The covenant is a document that sets forth a system for adjudicating disputes based on criteria that are almost entirely subjective and ad hoc. In this peculiar system, one can do nothing that offends another province in the Communion, and anything that does not. Offense is judged not by analyzing the act, but in analyzing the response to the act. This is governance by hurt feelings, a system in which power flows to those who complain the loudest and the most frequently. The covenant lacks any of the safeguards, contained in most civil codes, to protect the accused from frivolous accusations. Hence there is no cost and much potential benefit in lodging complaints simply to keep one’s theological adversaries on the defensive. There is great incentive for them to behave in similar fashion.
Jim's words in first paragraph seem so obvious that they should not need saying, but, just as obviously, they do. That the covenant will be a recipe for enabling the tattlers, complainers, and busybodies to stir up trouble was plain to me from the beginning, but not everyone views the document in a similar light. "Governance by hurt feelings" sums up the future of the Anglican Communion if the Anglican Covenant is adopted by a majority of the provinces. I predict that the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion will be quite busy handling complaints, large and small, and adjudicating whether the complaints are worthy of their attention. "The squeaking wheel gets the grease" is a truism that, all too often, applies.
The rest of Jim's essay is sobering, indeed, with its reminder of the implementation of the "pastoral scheme" for the Episcopal Church at the 2007 Primates Meeting in Dar es Salaam.
