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Professor Marilyn McCord Adams' paper: The proposed Anglican Covenant and its implications for the Communion given at the 2008 MCU Conference - Saving the soul of Anglicanism.
The Draft Anglican Covenant
The continuing story:
(.pdf files)
In January 2007 a group under the chairmanship of Archbishop Drexel Gomez met in Nassau and produced a report and Draft Anglican Covenant.
This was given to the Primates' Meeting in Dar es Salaaam in February 2007. In its Communiqué the Primates' commended the Draft to the Provinces for study. They requested responses by the end of 2007.
TEC produced this study guide as part of its consultation.
A revised draft is expected to be debated at the Lambeth Conference 2008, and presented for final agreement to the Anglican Consultative Council in 2009, and thence to the Provinces for approval.
MCU's response to the previous consultation paper (and earlier stages of the story) is here with further links.
The MCU opposes the Draft Anglican Covenant and urges its rejection
Jonathan Clatworthy, Paul Bagshaw and John Saxbee, Bishop of Lincoln, have prepared a detailed response to The Draft Anglican Covenant on behalf of the MCU.
Available here:
- Response (prepared for the meeting of General Synod in July 2007 and submitted the the Anglican Communion Office as MCU's response to the consultation) in Word, .rtf, .pdf
- Letters in the Church Times from John Plant (15 June 2007) Word, .rtf, .pdf and from Bishop John Saxbee (29 June 2007) Word, .rtf, .pdf
- Bouncing the Covenant through the Anglican Communion - a personal paper by Paul Bagshaw (i.e. not formally endorsed by the MCU) - showing the process by which almost everyone is being excluded from a voice on the content of the Covenant. Word, .rtf, .pdf
The MCU opposes the Draft Covenant on the grounds of its origin, content, ambiguities and silences, its likely consequences, and the poverty of its justification.
But we also recognise that there is a need to look again at the structures of the Anglican Communion. The MCU believes there are alternative and more fruitful ways by which to address the future of Anglicanism drawing on our rich Anglican tradition.
The paper has been picked up by the Thinking Anglicans and TitusOneNine blogs.
The Response concludes:
We oppose the Draft Anglican Covenant on the grounds that:
- it would transform the Windsor process from admonition and counsel into an unprecedented and unjustifiable ecclesiastical coup d'état;
- its central proposal is to transfer power from the presently autonomous Provinces to a Meeting of the 38 Primates. The ambiguity of the text leaves open the possibility that this power would be unlimited, unaccountable, and irreversible;
- the consequences of this development for Anglican theology and polity, and for ecumenical agreements, would be extensive and have scarcely been explored;
- the proposed innovation in granting juridical power to the Primates' Meeting would be a distortion and not a legitimate development in Anglican ecclesiology;
- the consultative processes and timetable are wholly inadequate and in particular they completely marginalise the voice of the laity;
- the proposals have not been adequately justified in their own terms (the creation of trust) nor in the wider terms of better ordering and facilitating the mission of the Church;
- and yet Anglicanism has a rich storehouse of dispersed authority, of hospitality, mutual respect and trusting co-operation, of valuing difference and openness to new developments, of the honest and open search for truth, all of which can provide an alternative to the Draft Anglican Covenant as grounds for hope for the future.