(Update to earlier story)
The Archbishop of Canterbury has welcomed an endorsement of the first three sections of the Anglican Covenant by the Diocese of Central Florida’s board and standing committee.
On Sept. 17, the diocesan board and standing committee adopted a resolution stating that they “affirm sections one, two and three of the Ridley Cambridge Draft of the Anglican Covenant, as we await the final draft of section four.”
Central Florida also asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to “outline and implement a process by which individual dioceses, and even parishes, could become members of the Anglican Covenant, even in cases where their provincial or diocesan authorities decline to do so.”
In a Sept. 28 letter to the Rt. Rev. John W. Howe, Bishop of Central Florida, Archbishop Williams called endorsement from the diocesan bodies a step in the right direction. “As a matter of constitutional fact, the [Anglican Consultative Council] can only offer the covenant for ‘adoption’ to its own constituent bodies (the provinces),” the archbishop noted. But “I see no objection to a diocese resolving less formally on an ‘endorsement’ of the covenant.” Such an action may not have an immediate “institutional effect” but “would be a clear declaration of intent to live within the agreed terms of the Communion’s life and so would undoubtedly positively affect a diocese’s pastoral and sacramental relations” with the wider Communion, he said.
The resolution was offered to the board by the dean of Southeast Central Florida, the Very Rev. Eric Turner, rector of St. John’s Church, Melbourne, Fla.
Originally titled a “Resolution in Response to General Convention,” the first two clauses backed Bishop Howe’s endorsement of the Anaheim Statement issued at the close of General Convention, and reaffirmed the “teaching of the Anglican Communion” on “matters of human sexuality” [TLC, Aug. 9].
The second half of the resolution drew upon the Sept. 7 call by the bishops of Albany, Dallas, North Dakota, Northern Indiana, South Carolina, West Texas and Western Louisiana for “dioceses, congregations and individuals” to “pray and work for the adoption” of the covenant, and asked that they “endorse [its] first three sections” [TLC, Sept. 27].
Bishop Howe stated that he was aware that some believed that “only the General Convention can decide whether or not to ‘opt into’ the Covenant, but there is nothing in the Covenant itself, and nothing in our Constitution or Canons, that stipulate this. If a given person, parish or diocese agrees with the Covenant, what is there to prevent saying so?”
Bishop Howe added that “should it be that the General Convention were to ‘opt out’ of the Covenant while some of the dioceses of the Episcopal Church have endorsed or adopted it we will have a number of interesting questions to address.”
(The Rev.) George Conger
4 Comments
What a disappointment! Surely Archbishop Williams knows that there is no way the Episcopal Church as a province will adopt the covenant. The recent actions of General Convention have already conclusively shown that TEC has no intention of living in a mutually accountable relationship with the Anglican Communion. Assuming he does know this, the Archbishop is going to greatly hurt the minority of dioceses and parishes that wish to remain in the Anglican Communion through the convenant relationship. I don't want to be an "informal" Anglican because the majority of my province has decided it has no need of the Communion.
This does beg the question: Does this mean that Archbishop Williams is opening the door to recognize the ACNA group as a new province that could then adopt the Covenant? If so, that would be a situation that would require Episcoplians who want to be "official" Anglicans to have to join ACNA and leave TEC? Certainly, if the Episcopal Chuch snubs the covenant, Archbishop Williams would find he has lost a province in the United States.
I think Archbishop Williams has some clarifying and explaining to do. He is certainly undermining the Communion Partners movement by only allowing only whole provinces to adopt the covenant formally.
This news is most discouraging.
Dear Mr. Dove,
Please see the updated version of the story (posted above), which may alleviate your discouragement, and correct your sense that the Archbishop of Canterbury "is certainly undermining the Communion Partners movement."
Our original story, while technically not mistaken, misleadingly placed the emphasis on the archbishop's reiterated, formal statement of "constitutional fact" regarding the ACC's internal process at present, rather than on the larger point of his communication with Bp Howe, namely, to welcome the recent actions of Central Florida because he thinks that diocesan "endorsement" of the covenant is a helpful thing, not least as we look down the road to likely necessities if and as provinces decide to take a pass on "opting in" to the commitment to covenant (as Bp Howe rightly extrapolates, following the archbishop's own making of this point in his crucial "Communion, Covenant and our Anglican Future" of last July). That is, again, in the archbishop's own words from this latest letter to +Howe, diocesan endorsement of the covenant "would be a clear declaration of intent to live within the agreed terms of the Communion's life and so would undoubtedly positively affect a diocese's pastoral and sacramental relations" with the wider Communion.
In this light, the fundamental state of play would seem to remain the same as several weeks ago when TLC ran this editorial: http://archive.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2009/9/18/editorial-commitment-to-covenant; except that now Central Florida has taken the lead as the first diocese to endorse the covenant--following the archbishop's encouragement to do so, and now with his blessing ex post facto.
Apart from endorsing the diocesan equivalent of 'Congregationalism', the Archbishop of Canterbury has no option but to say what he has said here.
The component parts of the Anglican Communion are recognised only through the primacy of its constitutional Primates. Bishops are something else - as the ABC has already stated. Bishops are the constitutional focus of a diocese and the source of episcopal authority within their own diocese. They are not the authoritative representatives of the provincial Churches to which they are consitutionally joined.
To have individual dioceses privy to a Covenant relationship - without the consent of their province - would be the espiscopal equavalent of parochial Congregationalism, which is antithetical to the ethos of Anglicanism.
I see at least three problems with Ronnie Smithīs response. First, historically, the basic unit of our Church has, for nigh onto two millenia, been the diocese and not the province. Second, the Archbishop of Canterbury specified "provinces" and not "national churches"... and TEC is not a province, but in fact includes nine separate provinces, some of which are not part of the United States of America at all, and do not share its culture or ethos. Does Mr. Smith (or the ABC) mean to imply that dioceses in Province IX, which is by definition a province, and while part of TEC is not in the United States and does not share in the culture of the US (Venezuela didnīt even send representation to the last TEC General Convention), or that the Church in Micronesia, which is even more distant from America and its culture, and although under the jurisdiction of the Presiding Bishop is not a part of any province at all (itīs served by the Bishop for Chaplaincies, simply because he spends time in the area visiting the US Military), cannot vote to sign the Ridley Document? And third and finally, if taken as read, it means that the Anglican Churches of Portugal, Spain and Bermuda are blocked from signing it as well... they are national churches, but neither provinces nor parts thereof. Are the Anglicans there simply unimportant and to be left voiceless?
The say that "To have individual dioceses privy to a Covenant relationship - without the consent of their province - would be the espiscopal equavalent [sic] of parochial Congregationalism, which is antithetical to the ethos of Anglicanism" is the equivalent of saying that the signers of the Nicene Creed or the other Ecumenical Councils that created our Church were "antithetical to the ethos of Angicanism"... in which case we need to take a close look at our "ethos".