Updated yet again Sunday evening
11.25 pm Friday
ENS is first with a report on the Covenant: Bulletin: Anglican Consultative Council postpones release of covenant. ENS says:
The council had originally been asked to send the entire text to the provinces. However, some members were concerned about the practicalities of the processes outlined in Section 4 of the covenant, “Our Covenanted Life Together,” which attempts to provide a method for resolving disputes in the communion. Much of the concern centered on the provision in paragraph 4.1.5 that “it shall be open to other Churches to adopt the Covenant” because it lacks a definition for “other churches.”
The members agreed 33-30 (with two abstentions) to ask for more work on Section 4.
Saturday morning update
That Bulletin has now been replaced with a much longer detailed report.
Anglican Journal also has a detailed account, Delegates vote to delay distribution of latest draft of covenant
ACNS has ACC-14 Press Briefing 8th May 2009 with the Secretary General which includes audio of the half-hour session.
Anglican Mainstream has ACC Bishops from Egypt, Peru and Nigeria reflect on the delay to the Covenant. and there is comment about the covenant debate in Report from ACC-14 Day Seven: No Fourth Moratorium and No Covenant.
The text of the document itself can be found at An Anglican Covenant – The Third (Ridley Cambridge) Draft.
Saturday afternoon update
Video from ENS is available here. There is an interview with the TEC delegates, as well as videos of the press briefings.
Saturday evening update
Colin Coward has Covenant debate – who was to blame for chaos?
…My perception was that there were two reasons for the chaos. The first and most significant, which hasn’t been reported elsewhere, is that no-one was at hand to advise the chair on the standing orders which set the rules for ACC meetings. At meetings of the Church of England General Synod a legal adviser always sits to the left of the chair and can offer instant advice. Yesterday’s debate would have benefitted from having John Rees closer at hand to provide advice.
The second cause of the chaos arose within the meeting itself. Delegates for whom English is not their first language ( and for some, not even second or third) find it understandably difficult to follow the process. Cultural differences about process and the way decisions are made and where power lies or should lie also affected delegates’ understanding of what was happening. And finally, some delegates carried a very strong agenda to the debate and their interventions contributed to increased tension and rising confusion.
When the Archbishop of Canterbury intervened, he did so to rescue the session from increasing chaos. I thought he summed up very succinctly and helpfully exactly where the debate had reached and what the delegates intended. Other journalists thought the Archbishop had abused the democratic process and had been putting that possibility to delegates as they dispersed at the end of the debate. This enabled them to say at the press briefing, “Delegates think …”
Sunday evening update
Anglican Mainstream has ACC 14 – Day 9 : It’s the property – stupid!
This is all so bizarre. To this Yank it reminds me of the heavy thinkers in high school who ran student government and passed convolted and very serious motions about the quality of food in the cafeteria. Listen up folks! There are people who are hungry, thirsty, naked, in prison, ill, oppressed, discriminated against, and wish for an end to hatred…. and I don’t think they or Jesus give a tinker’s damn about the shape or form of governance of the Anglican Communion. They want to be fed, given water, be clothed, be freed, be made whole, be accepted as… Read more »
“The Council had originally been asked to send the entire (Ridley) text to the provinces. however some members were concerned about the practicalities outlined in section 4 of the Covenant: “Our Covenanted Life Together”, which attempts to provide a method for resolving disputes in the Communion. Much of the concern centred on the provision, in pargraph 4.1.5, that “it shall be open to other Churches to adopt the Covenant” – cause it lacks a definition for “other Churches”. ENS web-site.M. Schjonberg Thank goodness the ACC has delayed sending the Ridley Draft in it’s present form to the Provinces for ratification.… Read more »
It should not surprise me that the outcome would have been different had some people succeeded in insisting that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada should not take part. But given that, I suppose, other members may have had misgivings about giving a carte blanche for the entrance of ACNA as the “replacement” for the two churches (or for that matter, any substitute “border-crossing” jurisdiction), it was bound to happen.
But it will only reinforce the feeling of victimhood some of our brothers and sisters are being whipped up to have.
It’s dead.
http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/05/acc-lecture-interruption-resolution.html
Here is an instance of misrepresentation by ACU executive officer Rev. Philip Ashey, in his statement (below) on the Anglican Mainstream web-site, that he is a ‘Ugandan delegate’ together with Mrs Babirikamu.: “Thank God for my fellow Ugandan delegate (who was seated) Mrs. Jolly Babirikamu, for her courage in calling the introduction of new resolutions which were out of order exactly what they were – Instruments of confusion” The real fact is, that, though proposed by his Archbishop as Uganda’s clerical delegate for membership of the ACC, this proposition was turned down, on the grounds that he was part of… Read more »
They want to be fed, given water, be clothed, be freed, be made whole, be accepted as God’s children. They cry out for food, water, clothing, liberty, and an end to hatred and discrimination. They are we. We are they.¨ Cynthia G. Exactly. I often wonder if Archbishop Rowan has ANY idea about the current Church and Government sponsored anti-LGBT ¨witch hunts¨ in Uganda…or, the level of persecution that Anglicans, our families, our friends are facing in Nigeria. Or the promised NEW anti-lgbt legislation in Kenya? The ABC is very busy being defensive, like his spectacle yesterday of jumping up… Read more »
From the beginning of ‘the job’ Rowan Williams put religious bureaucracy above its people and human ethics and is simply going to pay the price for that focus. The outcome is the same as if he’d focused on people and ethics and failed with the bureaucracy, but with considerable more exasperation and annoyance from those he let down earlier on to those he has let down later on.
“One could be forgiven for thinking that the debate on Friday morning about the covenant was actually about matters of faith. However it was actually about the issues of property and litigation in the United States.” – Chris Sugden In his roundup on ‘Anglican Mainstream’ on the proceedings of Friday’s debate, Mr Sugden draws attention to the fact that it was almost entirely taken up with matters of property legislation. What he, and others in the ACNA camp will not admit, is that the need for this debate came as a direct result of the attempt by the dissidents to… Read more »