Showing posts with label No Anglcan Covenant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label No Anglcan Covenant. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

SPRING NEWSLETTER - NO ANGLICAN COVENANT COALITION

Spring Newsletter


March 14, 2012

Dear Supporters,

Since I last wrote to you, developments in the progress on the development of the Covenant have been fast and (occasionally) furious. We had previously assumed that adoption of the Covenant would come before General Synod in York this July, and we were concerned that it might be overshadowed by the – hopefully final – debate on the appointment of women bishops. But this has almost certainly been overtaken by events.

Voting has been continuing in the dioceses, the surprise being that the current state of play is 17 against the adoption of the Covenant, with only 10 in favour of it. If a simple majority of the dioceses vote to reject it, the Covenant will not after all be brought before General Synod. There are 44 dioceses, which means that the pro-Covenanters need 23 to be in favour. Thus to defeat it, we only need to have 22 dioceses reject it. The Covenant could not be brought before General Synod again in this quinquennium, i.e. not before July 2015 (and it is hard to see how it could be revived then).

On 17 March, this coming Saturday, Norwich, Liverpool, St Albans, Chester and Ely will vote; and on the following Saturday, 24 March, they will be followed by Lincoln, Exeter, Blackburn, Oxford, Guildford and Peterborough. You can follow the results on the Thinking Anglicans website and also at Modern Church.

Our experience in the last few months has been that, wherever members of the diocesan synods are briefed on both sides of the question, they have tended to vote against the Covenant. In several cases, synods have refused to allow briefing papers on both sides to be circulated. In Sodor and Man, Bishop Gregory Cameron of St Asaph debated with Jonathan Clatworthy of Modern Church before the diocesan synod: despite an address by the Bishop of Sodor and Man strongly in favour of the Covenant, it was rejected.

Our team in the Coalition has been strengthened by the recruitment of 5 more patrons: from England, the Revd Dr Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of Church History at Oxford University, and the Revd Canon Sarah Coakley, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University; from the USA the Revd Dr Marilyn McCord Adams, Professor of Philosophy at University of North Carolina and formerly Regius Professor at Oxford University; from Australia, Dr Muriel Porter, OAM, a senior Anglican and correspondent for ‘The Church Times’; and from New Zealand the Rt Revd James White, Assistant Bishop of Auckland.

Concentration remains, for the moment, on the Church of England. Professor MacCulloch was interviewed with Bishop Graham Kings of Sherborne by Edward Stourton last Sunday. You can hear it on YouTube, and you can also hear his general comments on the Covenant here. This video was fortuitously uploaded to YouTube the day after the Archbishop of Canterbury’s rather rambling piece - and appeared to be in response to it.

So, to summarise, it is possible that by the end of March we will have defeated the Anglican Covenant, at least in its present form. I never imagined, when we started the No Anglican Covenant Coalition in 2010, that we could conceivably achieve this result. It has not happened yet, so for now our efforts are concentrated on getting at least 5 more dioceses voting our way. If we succeed, the next task will be to keep a close eye on what the Anglican Communion Office do next. Will they try to rescue it in some way or other, or will we have a part to play in more constructive dialogue about the future of the Anglican Communion?

Thank-you to so many people who have been working hard at the local level to enable both sides of the debate to be heard. Please continue your efforts, we still need your help.

With very best wishes,


(Coalition Moderator, the Revd Dr Lesley Crawley)

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

NO ANGLICAN COVENANT COALITION NEWS RELEASE

Tuesday, March 13, 2012



The No Anglican Covenant has issued a news release remarking on the status of Covenant voting in the Church of England and emphasizing that the Coalition is against the adoption of the Covenant but not opposed to the Anglican Communion. You can read a PDF version of the news release here. Below is reproduced the title and body of the news release.
 
YES TO COMMUNION – NO TO COVENANT

LONDON – With more than half of English dioceses having voted, leaders of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition are cautiously optimistic. To date, a significant majority of dioceses have rejected the proposed Anglican Covenant. Coalition Moderator, the Revd Dr Lesley Crawley, welcomes the introduction of following motions at several recent synods emphasizing support for the Anglican Communion. Four dioceses have already passed following motions (Bath and Wells; Chelmsford; Worcester; Southwark) and a further six have following motions on the agenda (St Alban’s; Chester; Oxford; Guilford; Exeter; London).

“The more widely the Covenant is read and discussed, the more likely people are to see it as a deeply flawed approach to the challenges of the Anglican Communion in the 21st century,” said Crawley. “The introduction of following motions in several dioceses has emphasized what has been our position from the beginning: we oppose the Covenant because we love the Anglican Communion.”

“The proposed Covenant envisages the possibility that Provinces of the Communion may be barred from representing Anglicanism on certain councils and commissions with the clear implication that they are no longer sufficiently Anglican,” said Coalition Patron Bishop John Saxbee. “It is precisely this dimension of the Covenant which renders the Covenant itself un-Anglican.”

“Some have argued that the Covenant is necessary for ecumenical relations to indicate how Anglicans understand catholicity, even though this is already laid out in the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral and the Declaration of Assent,” according to Coalition Patron Bishop Peter Selby. “The Covenant adds nothing to these other than a bureaucratic disciplinary regime which denies to Anglicanism a distinctiveness which ecumenical partners might come to appreciate or even envy.”

“I’m very disappointed that some Covenant supporters have tried to turn this into a contest about who loves the Communion more, like self-centred parents in some ugly divorce drama,” said Canadian Coalition member, the Ven Alan Perry. “Our position has always been that ‘No’ to the Covenant really is ‘Yes’ to the Communion. Companion diocese relationships came into being without the Covenant and will continue to exist, Covenant or no. Anglicans from around the world care about their Anglican brothers and sisters in places like Haiti or Zimbabwe, and we will continue to care about them with or without the proposed Anglican Covenant. Our current ecumenical relationships began long before the idea of an Anglican Covenant, and they will continue whether the Covenant is accepted or rejected. We are a family, and we shall continue to be a family regardless of what happens.”

To date, the proposed Anglican Covenant has been approved by ten dioceses of the Church of England (Lichfield; Durham; Europe; Bristol; Canterbury; Winchester; Sheffield; Bradford; Carlisle; Coventry) and rejected by 17 (Wakefield; St Edmundsbury and Ipswich; Truro; Birmingham; Derby; Gloucester; Portsmouth; Rochester; Salisbury; Leicester; Sodor and Man; Chelmsford; Hereford; Ripon and Leeds; Bath and Wells; Southwark; Worcester). Approval by 23 diocesan synods is required for the Covenant to return to General Synod for further consideration. Rejection by 22 dioceses would effectively derail approval of the Covenant by the Church of England.

From the No Anglican Covenant Coalition.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING!


I am not kidding. Lionel Deimel has gone and done it. He's created a whole line of clothing and other "NO ANGLICAN COVENANT" products. Check it OUT!

Pictured above is the value T-shirt for only $9.99.

Read all about how Lionel's online shop came to be.

H/T to Torey Lightcap at The Lead.