ALTHOUGH the debate about an Anglican Covenant was continuing,
it was clear that the Anglican Communion was "far from ready" to
move to a more centralised authority structure, the Archbishop of
Adelaide, Dr Jeffrey Driver, said this week.
Delivering a lecture, "The Gift and Grief of Anglicanism", at
Trinity College, Melbourne, Dr Driver said that it was
understandable as crisis-management that the Communion's response
to the "grief of recent years" had been focused on the primatial
instruments: the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Primates'
Meeting.
Opposition to the Covenant had been based on an apprehension
that it could, or might, "add juridical power at the centre, or be
used coercively in some way", he said. The task of Anglicanism was
to make its "polity of persuasion" work more effectively.
If the Communion were to move beyond crisis-containment to
conflict resolution, then the Anglican tradition of "conciliarity"
had much to offer. But, he said: "We have a way to go in developing
our conciliar gatherings as places of consensus-growing and
community-building."