ANGLICANS AROUND THE WORLD OPPOSE COVENANT

IT'S HERE!


From No Anglican Covenant:

Anglican churches are being asked to adopt a so-called Anglican Covenant that seeks to bind them more tightly to one another and to codify procedures by which future disputes within the Anglican Communion will be resolved.

We believe that this covenant is ill-conceived. In response to the reputed “crisis” in the Communion, drafters of the covenant have favoured coercion over the hard work of reconciliation. The covenant seeks to narrow the range of acceptable belief within Anglicanism and to prevent further development of Anglican thought. Rather than bringing peace to the Communion, we predict that the covenant text itself could become the cause of future bickering and that its centralized dispute-resolution mechanisms could beget interminable quarrels and resentments.

I'm June Butler, and I approve this message. No good will come of the covenant.

General Synod of the Church of England will meet on 23 and 24 November 2010 and debate and vote on the Anglican Covenant.

This site is the work of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition. The Coalition comprises dedicated Christians, many of them bloggers, from around the worldwide Anglican Communion who believe that the proposed Anglican Covenant our churches are being asked to endorse is, at best, redundant, but, more likely, will do irreparable harm to our churches and to our Communion.

In particular, the members of the Coalition believe that the covenant is likely to change forever the fundamental nature of not only the Anglican Communion, but also of Anglicanism itself. Out of a fellowship of mutually supportive yet diverse regional and national churches tracing their historical and liturgical traditions to the Church of England, there threatens to emerge a monolithic, worldwide church unresponsive to local needs, narrow in its theological outlook, and governed exclusively by bishops most of us will never see.

For me to have been asked to be part of a group which includes such worthies is quite an honor. I hasten to add that my contribution to the hard work of putting the web site together was quite small. Others worked long and heroically, and I believe the result is splendid.

November 3rd is an ideal day to launch a new international organization resisting the proposed Anglican Covenant because it is the day Anglicans commemorate the sixteenth-century theologian Richard Hooker. Hooker argued that the Church should use the full range of reasoning faculties in matters of faith and should develop in light of changing circumstances. New ideas and differences of opinion, therefore, have a proper place within the Church. It is this openness and tolerance that we, the No Anglican Covenant Coalition, wish to defend today against an Anglican Covenant that would suppress differences of opinion.

Click on the link and explore the No Anglican Covenant web site. You'll find all you've ever wanted to know about the covenant and more.



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The statue of Richard Hooker stands before Exeter Cathedral in England. Photo courtesy of Ann Fontaine.