Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies, has written to all deputies to General Convention to enlist their help in preserving the three-fold form of governance under which The Episcopal Church is currently structured.
 
“In The Episcopal Church, the belief that God speaks uniquely through bishops, laity, priests and deacons, enables our participatory structure and allows a fullness of revelation and insight that must not be lost in this important time of discernment,” she wrote in an e-mail letter sent April 21 to deputies and first alternates. “The joint work of the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops is the institutional expression of this belief.
 
“It is thus crucially important that our bishops go to Lambeth with a sense of where their General Convention deputations (and their diocese) are with respect to the current state of the Anglican Covenant.”
 
An Anglican Covenant was proposed in the Windsor Report, which was published in 2004. In 2006, the 75th General Convention adopted a resolution that supports the development of a covenant and designating an Executive Council subcommittee with responsibility for monitoring and reporting on its development. To date a Covenant Design Group appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury has produced two drafts: a preliminary one presented to the primates in 2007 and a second draft published in March. Executive Council, the legislative body which carries out the work of General Convention when it is not in session, made an official response to the first draft in October 2007.
 
Executive Council is scheduled to meet June 13-15 in Albuquerque, N.M. Mrs. Anderson has asked each diocesan deputation to discuss and report on the second draft of the Anglican Covenant and to make a copy of the report available to Executive Council.
 
“It is important to stress that we are told that the bishops at the Lambeth Conference will not be making a decision on the Anglican Covenant, nor will they be ratifying any draft of the covenant,” Mrs. Anderson wrote. “The only body with authority to commit The Episcopal Church to an Anglican Covenant is the General Convention in which bishops, priests and deacons and lay persons share authority.”
 
Episcopal News Service contributed to this report.
 
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