Dave -  I think GAFCON are right not to support the current proposals given  the  very unrepresentative (of global Anglicanism, that is) 'Standing Committee' role  -   which ought to be the role of the  Primates who do represent global Anglicanism....but TECusa pays a lot of bills and does not want the Primates to have the role they should have for obvious reasons. Revisionists are grossly over-represented on the Standing Committee even though they have tragically low attendances in their own 'contexts' .... but we continue to be told that they adopt revisionist ideas because their contexts demand it yet their contexts really are not fooled.  TEC attracts hardly anyone under 60 in the US and only about 1 in 400 Americans on a Sunday when up to 1 in 2 to go to church ...the context demands revisionist teaching, they say!  Who is fooled? Revisionist TECusa represent so few (certainly not the US population which does not go to TECusa nor Anglican tradition) but they get a seat on the Standing Committee....because it is formed by regions -   why should the leaders of millions of Anglicans accept that?  Because TEC pays a lot of the LamPal bills?  Surely not.  Revisionists, in fact, represent very few people in the west and certainly not global nor historical Anglicanism .  GAFCON are right not to legitimate the role currently given to the 'Standing Committee' as it will be the means by which discipline will continue to be avoided and faux 'indabas' continue with no decisions ever being made (regardless of the clear view of the vast majority of Primates and Anglicans!!)  -   while revisionist activists use the vacuum of leadership, or search for some Hegelian 'synthesis' which tolerates false teaching, for their unilateral actions to gain 'an inch at a time' until the point that the AC is no more. The ABC needs to wake up to the illegitimacy of the 'Standing Committee'   - or at least that most Anglicans' leaders are not fooled by it, will not accept it...and do not trust it as presently constituted...and with good reasons. To get GAFCON support, so that the AC does not reduce to a tiny, western, 'liberal' sect, the ABC needs to give the Primates the role they deserve with regard to the Covenant that they initiated and stop giving western revisionists grossly disproportionate power in the AC through the 'Standing Committee'...GAFCON are right not to get involved in something which already has in place the means of its own failure to do anything meaningful at all..... given GAFCON does not need the ABC or tiny TECusa to carry on with its mission amongst millions of Anglicans, why should it waste its time with a flawed structure that only prolongs the indecision and growing division of the last 7+ years? 

pluralist.......perhaps your patronising critical comment on AG's work is  'playing the man'?  You think Dr Goddard's piece was long...so what?  What matters is whether Anglicans find it useful in our current debates. Given you are a kind of unitarian, you know the situation of unitarians in England, i.e. hardly anyone at all comes to hear about 'pluralism' etc. I certainly do not want the CofE to go down a pluralistic path which leads to irrelevance (near zero attendance) in England.  Same goes for TECusa....they can talk about their context until their cows come home....fact is, on their nos, very few Americans (1 in 400 approx) bother to go to hear pluralistic musings there even though churchgoing rates are very high in the US.  So, should the CofE listen to TECusa ,when revisionist ideas fail to attract many Americans even though lots of Americans go to church every week, or unitarians who fail to attract anyone, anywhere... or stick to its scriptures, traditions, articles and with the message which still leads to very full and growing and new churches in England today?   (rhetorical question.... )

Nersenpaul,

It is clear that you do not have much, if any, time for TEC and the MCU. I understood you to be a supporter of GAFCON. I wonder how you react to the unequivocal comment from the GAFCON Primates Council that "And while we acknowledge that the efforts to heal our brokenness through the introduction of an Anglican Covenant were well intentioned we have come to the conclusion the current text is fatally flawed and so support for this initiative is no longer appropriate" para 5  http://www.gafcon.org/news/oxford_statement_from_the_gafcon_fca_primates_council  It this group will not sign up the covenant is dead in the water.

David

I am not casting aspersions on Andrew Goddard or his student work, but on the length of writing that seems to be apparent in some of these Open Evangelical comments, when surely it is more effective to be briefer and to the point. He will surely make the same point about effective writing. Yet there is, in these writings, a sort of a history-so-far just about every time they are written.

You really ought to play the ball and not the person. Arguments are not reducable to numbers, nor trying to put a 'liberal' label on Rowan Williams or trying to speculate on my study skills teaching abilities versus Andrew Goddard's. The use of a label without support is another attack on the person - but why not instead (as I have on my blog) look at the argument say within his Synod speech and ask what is being stated. In returning here to discuss these matters, I am not going to reduce myself to a scrap at this level that becomes instantly repetitive and unproductive.

So, pluralist.... now TECusa is not a 'national church' in the same sense of the CofE but you still want to try and claim it is reaching people in its context....but the fact that it reaches around 1 in 400 (and falling on TECusa's own nos) in a country where churchgoing is up to 1 in 2 people - that is not relevant when you try to claim it is reacting to its own context?  Do make up your mind!  And TEC's average attendee age (retired) is not relevant?  Do its own nos show that TECusa is eaching its context or in terminal decline with fewer interested all the time and hardly any younger Americans?   The CofE could reject the covenant and adopt revisionist ideas but not sure we want to go the way of TEC's irrelevance in its own land or the way of unitarians in England....the CofE is not a shining example of what it could be but things could be a lot worse....we only have to look around to see that.  But reality does not seem to inform your comments much  e.g. you feel free below to comment on how you would mark 'students' essays..... you do that often?  Amazed to see you commenting in such a patronising way on a successful academic who does have students and a university post....... do you think he needs your advice on his written output?  Maybe you have much to teach him and that is why you offer, uninvited, the benefit of your wisdom.

If the majority of Anglicans, including 'liberals' like Rowan Williams, want a covenant, we will have one  -   tiny nos of revisionists objecting cannot stop this happening because they persuaded few inside the church and attract even fewer from outside (even in the US and England)...unitarians certainly cannot stop the covenant being adopted..... not that the CofE is looking for guidance from them, is it? 

The British people are "so interested in the gospel" that attendance at churches is about 5% on any regular basis, with plenty of access to those churches providing such supposed meat and drink. In any case, I am arguing about a Covenant based on its merits, or otherwise, not on some dodgy projection regarding numbers. TEC is not a national Church in the sense that the C of E was a national Church (and still retains some of those formal feudal features long beyond sense) but it is a Church in its national setting (with extended bits) and is still culturally responsive, as are the United Methodists, the Presbyterians (etc.), and - dare I say - the growing Unitarian Universalists.

Please forgive my simplicity.

I have a question: What happens, in the context of the proposed covenant, if the dioceses of the Episcopal Church continue to endorse and appoint active gay or lesbian bishops and priests?

What exactly, in this context, is the covenant for? What actually happens, over time, because of the covenant, that would not happen if there was no covenant?

Since the covenant emerged from the Windsor Report, and thus seems to exist in part because of divergent views on sex and gender, it presumably has a function in this likely context of continuing divergent practice in the Episcopal Church.

I hear a certain amount of denial about the covenant being used to discipline provinces that diverge like this.

But whether you call it discipline or not, how is the covenant actually likely to operate in this specific and focal area of diverse practice in the Anglican Communion?

And what is the position of individual Anglicans within complying provinces, who share the divergent views, or don't personally endorse the covenant?

What exactly is the covenant going to 'do' about dissenters?

And if we don't know, then how can anyone vote on it?

I'm genuinely unclear.

"some national Churches, being responsive to its people..."    -   misleading ..... not the situation we have in the AC.....we have a couple of tiny revisionist-dominated groups in the US and Canada which attract very few in their own countries....  hard to claim to be a 'national church' when between 30 and 50% of the US population are churchgoers but TECusa gets about 0.26% attending.....     nobody is fooled by the smoke and mirrors that would like to pretend TECusa is any sort of 'national church'  (especially the American people, it seems, given 99.5%+ do not go on a Sunday)....revisionist teaching has led to terminal decline and tiny nos with an average age over 60 in TECusa   (they are going the way of unitarians in England).....the CofE can do better than slip into that kind of irrelevance decline and it knows which churches have grown strongly in the last 50 years..... the British people are not easily fooled either but they are interested in the gospel.

There is no problem with disagreeing. The problem is some national Churches, being responsive to its people, want relationship lesbian and gay people in ministry without hindrance and to have their relationships blessed. Other Anglican Churches think that, via this Covenant, they should be able to stop such action with relational consequences. The alternative is for each Church to do its own sorting out of these matters and so some will move on and others won't. Given the many contacts that exist and that some clearly don't exist, there is no need for central processing. There is nothing in liberalism that calls for inaction.

Communion is not a "bureaucratic need to associate". 

Nobody is either morally or intellectually slow, slower or "slowest" simply because they disagree with me, or with anybody else.

It is perfectly possible to disagree with me, or with anybody else -even about the things that for us are more obvious- without being intellectually compromised or morally depraved. The opposite is the definition of fundamentalism.

It is sad having to propose these basic liberal principles, but without them conversation is hardly possible.

Community and care for each other can surely be in terms of including your lesbian and gay people, rather than having to do nothing constantly because of some bureaucratic need to associate one national Church with another via the strategy of do nothing until the slowest changes. People come before institutions.

Why is "do nothing until conversation is exhausted" worse than "do whatever you feel right and let's keep on talking"?

In the first case, conversation is a necessity borne out of a sense of community and care for each other. In the second case, conversation soon becomes chatting among those who have the time and curiosity to bother about it.

Pluralist,

You raise an interesting point about the organisation of the Australian church, A parallel point arises from the election of Mary Glasspool which was claimed to breach assurances previously given. I think the reply given by TEC was that the election was properly conducted so they could not interfere. The covenant does not answer every problem but it does express in a single document the spirit of the communion.

I wish I could tell you that the covenant creates no new central body. However there seems to be some ambiguity as to whether the standing committee is a new body or an existing one. The covenant does not give new powers to the instruments of unity but indicates they may use their powers. In fact some action on there lines has already been taken.

The overall effect of the covenant is to reduce the level of confusion and provide a way forward which may lead to greater unity but certainly not uniformity.

David