Two major Church of England groups, Inclusive Church and Modern Church, have joined together to campaign against the proposed Anglican Covenant.
In November 2010 the Church of England’s General Synod will be asked to approve the Covenant, which has emerged from attempts by the Archbishop of Canterbury and others to resolve the wrangling in the Anglican Communion over sexuality, authority and related issues - and from the lobbying of conservative hardliners, say critics.
The Covenant was first proposed by the Windsor Report in 2004 to put pressure on the North American churches, after a diocese in the USA had elected an openly gay bishop and a diocese in Canada had approved a same-sex blessing service.
"Many Synod members do not realise it, but it could be the biggest change to the Church since the Reformation," say Inclusive Church and Modern Church (formerly the Modern Churchpersons Union).
The groups charge that the Church of England, if it signs, will become subordinate to a bureaucratic structure and will thereby become more centralised, dogmatic, backward-facing, inward looking and clerically dominated.
Here's the pdf link to text of the ad in the ChurchTimes.
How anyone expects that the Anglican Draft Covenant, or as someone in the comments at Thinking Anglicans called it, the Daft Covenant, will serve to bring the members of the Anglican Communion together is beyond me. The ratification of the Covenant will enable any province to accuse another of breaking the terms of the Covenant. The accusations will need to be addressed by whatever powers are assigned to the task, and it seems to me that the result will be endless wrangling about whether a province is assigned a place in first tier membership, second tier membership, or banished from the Communion altogether.
Modern Church provides excellent background information on the proposed Covenant here.
UPDATE: Credit where credit due. It seems that Tobias Haller coined the phrase "Daft Anglican Covenant" in the comments to this post at Thinking Anglicans from 2007:
Perhaps what is really needed is a Daft Anglican Covenant. ;-)
Posted by: Tobias Haller on Friday, 30 November 2007 at 8:55pm GMT
I should have known Tobias was the clever (or guilty?) author. How has so apt a phrase remained hidden for years? No matter. I shall do my best to make it famous.
UPDATE 2 CORRECTION: Tobias Haller is not the clever (guilty?) party.
At Ship of Fools:
Maleveque said: Posted 18 June, 2007 17:48
I really, really don't want a covenant. Covenant churches prescribe particular belief in a way that I find oppressive. If it happens, I don't know that I'll stay - and I am such a die-hard Episcopalian that I don't know where I'd go.
Anne L.
ps - am I the only one whose aged eyes read "Daft Anglican Covenant"?
Thanks to John Chilton and Ann Fontaine for the correction.
I may have the attribution right now, unless I receive a reference to an earlier use of the phrase.
UPDATE 3: As of this moment, Tobias Haller gets credit for the first publication of The Daft Anglican Covenant.
Further updates may follow.
