'WHAT NEXT?" - ALAN PERRY

Canon Alan Perry of the Anglican Church of Canada ponders the next step for the churches of the Anglican Communion after the rejection of the Anglican Covenant by the Church of England.  As the Episcopal Church in the US will meet in General Convention in July of this year and and will be addressing proposed resolutions concerning the covenant, Alan's post seems to me a helpful addition to preparatory material.

I don't know how much time, effort or money has been expended on the Anglican Covenant proposal, but I think it is safe to say “a lot”. And this proposal has distracted Anglicans to a significant degree from pursuing, both other avenues of building relationships, and our primary mission of living out the Gospel in our various contexts. Now that the project is stalled, perhaps irretrievably, in the Church of England, how much more time, energy and money should the rest of us be expending on this proposed Covenant?

What should those outside England do?

It's really up to each Church to decide how it's going to deal with the proposed Covenant, but I see four options at this point:

1. Continue with the process of considering and adopting the proposed Covenant;
2. Continue to consider the Covenant, but adopt it conditionally such that an Act of Synod adopting the Covenant does not come into effect until the Church of England adopts it;
3. Suspend the process of considering the Covenant until it is clear what the Church of England is going to do next;
4. Adopt a resolution rejecting the Covenant.

Please don't stop with my short quote from Alan's post.  Read it all.

Whatever resolutions the Episcopal Church passes or does not pass, I fervently hope we will not spend "a lot" of time, effort, and money on such an inferior piece of work, especially now that the "mother" church has disposed of it.