One feels both gratified and alarmed, then, to learn that at is meetings last week, IASCUFO (the InterAnglican Standing Committee on Unity, Faith and Order) recognized the importance of “being a fully representative group” and “re-affirm[ed] the significance of the Anglican Communion Covenant for strengthening our common life.” Gratified, because, well, it is nice to have your opponents make your points for you. Alarmed because the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Communion Office continue to behave as though the more centralized church they hope to create already exists.The 'putting facts on the ground' strategy has been used time and again by those who wish to change the Anglican Communion from a fellowship of churches bound together by the Creeds, the Scriptures, common worship, and the bonds of affection to a centralized institution governed from the top down. Say it is so, and it will be so. The strategy was used with the Windsor Report to attempt to make what is only a report into binding rules, including open-ended moratoria with no end in sight, which the churches of the communion are expected to follow.
Bishop Martin Barahona, retired primate of Central America covered both the Windsor Report and the Anglican Covenant with with a few wise words:
“The Windsor Report,” he said. “It’s just a report. When did it become like The Bible. The Covenant. Why do we need another covenant? We have the Baptismal Covenant. We have the creeds. What else do we need?”As I said at The Lead, if any group associated with the Anglican Communion Office put out a communiqué that expressed disagreement with the Archbishop of Canterbury, I'd fall down in a faint. The ABC is, after all, only the first among equals, one among many primates, but a good many of the various groups and committees do not look representative or independent from where I sit, which is not right, because the member churches of the communion fund the Anglican Communion Office and its activities.
The name of the committee puts me in mind of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) of the Roman Catholic Church, which, apropos of nothing, began life 1542 as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition.
For further reading, I refer you to Pluralist's humorous take on a conversation between two bishops on the IASCUFO communiqué.
