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Anglicans did not always agree, but “that’s what we love about it.” The Church should continue to see the face of Christ in people with whom they disagreed.
Sarah Finch (London) would expect two parties signing a covenant to like each other, share an agenda, and “walk in the same direction, using one map”. Enormous distance had been put between churches in the Episcopal Church in the United States, and those who resisted “the new theology” were paying the price. Twelve bishops and 104 Anglican priests had been deposed, and there were 56 lawsuits against individuals and churches. The covenant had no strength, and could not enforce anything: enforcement powers must be looked at.
Canon Chris Sugden (Oxford) said that the Primates had welcomed texts with a relational tone, and which spoke of “freedom and robust accountability”. He wanted the Covenant Design Group to spell out clearly mutuality and accountability, and to whom or what it was given. Was it to each other to maintain unity, or to the apostolic faith? The prime purpose of the covenant should be to define that faith. The Church of England had never had to face that squarely.
The Bishop of Sodor & Man, the Rt Revd Robert Paterson, said that the legislative appendix of the St Andrew’s document “needs scrapping”, to be replaced by something more like the first letter of St John, with an emphasis on mutual love. He also emphasised “the distinctly Anglican trait” of “reading scriptures together”. He wanted the Synod to support the Archbishop of Canterbury in his “privileged and vulnerable role” across the Communion.
The Revd John Plant (Leicester) welcomed a “change in tone” led by Dr Williams, particularly in his leadership of the Lambeth Conference, and in so far as the Covenant was not seeking to “hit people over their head with sticks”. Instead, it was seeking to clarify their duty of care to one another. He was, however, concerned about a drift towards a more centralised, more curial government. Such a move would disenfranchise the laity.
The Revd Brian Lewis (Chelmsford) said that his deepest concern was that, through the Covenant, there was emerging a new principle that could affect the life of the Church of England. This was that new developments must be subject to “shared discernment” internationally.
If the Covenant had been in place at the time, it would have been used to argue against the first ordinations of women to the priesthood, let alone the episcopate, or against the admission of people to communion after a divorce. He suggested that if it had been in place at the time, it would have prevented the emergence of an English Bible and an English liturgy.
“We are not going to capture the imagination of our culture by handing over to the wider Communion our responsibility for deciding our response to these challenges. . . We can’t import solutions either from America or Nigeria. We are a nationally accountable Church with a national mission.”
Professor Tony Berry (Chester) said that, in a time of radical and rapid change, the Covenant expressed a set of values and beliefs in a language that all could understand, although every aspect was contestable and would be understood differently.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said that the central question of the Covenant was to do with what a global Communion might look like. This was not some kind of innovation: there were already provinces such as the United States and South-East Asia which were not national.
The Church of England had taken part in international Protestant and Reformed conferences in the 16th and 17th centuries. “This is not somehow a sea change to Anglicanism,” he said. He warned against “excessive expectations” of the Covenant in the absence of an international system of canon law.
The relative appropriateness of the Primates’ Meeting and the Anglican Consultative Council as arbiters and instruments of discernment and decision was a point of discussion. The Archbishop acknowledged a general increase in interest in the Communion about how the Instruments of Communion were working, and there was a willingness to look again at how these might operate.
A process of shared discernment was not a “handing over” of anything, he reflected; it was not resignation to invite someone to share in decision-making. He reflected on the inseparability of accountability both to each other and to God: “accountability, yes, lateral accountability, yes, and somehow all bound up with our learning together”.
The word “relational” was not a weak word for a Christian. It involved sacrifice, suffering, patience, endurance, and learning. The language was not “second best”, but a summons to the “deepened intensifying” the communion will already be giving.
Elizabeth Paver (Sheffield), as the lay representative on the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), reminded the Synod that the ACC was the only Instrument of Communion truly representative of Primates, bishops, laity, and clergy in one body. In the Church of England, the lay voice and that of the parish priest was as honoured as a Primate’s. This was not the case in many other provinces, where the bishop was the single representative, and there were few democratic structures. Some provinces met only every two or three years. The final sign-off of the Covenant would not happen overnight: “It will have to take the time it takes.”
The Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Christopher Hill, said that at the Lambeth Conference the “often lonely office and person of the Archbishop of Canterbury uniquely sustained the Anglican Communion”. By the end of it, there was considerably more support for the Covenant from all sides than there had been at the beginning. But
the Covenant was not about rigid definitions. The Church had the obligation to proclaim the faith to each generation, which required some flexibility. The heart of the discussion was how scripture and different cultures related.
The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Revd Michael Scott-Joynt, said that there was a fundamental question about who should be the signatories to the Covenant. There were points of the Communion where individual dioceses and parishes did not want to go along with their province, but wanted to remain recognisably Anglican, whatever the province decided to do. They needed a lifeline. |
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