Anglican Covenant

At long last - well, it feels as though it's taken ages to get the words right and all approved - the response of the Modern Churchperson's Union to the proposal for an Anglican Covenant has been sent off.

The summary is here, and the full report is accessible through the same page. My contribution is 'Covenant and Government'.

It's gone both to the Anglican Consultative Council who will, we trust, pass it to the Covenant Design Group. It's also gone to all the English Diocesan Bishops to try to increase its impact.

The Covenant is conceived as a contribution to holding the Communion together. I argue that it won't work. If people want to stay together they will anyway. If they don't, they won't. A Covenant won't make it so. The original report is here.

It's not really clear but the expectation is that a Covenant will have

• a statement of faith,
• a constitution for the Anglican Communion, and
• a conflict-resolution process.

I argue that this will move Anglicans further from a body of people who come together voluntarily and who decide things amongst themselves (however difficult this may be at times) to a legalistic corporation.

Jonathan Clatworthy argues that it will be a break with traditional Anglican theology and the tradition of inclusive tolerance.

We both fear that the whole point of the proposal is to narrow the boundaries of Anglicanism in the direction of conservatism and foundationalism. It will help unity only by excluding large slices of the church - a bit like going to war to make peace.

Basically, we don't want a Covenant. But we fear one may be proposed anyway (++Rowan is keen) and so we we wait to see what will be proposed next.

one heart and mind

I regularly use the phrase 'let us pray with one heart and mind' (it's in the prayer book I use).

And it's been worrying me.

As an aspiration I have no problem with it. It seems to me right, even a spiritual duty, that we should struggle towards personal integrity of life (body, mind and soul), and towards integrity of our life with the will and Spirit of God (always recognising that this is an unattainable goal, at least in this world).

But there is an edge of spiritual blackmail about the phrase when it comes to praying together. Does it mean, perhaps: 'I want all of you praying with me to agree with me.'?

Or does it mean: if we are not in agreement then our relationships with God, and hence these prayers, are all diminished?

I suspect the idea stems from the common-sense syllogism that:

1. We are all Christian believers;
2. God is one and undivided; therefore
3. All Christian believers should be united. (Disunity is prima facie evidence of a wrong relationship with God.)
   

But this is nonsense. From the New Testament on there has never been a time when Christians have not disagreed amongst themselves - we have never all sung from the same hymnsheet. As each person is unique, so too is their relationship with God and the words they use to articulate faith. Nor can God be contained in any box that human beings can specify. In Marilyn Adams' words (though I don't see this exact quote): God is so very, very big, and we are so very, very small.

In fact the desire for unity is a powerful force for division. The more that conservatives insist that ECUSA and the Anglican Communion must embody their agenda the more they destroy the faith they have inherited from the saints. Anglicans Online (always full of common sense) has this reflection on the notion that 'our church has been taken away from us'.

The desire for purity denies the generosity of God. The campaign for a narrow unity divides one Christian from another. The search for certainty becomes idolatry: we set up formulae to articulate an understanding of faith and end up making the words more important than openness to God.

Let us pray in the common cause of worship and service of God, bringing all our gifts, our conflicts, our uncertainties to our sharing together.

After all, just because we're Christian it doesn't mean we have to like one another.