“The Covenant text sets out the basis on which the Anglican family works and prays and lives and hopes,” said the Archbishop of Canterbury on Dec. 18, and on reflection one might be struck by the present tense, sustained throughout the sentence. Is it in fact true that our global Anglican family even now “works and prays and lives and hopes” on the basis of a text that we have only had for a matter of days? How is this possible?

On one level Archbishop Williams’s claim is clearly false. Now that the Anglican Communion Covenant is complete — the text has been agreed upon and will not, we are told, be amended until at least 2012, at the next meeting of the ACC — it is being disseminated to the provinces of the Communion “for formal consideration for adoption,” according to Secretary General Kenneth Kearon. Obviously, then, if the Anglican Communion is to embrace the Covenant, it will do so in the future, yielding “a new kind of relationship,” if people “agree to these ways of resolving our conflicts,” as the archbishop said.

On another level, however, it’s precisely the nature of the proposed innovation that makes the archbishop’s choice of verb tense correct, and deeply insightful. If, in an important sense, the Covenant will reorder and reconfigure our Communion, it will do so in a way “that will help us know where we stand together, and help us also intensify our fellowship and trust,” as Archbishop Williams says. And “in the long run this will actually help us to become more of a communion — more responsible for each other, presenting to the world a face of mutual understanding, patience, charity and gratitude for one another.”

There’s a paradox here, rather like that at the heart of the gospel. “I was lost but now I’m found,” in the words of the old hymn, but the subject in question, the I, remains the same, however transformed and reformed. Similarly, wrap your mind around the notion that “you are not your own” since “you were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 6:19-20). What does it mean to find ourselves beyond ourselves — in Jesus and in the Father (see John 6:44) — if not that the Christian life is a process of growth into the fullness of communion with God and one another; a journey into the love of God that transforms — heals and elevates — us and all with whom we share the space of communion? Thus, poetically, “the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”

Of course, no one will be forced to embark upon this particular journey. And many, on all sides of the debate — pro and con, “liberal” and “conservative” — doubt whether there will be much interest in adopting the Covenant by most provincial churches on the schedule of the ACC (at whom the covenant will first of all be aimed, at least until ACC-15 in 2012). For his part, Archbishop Williams said that he hopes “it will be adopted by as many provinces as possible,” adding that he expects “in the next few years … to see quite a bit of activity around this.”

In defense of the plausability of the archbishop’s expectation, we recall last week’s announcement of the “Fourth Anglican Global South to South Encounter” in Singapore next April. Organized by the Global South Anglican Primates Steering Committee, the event will be given to the theme “The Gospel of Jesus Christ — Covenant for the People; Light for the Nations.” Those gathered will “aim to affirm the Anglican Covenant as the basis in intensifying the ecclesial life between churches in the Communion.” Indeed, so firm is their resolve to affirm the Covenant that “the Steering Committee emphasized that provincial and invited participants should be unequivocally committed to uphold the spirit and intent of the 1998 Lambeth Resolution 1.10 and the proposed Anglican Covenant (full Ridley Draft).”

What will the Episcopal Church do? Of course, many if not most in our church, as well as in the Communion, presume that our church will decline to adopt the Covenant, and that may be true. There is, however, freedom in Christ, and Episcopalians can decide for ourselves whether to accept this mission. The Living Church considers these the minimal criteria of Christian responsibility for discerning God’s will in this matter:

1. Take up the Covenant and read it, carefully and prayerfully.

2. Discuss it in your parish and diocese and decide if you can commit yourself to it and endorse it, as the Covenant Working Group has encouraged.

3. Decide if you will support its adoption on the provincial level.

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