1. The final text of the Covenant is meant by the Covenant Working Group (all of whose members served on the Covenant Design Group) to be taken as a revision of the Ridley draft of last April rather than as a distinct, fourth draft. This may be seen by the fact that they have subtitled this final text “the Ridley Cambridge November text” (see along the top of each page of the final text and also p. 4 of the commentary provided by the Working Group), and fits with their stated principle of “minimal revision” and “definite intention to remain consistent with the work that had already achieved a wide measure of support.” It also indicates that we may safely presume this final text to have been completed by the Covenant Working Group itself rather than by the Standing Committee, as Canon Kearon’s letter also suggests: that the Working Group “met in November 2009, considered 18 responses received from the Provinces, and revised Section 4 in light of these responses. … This text was presented to the Standing Committee, which has now approved it for distribution.”

2. The foregoing is important for several reasons, including that this final text makes “explicit,” as the Working Group explains in its commentary, “that the Standing Committee derives its authority from its responsibility to the two Instruments of Communion which elect its membership, and on whose behalf it acts. It provides a co-ordinating function for matters to do with Covenant maintenance, supported by relevant expertise (cf. 4.2.2) and in close communication with both the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting, on whose advice it acts (cf. 4.2.6 and 4.2.7).” Thus, where the earlier Ridley text gave to the then Joint Standing Committee “the duty of overseeing the functioning of the Covenant” (4.2.1), a word that implies a kind of episcopacy, the final text stipulates that the Standing Committee shall “monitor the functioning of the Covenant … on behalf of the Instruments” (4.2.2; and cf. 4.2.4 and 4.4.2). Given that the Standing Committee will be playing such a central role in the life of the Communion going forward, it is necessary to understand this.

3. The final text now displays in section 4 several vital theological enrichments that, as the Working Group explained, tie the picture of “communion” and its responsibilities more tightly to the previous sections. This may be seen in 4.1.1, in and around the original one-sentence definition of the Anglican Communion; and especially in 4.2.1, which is constructed from sentences from the former 4.1.3 and 4.1.4 but also adds new language — in particular, two references to “accountability,” a word that did not previously appear anywhere in section 4. Likewise, the Working Group drew attention to the “explicit” (again) addition of 4.2.3: “it is the duty of each covenanting church to seek to live out the commitments of section 3.2.”

4. The final text specifies that “the churches of the Communion” means first and primarily the “fellowship … of national or regional churches” presently “recognized” in the Constitution of the ACC (4.1.1 and 4.1.4). It also defines these churches, however, as mutually recognizing in one another “the bonds of a common loyalty to Christ expressed through a common faith and order, a shared inheritance in worship, life and mission, and a readiness to live in an interdependent life” (4.1.1). And the latter are now placed within the normative context of the covenantal call itself — “to live more fully into the ecclesial communion and interdependence which is foundational to the churches of the Anglican Communion.” In the event, therefore, that some churches of the Communion choose not to enter into the Covenant, the final text has left plenty of room for the Instruments of Communion to manoeuver, primarily by pointing to the fact that the ACC’s schedule of membership may be changed at any time (4.1.5; cf. 4.2.5, 4.2.8, and 4.3.1). And the Working Group’s deft “reaffirmation” of the Design Group’s Lambeth Commentary of 2008 serves as a crucial resource here as well, in terms of the “creative tension” in Anglican ecclesiology (and they might simply have said Catholic ecclesiology) between church in the sense of a diocese and in the sense of “a national or regional ecclesial community.”

5. The final text admirably expands the description of the dispute resolution process by referring first of all to the duties of covenantal life in Communion (4.2.3) and then to the initial role of the Standing Committee to “make every effort to facilitate agreement” in the case of matters upon which “a shared mind has not been reached” (4.2.4). Following these steps comes a request by the Standing Committee to a church “to defer a controversial action” and consequent recommendation of “relational consequences” should the church decline due deference (4.2.5). And while this latter material is not new, it is significant that the first action taken by the Standing Committee on Dec. 18, besides approval of the Covenant, was a resolution “strongly reaffirm[ing]” the Windsor Report’s moratoria in the face of Canon Glasspool’s nomination in Los Angeles, increased same-sex blessings in U.S. and Canadian dioceses, and continued “cross-jurisdictional activity within the Communion.” The request for deferred action in these instances has thus now been made, and we may expect that relational consequences — “a provisional limitation of participation in, or suspension from” any or all of the Instruments of Communion — will follow should these actions continue.

Christopher Wells

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