| HE WAS diplomatic about it, but it was clearly vexing to the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, the Most Revd Greg Venables (above), that he had neither seen nor agreed the published response to the St Andrew’s draft Covenant, issued by GAFCON on Friday in his name and those of the Primates of Nigeria, West Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Of the other six, the Primates of Tanzania and West Africa are also at the conference.
“If the conservative orthodox group within the Communion is going to come out of this very difficult situation in a way that honours God, it’s going to have to be consulting together,” said Bishop Venables, “agreed not just on what we believe, but prepared to be tolerant and considerate and loving on secondary issues, and also committed to talking together and doing things together.
“If we speak, it’s because we have had dialogue and we have agreed on what we’re saying. The GAFCON statement as it came out of Jerusalem was fully agreed on and worked out together, but obviously other things haven’t been followed through in the same consultative, collegial way, which is a great pity.”
He described his own response to the Covenant as “two-sided. I haven’t got a great deal of hope, because I think there are important sectors of the Communion that simply don’t want to work towards a covenant: they believe in autonomy. And one would say, if we haven’t been able to agree on what we’ve done so far, starting with the scripture and the creeds and the things we’ve done in more recent days as Anglicans, I don’t have much hope.
“But I think we’ve got to work at something we can talk about, something that puts us around the table, and something that enables us at least at the very minimum to agree to disagree — or maybe find out that there are things we have in common which could be more hopeful. God could well use something like the Covenant if we humble ourselves, and move towards the dialogue we are going to have to have.”
But Bishop Venables had agreed the accompanying response to some of Dr Williams’s concerns. Was GAFCON starting from a totally fixed position with no compromise and no leeway, I asked. “That’s the opposite of what a number of us feel,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here at Lambeth if I didn’t think that God had always got the door open.” |
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