The Church in Wales is inviting the public to comment on the Anglican Covenant, see this page.
To help in this matter, a commentary provided by the Church in Wales Doctrinal Commission has also been published, as a PDF file, here (link now corrected)
Another case of one way bias.
This seems to me to be an exemplary exercise in openness. The contrast with the seemingly closed discussions in the Church of England is stark. In the light of links, articles and letters posted here there should be great concern that the issue seems to be being steam-rollered through to approval and that the justified concerns over the Covenant are neither being heard or considered. The Church of England Synodical system and the electoral college makes it very difficuly to ensure that the voice of the person in the pew is also heard alongside the professional committee goers. Some dioceses… Read more »
Shame that a Welsh Archbishop of Canterbury can’t emulate the Church in Wales.
I agree with Richard Ashby that “the Church of England Synodical system and the electoral college makes it very difficult to ensure that the voice of the person in the pew is also heard alongside the professional committee goers.”
However, I think that this is part of a wider problem whereby the church authorities pay scant attention to the views of the laity; even Licensed Lay Ministers seem to be undervalued.
I hope that the Church in Wales website will post my comment: I am a young American who strongly supports the Covenant. I am also principal editor of Pro Communione: Theological Essays on the Anglican Covenant (Wipf & Stock/Pickwick, forthcoming), a collection of essays by younger Anglicans from across the Anglo-American world which is due to be published next year. Notably, even as we all have questions about the Covenant we also fundamentally support it. The current generation of leadership must ask itself if it wishes to be the generation that dismantled the Anglican Communion. No generation has the right… Read more »
Mr. Guyer writes: “The current generation of leadership must ask itself if it wishes to be the generation that dismantled the Anglican Communion.” I’m not quite sure to whom he is referring. It seems to me that if the Anglican Communion is dismantled, the perpetrators will be those who are saying “If you do not sign our Anglicaner-than-thou Covenant, you have no place with us.” I am an old American who strongly opposes the Covenant. I am older than the “Me” Generation/Baby Boomers. I have been an active Anglican/Episcopalian all my life. I’m not at all sure what Mr. Guyer… Read more »
Did Mr. Moorhead not live through the 1960s? How can he not know what pop song politics are? Does something like “The Times They Are A-Changin'” sound familiar? As for the latter comment – “I am an old American who strongly opposes the Covenant” – age, like frequency of church attendance, is immaterial. I did not claim (and I know of no one who would be so naive to claim) that there is a simple generational bifurcation on the matter. The issue which I have raised, and which Mr. Moorhead did not answer, remains: “The current generation of leadership must… Read more »
One can be of any generation and be for the Anglican Communion and also have hesitancies about or even problems with the proposed Covenant. Pitting entire generations of each other against each other in this way does not allow for nuances among persons much less among arguments.
“regardless of our views on human sexuality (which are, as we all surely recognize, diverse)” Surely? Nope, can’t say it rings a bell: I don’t know what “young” Anglicans you hang out with but I don’t know anyone under, oh, 30ish for whom the “presenting issue” of the Covenant (the intransigent refusal of a few brave provinces to unchurch a certain segment of the faithful, much as the “second wave” of Covenant supporters may distance themselves from its source) is in any wise an issue. As a gay youth whose own parents’ separation has deepened my scepticism about no-fault divorce,… Read more »
‘Young people thus have a greater vested interest in the preservation and pacification of the Anglican Communion’.
O come on! For ‘Young people’, like most of us, the Anglican Communion is completely irrelevant to both our religious and secular lives. Except where it tries to interfer with legitimate developments in doctrine and practice of each Church and where one group tries to impose its views on the rest.
Young or old has nothing to do with this. This “covenant” is a nasty attempt to convert a fellowship of national churches into an RC-style international church. Look, I’m not a baby boomer and understand your anger with their generation. But that has nothing to do with this callous attempt to enforce conformity (and homophobia) on the Episcopal Church in America, along with Anglicans in Canada, New Zealand, and elsewhere.
While I agree with Mr Guyer’s concern that this generation not be known as the one that dismantled the Anglican Communion, I think adopting the covenant will be exactly that: dismantling the Anglican Communion. We were not founded as a confessional movement and the covenant essentially makes us a confessional movement. We are not a world-wide church, but a gathering of autonomous churches. The covenant seeks to end that autonomy. The ABC has no authority beyond England – nobody has an authority beyond their boundaries – the covenant fundamentally changes that. A covenant-based worldwide Anglican Church would be an entirely… Read more »
I woud like to briefly respond to a few points. First, and generally, as I noted in my second post above, age is immaterial. I have asked a question about what the current leadership (I used the term ‘generation’, clearly a poor choice on my part – perhaps ‘leadership cohort’ or just ‘leadership’ is better?) wishes to bequeath to those who are growing up within our Communion or entering into positions of leadership. As several other posts have noted, there is a certain sense that the ‘Me’ Generation has derailed a few things. But I certainly don’t think that support… Read more »
guyer wrote, “No generation has the right to destroy that which was once entrusted to it.” I beg your pardon? I would argue that at times a new generation has the right – indeed, the *obligation* – to destroy what was once entrusted to it. I keep trusting that with each new generation are able to further dismantle the nuclear terror that clouded my childhood. I am glad that a previous generation restructured the Church from an institution racially segregated by canon to one that knows its sin of racism and struggles against it – and, guyer, be assured that… Read more »
Benjamin Guyer is here playing the role of the young naïf (who only wants his chance to enjoy the Anglican Communion). He is no such thing. He is an active combatant in the web battles over the direction of the Anglican Communion, he is a regular poster over at Living Church, and is in regular working relationships with the usual suspects over on the right hand side of the Anglican debates. A thirty year old activist for conservative theology has every right to participate in the discussion, and to bring his beliefs from his charismatic and “continuing Anglican” background into… Read more »
“The current generation of leadership must ask itself if it wishes to be the generation that dismantled the Anglican Communion. No generation has the right to destroy that which was once entrusted to it.”
Couldn’t agree more. This new structure of Anglicanism changes the Communion beyond recognition and you could well argue that, while every generation has the right to change what was once entrusted to it, it has to be done carefully, wisely, slowly and with a substantial majority agreement.
Not sure that applies to the Covenant proposal and the machamisms for its adoption.
I thought only people much much older than I am had issues with Bob Dylan. So far as I know, he’s not had anything to say – or sing – about the Anglican Communion, but then, I’ve not heard him lately.
“Is shirking the question of unity excusable or justifiable when it comes to human sexuality?” Yep. If “unity” is code for being blackmailed into doctrinal uniformity then it takes back seat to doing right by our own gay parishioners and ending the double standard. After all, it’s not like SSM or gay bishops *force* anyone to leave the communion, the implicit assumption underpinning the dichotomous “Covenant or schism” choice being presented. Unity we have in spades: it’s in the current Anglican Covenant and in our willingness to meet at the same table (both sacramentally and in terms of governance) at… Read more »
“The current generation of leadership must ask itself if it wishes to be the generation that dismantled the Anglican Communion. No generation has the right to destroy that which was once entrusted to it.” – guyer – Too late, guyer, the severance has already occurred. Ask GAFCON and ACNA about their new claims to ‘orthodoxy’ within the Communion (as opposed, presumably, to the ‘un-orthodoxy’ of the rest of us who want to see an inclusive future for ALL churches and ALL people of the Communion. Whether they will ever come to any sort of agreed covenantal status within the ‘Bonds… Read more »
‘I should have altered the above to say ‘young people within the Anglican Communion’.
Mr Guyer: That is exactly what I thought you meant and my comment stands.
Mr Guyer: “An ideological flight to utopian complacency is wholly at odds with what the present moment needs: a clear-sighted realism which accounts for this generation’s legacy.” I have to admit to a double take at this posting of Mr Guyer, and also a quick mental check that it wasn’t 1st April. Those of us who have misgivings over the proposed Covenant do so precisely because we believe it will dismantle the Anglican Communion as it has developed over many years and in which we have found a home. It will replace gracious bonds of affection (and, yes, they do… Read more »
The so-called Anglican Covenant would simply convert the Anglican Communion into something it never was, and never should be. Leave the Roman magisterium with them; if you happen to find that attractive, well, Rome is certainly willing to accept you. However, our parish church has seen more former Romans join in the past three years than had joined over the prior ten years. I departed from Rome thirty-six years ago, and have no interest at seeing Anglicanism emulate the structure of the church of my birth and my upbringing. There should be no covenant as is presently constructed, and as… Read more »
“The current generation of leadership must ask itself if it wishes to be the generation that dismantled the Anglican Communion.”
Up until now, the Anglican Communion has been a loose association of autonomous churches. A family of churches, really.
These days, some people want the family to restructure itself into a corporation. It is these same people who are refusing to show up at family reunions.
Who then is rejecting what history has handed down to us?
If the so-called Covenant gets through it will be largely ignored except perhaps at the international jet-setting and chattering level.
So that is encouraging I guess.