It was a relief to find someone who seems positive about the Anglican Covenant. As Bishop Alan said somewhere (possibly in the comments on the post here), if we can't find anyone with something positive to say about the Covenant then it is difficult to have a sensible debate. I think both Bishop Alan and myself have been asking around and found a universally negative response to the Anglican Covenant, with a vague feeling that those who will vote for it feel a bit sorry for Rowan right now. However, Andrew Goddard has written an article here that criticises the advert by Modern Church and Inclusive Church. His article is rather emotive and polemical, with some things that I consider to be incorrect, and I couldn't glean why he actually liked the Covenant from it, so I went digging and found this more positive piece, which I would like to consider. So reasons to have the Covenant
1. Avoid embarrassment:
We need ways of translating this underlying sacramental communion into a more effective institutional reality, so that we don't compromise or embarrass each other in ways that get in the way of our local and our universal mission, but learn how to share responsibility. The idea of a 'covenant' between local Churches...is one method that has been suggested, and it seems to me the best way forward.
It seems that having gay clergy in the Anglican Communion embarrasses Anglicans in Africa and they feel this impedes mission. However, not having equal rights for gay clergy also embarrasses other Anglicans, like me, and I feel it impedes mission. So.... how does the Anglican Covenant solve this? A better approach, I feel, is to say 'My brothers and sisters in [name of province] feel differently than me on this subject, I feel they are wrong, very wrong, but they are still part of my family, and I will love them'.
2. It helps us achieve 'Big Church'?
Coming to the Conference...I hope...does commit us all to striving together for a more effective and coherent worldwide body, working for God's glory and Christ's Kingdom. The Instruments of Communion have offered for this purpose a set of resources and processes, focused on the Windsor Report and the Covenant proposals. My hope is that as we gather we can trust that your acceptance of the invitation carries a willingness to work with these tools to shape our future.
Personally, I feel in this post-modern age, we don't need overarching international structures. Mission happens in the parishes where people serve each other and love each other, mostly completely unaware of what is happening in other Provinces. We do find connections with people all over the world, and fund Mission Partners and pray for them, but this is again from a grass roots level. I can't understand where this perceived need is being generated from?
3. Build trust
Commitment to engaging positively with this process is therefore essential if Synod and the wider church are committed to strengthening the bonds of affection, rebuilding trust and mutual recognition across current divisions in the Communion, and agreeing structures to enable future tensions to be faced more constructively than at present and in the recent past.A covenant is like a marriage - it is an outward show of an inner reality. You marry someone you trust. A contract is made with someone you don't necessarily trust. It has requirements and disciplinary clauses if these requirements are not met. The Covenant is in my opinion a contract. How will that build trust?
4. Good for Evangelicals
It also offers the hope of being able (in a theologically rich and biblically based form of a covenant) to express biblical and creedal faith and to develop the structures of a distinctive global Anglicanism which is both Catholic and Reformed and which will help us work for the unity among all his disciples for which Christ prayed.One of the things I find most staggering about the Anglican Covenant is the words in the introduction, number 6: We are a people who live, learn, and pray by and with the Scriptures as God’s Word (emphasis mine). Surely not. Jesus is God's Word. We are followers of Jesus, unlike Muslims who follow the Qu'ran. For Luther, famously, the Word of God is preached, not read. For Calvin, the Bible was "la parole de Dieu",
not "le mot de Dieu" (the utterance of God not the Word of God).
I was an evangelical for many years and I value very much that wing of the Church of England. I don't think the brand of Evangelicalism that we see in the Covenant is what many people would see as mainstream, I am afraid it feels more fundamentalist than that. Anyway, do we not wish to keep the three wings of the church - based on scripture, reason and tradition? The Covenant is not good for anyone in my opinion.