In a dismissive response, the Primates describe the Covenant as “seriously limited and severely flawed”; a “defective” document, unworkable and “with no prospect of success”. It fails to address the issues, the Primates say; it contains “no biblical theology”; has “faulty anthropology”; has “absent eschatology” in not referring to sin, judgement or the “coming wrath”; has “no language of obedience” and is “an isolated and vacuous appeal to unity.” It also “fails to recognise the disproportionate influence of the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“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, 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,” said Bishop Venables.

“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 [The Jerusalem Statement and Declaration] 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 personal 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.”

Bishop Venables had agreed the accompanying response to some of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s concerns, a response which, although uncompromising, has a markedly less high-handed tone. Was GAFCON starting from a totally fixed position with no compromise and no leeway, I asked Bishop Venables? “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, and if we move towards him then hopefully we would be moving towards each other if we were all sincerely seeking the same thing.”

He said he had “talked seriously” to the African bishops about coming to Lambeth. “But they’d made their minds up, which is sad. When a close friend comes and talks to me, I’d like to think I had an open mind until we’d talked about it. I can’t tell you the real reasons why people aren’t here except that they think it’s already gone too far, that we’re beyond dialogue and there’s a very large area of distrust.

“I think if we give up on dialogue then we’ve given up completely. . . I think it’s extremely sad. I think [their not coming] was a mistake. The Americans made a sad mistake in 2003 when they moved ahead without agreement and I think others have made the same mistake in not being here at Lambeth.”

He has met with a welcome from many and has encountered “studiously averted glances” from others. “I’m glad to be here and I hope I go on being glad to be here. As long as we keep this open spirit of recognising that all of us have been working from motives which are honourable in our own eyes at least, or at least agreeing to differ. . . But I’m not very hopeful we can have that level of dialogue.”

Bishop Venables viewed GAFCON not as a standing outside or a standing apart but as “us standing together in the heart of Anglicanism and saying, here is the heart of the gospel as the Church has believed it for the last 2000 years. Here we want to stand, so that if you resonate with this and care about this, you know you can stand with us.

“Sadly some people seem to see it as distancing and an apartness, and I find that very distressing because that’s not the reason I was there. It’s not what I experienced when I was there and it wasn’t what I experienced when I was with my fellow primates and bishops and others within that group. I’m going to have to do a lot of thinking about how that looks over the next few weeks before the first meeting of this primates council, as we’re calling it, so that I can take my thoughts to that.”

There were a number of questions to be faced about GAFCON, Bishop Venables admitted, but he repeated: “I don’t believe it was a moving away either from the Communion or the Archbishop of Canterbury, who I believe is the first among equals and the senior bishop within the Church. I’m committed to dialogue and working within it both personally and in the Communion.

“Anything we’ve done in the Southern Cone has been temporary and emergency to give people holding ground until there is something far more official and practical. If I see that isn’t happening, that causes me enormous concern because my whole aim was to do something short-term.”