Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams used his May 11 presidential address to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) to urge Anglicans not to “put off discussion of the covenant simply because of that detail we are finalizing.” The ACC voted May 8 to postpone sending the third draft of the Anglican Covenant to the provinces for adoption.
 
“The texts are out there. Please pray them through and talk them through, starting now,” Archbishop Williams said. “The official processes will no doubt take longer and be more complex. We are trying to make sure that any delay is as brief as possible. But meanwhile the texts are on the table. Begin the discernment. Begin that intelligent engagement with those texts as soon as you can.” 
 
Archbishop Williams addressed the confusion and controversy that surrounded the ACC’s processes in postponing the covenant.
 
“As we go back to our provinces thinking about the work we’ve done, and thinking about the quagmires of detail and procedure that we waded through [May 8], the only thing we can say, I suspect, in defense of all that is something like this: We did it because we hoped that through all these procedures, Christian people would be able to recognize each other a bit more fully, a bit more generously, and a bit more hopefully.” 
 
While noting that “there are some who would say that in this conflict the credibility of Christianity itself is at stake,” Archbishop Williams stressed that “we have not in this meeting given evidence of any belief that we have no future together.”
 
The archbishop said some people expect the Anglican Communion will in the future resemble a federation, and he suggested that such a result may be inevitable if all provinces don't sign on to the covenant once it is presented for consideration.
 
“That not what I hope, [but] it's what I think we have to reflect on as a real possibility,” and said the challenge if this takes place is how to carry out mission effectively.
 
“My plea is, don’t write off those Instruments of Communion, whatever may happen in the years ahead,” he said. “There’s an awful lot we want to do together. I believe very strongly that even if we are facing a more diverse or divided future, we would still want to do these things.” He added that “I really don’t believe that if not all provinces sign up to the covenant in the years ahead, that (it) means the development and educational things we do together instantly disappear.”
 
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