Anglican Covenant: the Study Guide

Just in time for Lent, the Anglican Communion Office has issued a Study Guide to assist ordinary Anglicans around the world in coming to a clear understanding of the proposed Anglican Covenant. The idea seems to be that people will gather in groups for five sessions to read through the text together and, assisted by the Study Guide, understand what the Covenant is all about and what it will accomplish.

Each session is supposed to focus on one part of the proposed Covenant, beginning with the Introduction - which actually isn’t part of the Covenant at all, but is intended to provide an interpretive framework for it - and then moving through the four sections of the Covenant itself. A single question is provided for the study of each section. These are:

Introduction:

For each paragraph, read the Bible passages that are mentioned in the text, read the text and discuss it, and then ask ‘How does this paragraph help me/us understand the Christian faith as Anglicans have received it?’

Section 1:

Read each paragraph and discuss it. How is each of these affirmations and commitments lived out in your church?

Section 2:

Read each paragraph separately and discuss it. How do you understand the work of your church in furthering the mission of God in the world?

Section 3:

Read each paragraph separately and discuss it. How do you experience each of these as equipping Anglicans for common life and mission?

Section 4:

Read each subsection (4.1, 4.2, 4.3). What might this mean for your church?

That’s it. Naturally, a few comments come to mind:

1) The stated purpose of the process of study and consultation is "that Anglicans around the world will have an opportunity to understand and rejoice in the commitment which the churches are being asked to make." Funny, that word "rejoice". I would have thought that the purpose of study would be so that Anglicans would be able to make an informed decision about whether to accept the commitment asked of them. Evidently there is no possibility that anyone will do anything upon understanding the Covenant but to rejoice.

2) There is a typo on page 15. The paraphrase of section 4.2.6 says "the Standing Committee many (sic) declare something incompatible with the Covenant." I don’t point this out to be nitpicky, but because this kind of error reflects the haste which has characterized the whole Covenant process. (There are a couple of typos and grammatical errors in the draft Covenant, too). No one is perfect, but surely something as important as this document should have been carefully proofread.

3) The Study Guide is extraordinarily thin on actual study. In essence all it says is "read this section and discuss it in a group". Yes, there is a guiding question for each section, but it seems that the authors of the Guide feel that the value of the Covenant is so self-evident upon a simple reading of the text that no discussion or explanation of it is necessary. Either that or they fear that anything like an in-depth study will lead to people seeing through it and start pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.

Here are a few supplementary questions of my own:

Section 1:

Bearing in mind that these statements will be the basis on which the actions of  member Churches  may be judged in future, do you think these affirmations will be understood the same way by all members of the Anglican Communion? Are they clear enough to be used in a tribunal?

Section 2:

Based on reading the Covenant text, do you understand what it means by “communion?” What do you think your church should repent of (2.1.3)? Is there anything the whole Communion ought to repent of? Does mission mean different things in different contexts? Can you think of some examples of these differences? Do you think that all other Churches in the Anglican Communion will understand what mission means in your context?

Section 3:

Do you believe your Church is resolved to live in the Anglican Communion with all the current members? Do you believe that all other Churches in the Anglican Communion are resolved to live with your Church as a member? Do you agree that bishops have a central role as guardians and teachers of the faith (3.1.3)? What is the role of other clergy and the laity? Does the Covenant reflect that role? Does the description of the Instruments of Communion help you to understand these four bodies? Do you believe your Church respects the autonomy of the other Churches of the Communion? Do you believe the other Churches respect your Church’s autonomy? Does the Covenant provide adequate protection for the autonomy of the Churches?

Section 4:

Do you understand the process for deciding on controversial actions? Do you understand what is meant by relational consequences? Do you believe that it is helpful to impose relational consequences on a Church which is trying to live out its mission faithfully in its own context? If relational consequences were imposed on your Church, would you accept that the decision to do so is fair? Would you be troubled by the absence of a mechanism to appeal the decision?

Overall:

In what ways do you believe adoption of the proposed Covenant would help or hinder your Church in its mission? In what ways do you believe the adoption of the proposed Covenant would help or hinder the development of the Anglican Communion? In what ways do you believe the adoption of the proposed Covenant would address or fail to address the current tensions in the Anglican Communion? Do you feel more hopeful about the continuing life of the Anglican Communion and your Church if the proposed Covenant is adopted or rejected? If it were up to you, would you vote to adopt or reject the proposed Covenant?

By all means, do go ahead and study the proposed Covenant. Ask your own questions of the document. Study it in depth. And then ask yourself if it truly does make you want to "rejoice."

As for the Study Guide, I think I will wait for the Motion Picture.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

It has recently been reported that the Revd Dr Julian Linnell is part of the Evangelism and Church Growth Initiative (ECGI) of the Anglican Communion. Evidently Dr Linnell is part of the schismatic Anglican Church of North America, which is not part of the Anglican Communion. Presumably Dr Linnell has some compelling qualifications that make him a particularly valuable member of this group. The difficulty is that, according to credible sources, Dr Linnell, whatever his qualities, is a cleric who was “granted release from licensed ministry” in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh (Episcopal Church - part of the Anglican Communion) and who took up ministry in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh (Anglican Church of North America - not part of the Anglican Communion).

This episode raises a serious question about the proposed Anglican Covenant. The proposed Covenant requires each signatory Church “to respect the constitutional autonomy of all the Churches of the Anglican Communion....” (Section 3.2.2) This would suggest that the Covenant requires each Church to respect the various constitutional and canonical processes of each Church with respect to the regulation of the ministrations of its own clergy, for example. So, if a cleric in one Church is found guilty in an ecclesiastical trial of heresy, the other Churches would need to respect that decision. If said cleric were deposed, then he or she would be ineligible to serve further as a cleric, and that sentence would necessarily, under the proposed Covenant, need to be respected by all the other Churches of the Anglican Communion. Someone who departs a Church of the Anglican Communion to take up a position in a Church which is not part of the Anglican Communion ceases to be himself or herself a member of the Anglican Communion. If the reports are correct, then this is the case with Dr Linnell. (To avoid any doubt, I am not here accusing Dr Linnell of heresy. I am taking on face value the validity of reports that he is part of a group which has departed from the Anglican Communion.)

The question then arises, aside from Dr Linnell’s appointment being an apparent slap in the face of the Episcopal Church, how is it that the Anglican Communion Office decides to appoint a schismatic to an official body of the Anglican Communion without clearly stating that he is not an Anglican? It may be that the Communion Office is in the habit of appointing ecumenical advisors or partners to various committees, task groups and other official bodies of the Anglican Communion, and there is nothing wrong with that. Ordinarily such a person would be identified as such an ecumenical guest. It may be that Dr Linnell's particular expertise is such that he is uniquely qualified to be part of this particular group, and there is nothing wrong with that, either, in principle. But to appoint a member of a schismatic Church, particularly one which is embroiled in the very controversy which has given rise to the proposed Covenant, and which is involved in ongoing lawsuits against a member Church of the Anglican Communion, is to say the least a questionable action. It raises the question as to whether this appointment, or one like it, is in any way compatible with the proposed Covenant.

The trouble is that the proposed Covenant contains in it no requirement that the Anglican Communion Office act in accordance with the Covenant. The signatory Churches, not the Anglican Communion Office or, for that matter, the Instruments of Communion, are bound to “respect the constitutional autonomy of all the Churches of the Anglican Communion.” And a question may be raised pursuant to the proposed Covenant only with respect to “the compatibility of a covenanting Church with the Covenant” (section 4.2.3) and not with respect to the offices of the Communion itself. There is, in short, no form of check or balance to ensure that the actions of the Anglican Communion Office or the Instruments of Communion themselves respect either the letter or the spirit of the proposed Communion.

This absence of regulation of the very servants of the Communion allows them to act arbitrarily and with impunity. If they are unregulated and thus in effect unaccountable under the very framework that they themselves are so vigorously promoting, then there is a serious flaw in the framework. It is yet another reason to reject the proposed Covenant.

Why not just adopt sections 1-3 of the Covenant?

From time to time in conversations about the proposed Anglican Covenant someone suggests that perhaps we should just drop Section 4, the disputed dispute-settling mechanism, and just adopt sections 1-3, which more or less set out agreed - and mostly agreeable - parameters of Anglican faith.

The idea is well-meant. After all, no-one wants to be seen to be obstructive, or to be anti-Anglican Communion. And adopting the Covenant, or at least part of it, seems to be test of our loyalty to the Communion (not to mention the Archbishop of Canterbury). Dropping section 4 would seem to be a way of making the exercise less unpalatable. We might not have to hold our noses quite so tightly to adopt the rest of the Covenant, and it would seem that opposition to the Covenant might be reduced in the process. And then we'd look like we were playing nice and being co-operative.

So, why not? In fact, there are several reasons not to take this approach.

First, the suggestion to drop Section 4 really intends a desire to drop section 4.2. We would still need sections 4.1, 4.3 and 4.4, or something like them, to provide for adoption of, withdrawal from, and amendment to the Covenant. But that said, the Covenant process has now reached a point at which no-one is permitted to offer any further amendments to the text, and dropping section 4.2 would be a significant amendment to the text. So, it’s a matter of all or nothing.

But even if we could drop section 4.2 and adopt the rest, there are still reasons not to do so. At first blush, the first three sections look  relatively innocuous. After all, they mostly say things that we could all agree to say. Who, after all, could argue against the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, or the Five Marks of Mission, which are both quoted in the first three sections? Certainly not I!

But dig deeper. Most of us in saying these things are likely to mean slightly different things by them, depending on our various contexts. And the one context that is vital to account for in reading these sections of the proposed Covenant is the context of the document itself. I suggest that sections 1-3 need to be read through the lens of section 4. And when you do that and begin to ask yourself how these sections can be used as a basis on which to decide whether or not a proposed action would be
"compatible with the Covenant", then these three sections begin to look much less attractive.

What makes them attractive on their own is that they allow for a variety of interpretation in a variety of contexts. But the Covenant itself is designed to limit the variety of interpretation, and to allow for cross-contextual questioning of each others' actions. That being the case, the polysemous nature of sections 1-3 becomes, in light of section 4, yet another aspect of ambiguity or fuzziness which becomes unhelpful when used as a measuring stick in a quasi-judicial proceeding which will lead inevitably to relational consequences.

And, anyway, do we need another document which just quotes documents that already play a significant role in the life of the Communion? Wouldn’t that just be redundant?

And even if sections 1-3 are mostly innocuous, they are not without their difficulties. I’ve begun an analysis of these sections and will continue in the days and weeks ahead.

But the bottom line is that we are in a position now where the document is fixed. We do not have the liberty to amend the text or to adopt parts of it piecemeal.

Take it or leave it? Leave it!

Primatial Tea Leaves

About a week and a half ago the Primates of the Anglican Communion met in Dublin. Well, most of them met. But some were unable to be there because of health reasons or visa problems or because they had to deal with urgent matters at home. Fair enough. And a few decided to stay away to make a point about how upset they are with the Anglican Communion and certain of its members.

On the latter, the Church Times, in its leader, said that:

the Global South absentees had wished to signal by their absence the insignificance of the Primates’ Meeting, as long as it proved unable or unwilling to enforce earlier disciplinary measures against the Episcopal Church in the United States concerning gay bishops and same-sex unions.

Point taken. But the Primates who attended issued, among several documents, a Working Document which described what they understood to be the purpose of the Primates’ Meeting. It’s worth a read. The Working Document is not perfect, but then it doesn’t claim to be perfect. There are a few questions I would like to raise about it, but that will have to wait for another time. For today, I would like to suggest that this is in general a useful step.

It seems to me that what has happened with the Primates' Working Document is a bit of a reset of the Meeting, back to the original purpose. The accumulation of power in the Meeting since Dromantine, with the conservatives egged on by their "advisors," has been unhelpful, divisive and increasingly fractious. The boycott and the dismissive criticism of the Meeting by certain Primates this time was probably inevitable. The reason the Primates haven't "enforce[d] earlier disciplinary measures" is because they never had the authority to do so in the first place. Their purpose was never discipline, and the attempt to hijack the Meeting and turn it into a disciplinary body with coercive power was doomed ultimately to fail, even if it seemed to be working for a while.

In Dromantine, the Primates’ Meeting stopped acting as an Instrument of Unity, and became an Instrument of Disunity.

What happened in Dublin was that the Primates stopped being bullied. From my vantage point across the Atlantic it looks to me rather like the dynamic at the most recent meeting of the Canadian General Synod. The previous few meetings had been characterized by well-organized and well-funded efforts to push the General Synod in a direction it really didn't want to go, using a combination of threats, warnings, strategic tactics and propaganda to impose a conservative agenda on the Synod. But by last year's meeting in Halifax, the most strident and angry voices had left to pursue what they saw as their mission in other climes.

With the loud, angry people out of the room, we found that there was the possibility of a calm, rational, respectful set of conversations about sexuality. There was the opportunity to address the divide between the progressive and the conservative positions without the threats and attempts to hijack the meeting that had gone on before. There didn't seem to be a conservative war-room strategizing into the wee hours of the morning as there had been before. And the result was a document that said, in effect, that we are in disagreement about how the Church should respond to the presence of gays and lesbians, but we are in this together, and we're prepared to work at it together, and try to find a way to live with each other.

I think a similar thing happened in Dublin. I think the Primates sat around those candles signifying the absence of the advisors as much as the people who stayed away and asked themselves what their purpose was, and whether they really wanted to be the kind of group they were becoming since the last time they met in Ireland. And from the document they produced, for all its imperfections, it looks like the answer was "no".

Now as a Communion we need to do a similar thing. We need to ask ourselves whether we really want to be the kind of family of Churches that imposes a central authority on itself with a vague, arbitrary and demonstrably unjust process for imposing "relational consequences" on Churches that cross some ill-defined line in the sand. Or do we want to be the kind of family of Churches that takes seriously a commitment to each other and to each others' contexts, to worship and work and speak with each other respectfully, finding unity in diversity, rather than the illusion of unity promised but never fulfilled by the imposition of uniformity. Do we want to be what we can be at our best, or do we want to continue to go down the road of becoming our worst?

Do we want to be the kind of Communion where people refuse to come to the table unless they can use the opportunity to expel others from the table, or do we want to be the kind of Communion where people gather with all our differences and imperfections to continue to try to find ways of bringing light into the world together?

I think Lambeth 2008 and now the Dublin Primates' Meeting have given us a start. There is a way that we can build the future together as a Communion, and that way will take commitment to meet rather than refusals to attend meetings. It will take time to discuss matters respectfully rather than engage in ad hominem attacks and threats and strategizing. It will take humility rather than arrogance. It will mean, in short, a willingness to live out the Gospel in diversity.

The next step will be to rid ourselves of this troublesome Covenant.

Living the Faith

Having defined the faith, how do the Churches of the Anglican Communion live that faith? According to the proposed Anglican Covenant, we do so “in varying contexts ... reliant on the Holy Spirit.” (Section 1.2) Actually, this section is more about developing the faith than living it, about how we decide on what new initiatives or beliefs or practices we might legitimately pursue in our “varying contexts”.

Context is essential both for the development of the faith and for the interpretation of this section of the proposed Covenant. All of us are, for better or for worse, products of our context. We are influenced by the cultures in which we live, either positively by adopting surrounding cultural norms, or negatively in rejecting surrounding cultural norms. These contextual influences shape how we read Scripture, and how we appropriate the Tradition, and our context provides many of the questions we ask of Scripture and Tradition in developing the faith. All theology is contextual.

But the proposed Covenant must also be read in its context, that of dispute and open hostility in the Anglican Communion. Without that context there would be no proposed Covenant. It is designed to address the current climate of dispute and, possibly, to address future disputes, which seem to be understood to be inevitable. And each of the first three sections of the proposed Covenant must be read in light of the fourth section, the process for settling disputes. With that in mind, we can begin to assess section 1.2.

Section 1.2.1 commits signatory churches “to teach and act in continuity and consonance with Scripture and the catholic and apostolic faith, order and tradition....” And section 1.2.2 commits the churches to “a pattern of Christian theological and moral reasoning and discipline that is rooted in and answerable to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the catholic tradition.” (Emphasis mine)

Four hundred years ago, Richard Hooker established the Anglican way of doing theology: we use a complex interplay of Scripture, Tradition and Reason. This is often described as a three-legged stool on which our theology rests. But here the proposed Covenant seems to have sawn off the leg of Reason. (I’m grateful to William F Hammond for drawing my attention to this point.)

Bearing in mind the context of the Covenant, it seems to me that these clauses were included because some parties to our dispute alleged that some other parties to the dispute weren’t teaching and acting “in consonance with Scripture and the catholic ... tradition.” And section 4.2 of the proposed Covenant sets up a mechanism to decide whether such an allegation is correct and, if so, to apply sanctions, or “relational consequences”. (And, in my view, any claim that the proposed Covenant isn’t punitive is poppycock.)

But as so often is the case, the devil is in the details. For the problem is that Scripture and Tradition must be interpreted. And the means by which they are interpreted is Reason. And they will be interpreted in varying ways in varying contexts.

Scripture is sometimes misrepresented as though it were a self-interpreting document, but this simplistic depiction of Scripture is both dishonest and dangerous. It’s dishonest because it ignores the fact that Scripture must be read in order for its voice to speak, and in reading we all begin from a contextually-determined perspective. And it’s dangerous because it tends to turn Scripture into a bludgeon wielded by bullies. Each of us, based on the place and time in which we live, our education and personal life experiences, our intellectual and spiritual predilections, and a myriad of other factors, approach Scripture with a set of insights and prejudices that will inevitably colour what we are likely to see in Scripture. These sorts of factors provide us with our dominant interpretive frameworks, the lenses through which we read Scripture. Yes, we can learn techniques that help us to correct for some of these factors, but there is no way to determine a universal, objective reading of any passage of Scripture (even setting aside the fact that Scripture carries many layers of meaning). Dr Donna Runnalls, who was Dean of Religious Studies at McGill University during my time there, used to say that objectivity was a mirage, and what we should aim for is “critically tutored subjectivity.” That is, we need to be aware that we are subjective, and learn how to see past our biases as best we can. This is a never-ending pursuit which requires intellectual humility, which squares well with the Anglican virtue of provisionality.

Tradition also needs to be understood. It is not simply a monolithic body of beliefs and practices from the past to which we must slavishly adhere. Tradition is alive and in constant flux. The tradition is passed on from one generation to the next, but in the process the receiving generation evaluates and sifts and reinterprets that which it receives, before adding its own contributions to the tradition that it ultimately passes to the subsequent generation. Tradition either grows and develops, or it stagnates and ossifies into the idol of traditionalism. As Jaroslav Pelikan put it, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”

So the key to assessing this section of the proposed Covenant is to ask what, precisely, is meant by Scripture and Tradition (not to mention why Reason is left out). Because this is critical in assessing how any given action is “answerable to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the catholic tradition.” (Section 1.2.2) I suspect that each signatory Church will have its own understanding of what these terms means, and these varying understandings won’t be completely compatible. Inevitably, this will give rise to future conflicts. And I really don’t like that term “answerable” because it will only increase the temperature of future conflicts.

And is it really necessary to sign a formal agreement to take Scripture and Tradition seriously? No Anglican would claim to do otherwise. Each of us, in our “varying contexts,” seeks to apply Scripture and Tradition, with Reason, to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The trouble is that in recent times Anglicans from other contexts have questioned whether certain Anglicans have come to valid conclusions about the application of the faith in the latters’ contexts.

We all have mechanisms to explore and decide what it means, for example, to be an authentic 21st-century Canadian Anglican. (To speak of my own context.) In Canada those mechanisms include well-established processes of study, consultation, prayer, and eventual Synodical decision. And when the General Synod is deciding on a Canonical matter of Doctrine or Discipline, then it requires two readings in separate sittings of the Synod, which normally take place at three-year intervals. This is not a recipe for rash or hasty decisions!

Can we not trust each other to apply Scripture, Tradition and Reason in a responsible manner in our varying contexts? The proponents of the proposed Covenant seem to believe that we can’t.

Some critics of the proposed Covenant have suggested that it is tantamount to imposing a Confession on the churches of the Anglican Communion, not unlike, say, the Westminster or Augsburg Confessions. I disagree. It’s worse. Because at least with a clear Confession you know exactly where you stand. Rather than a clear Confession, the proposed Covenant provides rather ill-defined parameters against which any proposed action may be tested by a process that is vague, without criteria and demonstrably unfair.

An important question is whether the lack of precision here is useful or not. Theologically, it probably leaves room for some diversity (even if the amount of diversity is strictly limited) and even for the movement of the Holy Spirit. It leaves room to “be open to prophetic ... leadership”. (Section 1.2.6) But this is not a theological document. It is a legal document, binding the churches of the Anglican Communion together in an international treaty. In the absence of any dispute-settling process, section 1.2 would look a whole lot better. Not perfect, but better. But given that it provides the standard against which churches may be judged, its lack of precision is not helpful. It’s one more reason to reject this proposed Covenant.

Defining the Faith

Section 1 of the proposed Anglican Covenant has received the least amount of comment or criticism of the whole document. The reason why is self-evident: there’s not much objectionable in this part of the proposal. But that doesn’t necessarily make it perfect.

Section 1 sets out “Our Inheritance of Faith”. Actually, this is a bit of a misnomer, because it really says more about who we are than about what we believe. I’ve already indicated that the term “communion” is a little fuzzy in the proposed Covenant, and we see this in section 1.1.1, in which the Churches affirm their “communion in the one holy catholic and apostolic church.” I don’t think I disagree with the affirmation; I’m just not entirely certain exactly what it means. I think it might mean that we each claim to be part of the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” (the RCs might disagree with that, I suppose) and that we acknowledge that none of us is the whole church - that there are other parts of that one church that are not part of the Anglican Communion. Maybe that’s what it means. It clearly can’t mean that we are all “in communion” with the whole church because, sadly, we aren’t.

It’s the next bit that attracted the only question in A Lambeth Commentary. Section 1.1.2 starts out well enough. We all affirm the faith which is found in the Scriptures and attested to by the creeds. But the question asked at Lambeth was why the “formularies of the Church of England” were referenced here. The question asked and answer given are as follows:

Q: What is meant by “historic formularies of the Church of England”?  

A: There are certain texts, of varying degrees of authority, which were crucial in the formation of Anglican identity from its early days. However, not all of these (notably the 1662 Prayer Book) have played a direct role in the development of the ecclesial life of all the Provinces. Although we wish to emphasise the value of our common traditions and to pay careful attention to the historical roots of the Anglican family, we recognise that Provinces relate to these formularies and traditions in different ways, and will attend to this question in the next process of drafting.

With respect to theological discernment and teaching, the CDG agree with the comments of bishops that further clarity is needed on:

• the teaching role of bishops and synods;
• the role of the laity in relation to scholarship and bible study;
• the role of reason in relation to Scripture and Tradition
• the need to recognise up front that the mission into which we are invited is God’s mission, empowered in us by the Holy Spirit.

The Covenant Design Group is committed to further work to refine this section in light of comments received.

So the Covenant Design Group acknowledged that these “historic formularies” are seen differently in the different Churches of the Communion. Certainly the 1662 Book of Common Prayer hasn’t been used in Canada for nearly a century, in the United States for over two centuries and in Scotland ever, for example. And many Churches have long since moved to newer prayer books as the de facto norm for their worship, even if the 1662 BCP or some version of it retains status as the official prayer book.

My question is why the proposed Covenant suggests that the “historic formularies ... bear authentic witness to [the] faith.” (emphasis mine) My problem here is with the use of the present tense. These formularies were, according to the proposed Covenant, “forged in the context of the European Reformation” and it seems to me that they can only be properly understood in that context. By taking them out of their own context and placing them in our context today we make them try to speak to a context that their drafters could never have contemplated.

I don’t argue that the prayer book and the 39 Articles weren’t authentic witnesses to the faith in their day. Nor do I suggest that they have nothing to say to us today. But I do question whether decontextualizing these documents is fair either to the documents themselves or to us. I imagine most Anglicans would have very little interest, for example, in participating in a Commination service. (Many Anglicans would be surprised to discover that such a service ever existed!) And whilst the language of the 1662 wedding service sounds awfully quaint at first blush, many would blush for real at the mention of  “men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding.”

As to the 39 Articles, they are best understood as orienting the Church of England within the controversies of the 16th century. Although they continue to say some useful things, many, if not most, Anglicans would disagree, for example, with Article 37's endorsement of the death penalty. And the claim that “the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England” is both patently false today and irrelevant to the other Realms comprised by the Communion.

The formularies really should have been left in their own context rather than transported into ours as if by a Time Lord.

Taking things out of context is confusing.

Speaking of context, the next four clauses quote the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. Context is important here, too, because it seems a lot of people have forgotten it. It’s common for some people to suggest that the Quadrilateral would be perfectly adequate as a Covenant. It certainly does mention the bare-bones essentials. We have the Scriptures, the Creeds, the dominical Sacraments, and episcopacy. What else do we need? The point here, though, is that the Quadrilateral was not developed as a definition of what it means to be an Anglican Church; it was developed as a minimalistic definition of what it means, from our perspective, to be an authentic church of any kind. The Quadrilateral was developed with the idea that we might want to negotiate “Reunion” - or merger - with some other Church at some point and we would need a basic measuring stick to determine whether such other Church met the minimum requirements of authenticity. They would certainly have other features, but they would have to have these four or there would be no point talking to them. So, for example, there would be no talk of merger with congregationalist churches because they have no episcopacy. (Whether Presbyterianism is a legitimate local adaptation of episcopacy would have to be determined.) And we certainly couldn’t merge with teetotalling Methodists who use grape juice instead of wine for communion! (And, incidentally, the Orthodox Churches don’t fit the Quadrilateral exactly, because they don’t have the Apostles’ Creed. It’s a Western creed.) Still, there’s nothing to argue with in the Quadrilateral. We’d better all fit into it or we don’t even meet the minimal requirements of an authentic Church.

Finally, section 1.1 mentions our “shared patterns of common prayer and liturgy” and participation in mission, which is shared with other Churches. Which brings us full circle.

Based on these basic affirmations, section 1.2 has the signatories commit to a whole lot of care in the use of scripture, especially in “theological and moral reasoning” in our varying contexts. (Section 1.2.2) Section 1.2 really reflects the context of the dispute in the Communion that the proposed Covenant is supposed to address. But it’s not clear how we’re meant to account for those “varying contexts” or if the tension between them is supposed to be resolved or allowed to be creative. In fact, the question of context -  cultural, political, geographic, temporal and even psycho-social - is fundamental to our current disputes. It shapes our lives as Churches, it shapes our understanding and incarnation of the faith, and it shapes the proposed Covenant.

In setting out the fundamentals of the faith, Section 1 pays lip service to context, but it really doesn’t seem to be aware of the implications of context for how we might be able to live out the same faith in different ways in different contexts, and how we might be able to build creative relationships across the apparent boundaries of our different contexts.

Defining Communion

In the proposed Anglican Covenant, the word “communion” is used many times. It seems to be used in at least three different ways.

• First, it is used capitalized to refer to the collectivity of Anglican Churches throughout the world, the Anglican Communion;
• Second, it is used to refer to the relationship of those churches to the whole People of God, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church throughout the world;
• Third, it is used to refer to the relationship of the Churches of the Anglican Communion to one another.

The trouble is that this word is never clearly defined in the text of the proposed Covenant.

The key question is what exactly is meant by the third use of the word. For a model we turn to ecumenical agreements of Full Communion such as the Porvoo Communion of British and Irish Anglican and Nordic and Baltic European Lutheran Churches.

The Porvoo Common Statement offers the following definition of communion at paragraph 24:

Communion with God and with fellow believers is manifested in one baptism in response to the apostolic preaching; in the common confession of the apostolic faith; in the united celebration of the eucharist which builds up the one body of Christ; and in a single ministry set apart by prayer and the laying on of hands.

Porvoo also contains this salutary warning about the nature of unity:

Visible unity ... should not be confused with uniformity. ‘Unity in Christ does not exist despite and in opposition to diversity, but is given with and in diversity’. Because this diversity corresponds with the many gifts of the Holy Spirit to the Church, it is a concept of fundamental ecclesial importance, with relevance to all aspects of the life of the Church, and is not a mere concession to theological pluralism. Both the unity and the diversity of the Church are ultimately grounded in the communion of God the Holy Trinity. (Paragraph 23)

Based on that understanding, the Porvoo Declaration commits the churches, in part:

to welcome persons episcopally ordained in any of our churches to the office of bishop, priest or deacon to serve, by invitation and in accordance with any regulations which may from time to time be in force, in that ministry in the receiving church without re-ordination;

Similarly, and more clearly, the Waterloo Declaration of Full Communion between the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada contains the following succinct definition of Full Communion:

Full communion is understood as a relationship between two distinct churches or communions in which each maintains its own autonomy while recognizing the catholicity and apostolicity of the other, and believing the other to hold the essentials of the Christian faith. In such a relationship, communicant members of each church would be able freely to communicate at the altar of the other, and there would be freedom of ordained ministers to officiate sacramentally in either church. Specifically, in our context, we understand this to include transferability of members; mutual recognition and interchangeability of ministries; freedom to use each other's liturgies; freedom to participate in each other's ordinations and installations of clergy, including bishops; and structures for consultation to express, strengthen, and enable our common life, witness, and service, to the glory of God and the salvation of the world. (Introduction, paragraph 7)

Communion, or being in communion, thus suggests, in part, a mutual recognition of the authenticity of the Church, and the validity of all sacramental acts, especially the sacrament of Orders. That is, we recognize that the other members of the Communion, for lack of a better word, are truly Christian Churches, in all their attributes, and that they validly confer orders, and their clergy validly administer the sacraments. Their baptism is valid, their eucharist is valid, their confirmation is valid, their ordination is valid. And, based on this recognition, we count the members of our partner churches as validly holding whatever status their “native” church says they hold: baptised, confirmed, ordained. And it is possible for a member of a partner church to transfer to another partner church retaining the same status.

The most significant example of transfer, of course, has to do with clergy. (Sorry, laity.) So it is possible for a priest in one church to transfer to and serve in another church. It is possible for a priest in one church to be elected as a bishop in another church. And so on.

All of this suggests that we each recognize as valid the canonical, administrative and liturgical processes by which orders are conferred in the various partner churches. But, and this is a big but, it also implies to me that we must accept the various canonical and administrative procedures by which orders are either inhibited (under discipline) or revoked or relinquished.

Why is this important, you might ask? There are a number of ex-clergy around North America, and possibly elsewhere, who have either been deposed or who have relinquished their ministry (that is to say, have “voluntarily relinquish[ed] the exercise of [their] orders and use [themselves] as ... lay[men]” in the words of the Church of England’s Canon C1(2)) who purport to continue to exercise ministry as Anglican clergy, having purported to have been licensed by other Provinces. Licensing as a cleric someone who is not a cleric in good standing is simply not possible canonically. For Province A to purport to license an ex-cleric from Province B breaks communion just as much as refusal to accept the validity of Province B’s orders.

The proposed Anglican Covenant assumes an understanding of Communion which is not unlike the understanding in the Waterloo Declaration, and which may be inferred from the proposed text. But it’s not clearly stated as in the above Declarations.

If the proposed Covenant is supposed to define the relationships of the Churches of the Anglican Communion, one might have thought that a good starting point would have been a clear and succinct definition of what we mean by Communion.