|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
Permalink: http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/565
Fulcrum Subjects: Anglicanism, Windsor Process / Anglicanism, Church of England Other articles by Graham Kings are available from this site Discuss this Article on the Fulcrum Forum See the 14 comments on this article The Anglican Covenant is the only way forward Fulcrum Newsletter November 2010 by Graham Kings, Bishop of Sherborne co-published, with permission, with Comment is free belief, Guardian online, 17 November 2010
This covenant of unity seeks to hold the Communion together organically in the face of increasing fragmentation. The choice in this debate is to opt into intensifying our world-wide relationships in affection and commitment or to allow splits to develop further and irrevocably. Do we consider each other and belong together or do we do our own thing and hang apart? The Covenant has been portrayed, and betrayed, by its detractors as a dangerous, monolithic innovation of regulatory control, which will stifle freedom and diversity. But forced assimilation is not on the table, and it is false witness to dress it up as such. Gregory Cameron (secretary to the group who produced the Covenant) and Andrew Goddard The model of the Covenant is drawn from family ties and kinship and bounded by mutually agreed norms of behaviour which benefit everyone. It is not a document of doctrinal specifications, like the conservative Jerusalem Declaration, drawn up mostly by those who boycotted the Lambeth Conference. Nor is it a contract, as feared by its liberal critics. It is truly a covenant. In his address to the Lambeth Conference 2008, the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, was pithily penetrative and perceptive in drawing out contrasts: A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an 'us'. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform. The four sections of the Covenant cover the themes of belief, mission, church and relational consequences. They provide for a delicate balance of communion with autonomy and accountability. It seems to me that the ‘unbounded’ is soon the ‘empty’ and we do not want the life of the body to drip out, dissipate and disappear. Perhaps a step back to the late 1960s and early 1970s will provide some perspective on this debate. Some liberal and catholic Anglicans in the Church of England were questioning the need for clergy to assent to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and some evangelical Anglicans wished to retain this subscription. The resulting new text in 1975, the Declaration of Assent, provided an elegant middle way forward. The Covenant mentions this in its first section, and one way of viewing the Covenant is as the internationalising of this key text of breadth, unity and concord. It is made by deacons, priests and bishops when they are ordained and on each occasion when they take up a new appointment. An extended preface precedes the brief declaration, which then states: I, A B, do so affirm, and accordingly declare my belief in the faith which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds and to which the historic formularies of the Church of England bear witness; and in public prayer and administration of the sacraments, I will only use the form of service which are authorized or allowed by Canon. The ‘historic formularies’ refer to the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal. Colin Podmore, a scholarly central administrative secretary of the Church of England, in chapter four of his book Aspects of Anglican Identity (2005) sets out in detail the emergence of the text of the Declaration of Assent and its Preface. Although Ian Ramsey, the Bishop of Durham, chaired the Doctrine Commission and John Austin Baker came up with the shape and first draft of the long preface and short declaration, Podmore notes: The dignified, poetic and theologically sensitive final text of the Preface was not the work of academic theologians, however, but of two back bench Synod members – combining a parish priest’s theological vision with a solicitor’s skill at drafting. Lay people and priests, as well as bishops, are crucial in crises and in the vote on the Covenant. The progress of the Covenant does indeed move at a glacial pace, but the debate next week forms a focal point in the stretching of our Anglican imagination. The Communion does not need conservative or liberal incitements to isolation but encouragement to interdependence. Where there is a will, there is a middle way.
Dr Graham Kings is the Bishop of Sherborne and theological secretary of Fulcrum Discuss this Article on the Fulcrum Forum Forum Posts About This Article:Posted by: Deleted user 2359 Friday 19 November 2010 - 10:48pm It does make some detailed statements, but my point is that it is credal - as in those creeds indeed - but with the addition of consequences. The important point is the consequences. Already, even without the Covenant, decisions have been made that state that TEC and the Southern Cone cannot be represenative of Anglicanism in ecumenical relationships. Anyway, to move this on a little, it is interesting that liberal voices within the C of E are making themselves heard. Many of them gave a lot of wind to the Covenant, whereas I never did, but now there seems to be more co-ordination against it. The usual liberal strategy for things is to 'carry on' locally and via nods and winks, but this time the sense of perhaps betrayal over these last years and lack of balance in the liberal direction has led to this greater sense of visible pressure group response. I should again make it clear I am not Anglican now, and I was motivated to 'return' perhaps against better judgement simply by wanting to respond to Jonathan Clatworthy's remarks about historical Puritans. Posted by: Dave Friday 19 November 2010 - 10:11am Pluralist, Welcome back. You describe the covenant as credal as opposed to what? You refer to Hooker and the words Anglican, balanced and rational spring to mind but perhaps there is a better term for what you favour. The covenant is only credal in the sense of accepting the Catholic creeds. There is nothing like the confessions of the reformation and puritans. The BCP is only affirmed in general terms. The approach of the covenant is relational or organic. In biblical terms it recognises the church as the body of Christ. Incidentally can someone confirm that the correct version of the covenant ishttp://www.anglicancommunion.org/commission/covenant/final/text.cfm David Posted by: Mark Bennet Thursday 18 November 2010 - 08:40pm Pluralist's reading of history is interesting, but the reference made to a document which is 'credal with consequences' takes us back in history to some of the early councils of the church, where the credal statements of positive affirmation were accompanied by anathemas, condemning contrary positions. In liturgical use the Nicene Creed was separated from the anathemas. In the Church of England the 39 Articles have some negative statements, but the descendants of the anathemas were found in the 1603/4 Canons (the 20th Century revision of the Canons removed the strong negative statements). "Relational consequences", which seems to be the most contentious concept, are therefore related, in Anglican history to Canon Law rather more than "Covenant". But theologically "relational consequences" belong to the doctrine of sin, and for me there is a disjunction between the theological understanding of sin, and the concept of relational consequences in the Covenant document, in that the Covenant does not take 'relational consequences' seriously enough - they sem to be a kind of bureaucratic inconvenience. Those resonances might help to explain why the Covenant document generates resistance. Posted by: Deleted user 2359 Thursday 18 November 2010 - 03:31pm I'm back to make some limited comments, and now from a position as a Unitarian who has not attended an Anglican church since leaving New Holland and coming to Hull. My general view is along with that of Jonathan Clatworthy. You don't vote for what you don't want, if you don't want 'relational consequences'. The Covenant will be a football for kicking by disputants and make things worse. However, I am going to quibble with his historical analysis. He wrote that the "apparent fragmentation of Anglicanism is caused not by a lack of ecclesiastical procedures but by a clash of beliefs about religious truth." He goes on about the flexibility of Richard Hooker and the inflexibility and schismatic nature of the Bible only Puritans. It's not so. The Puritans were the excluded as regards the Book of Common Prayer, and were an extreme lot in Anglican terms. But they were a peculiar constituency, because they had some breadth to them as well, particularly in a 'parish' sense, and one of the writers Richard Baxter wanted subscription limited to the Apostles Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. By being Bible only, the Calvinists soon realised that the Bible was not quite as reliable as they thought. Some Puritans, like Independents, adopted creeds and more, and retained Calvinism for longer, whereas the English Presbyterians started to liberalise and moved towards Arminianism (of the head), some Arianism (Anglicans were more likely to be Arian) and occasionally Universalism. Wealthy merchants don't exactly want strict religion. Their congregations were in effect boosted by new ideological liberal Unitarians who were also biblical literalists - biblical criticism and its methods came to a different school of Unitarians and later. The point is that when the Bible only Puritans liberalised, the others would go off and form their own congregations - the schisms were those of conservatives and credalists. Hooker was different, a person of a balancing act between Scripture, tradition and reason. The Puritans in effect became evolutionists of religion, changing because they had been Bible only and also were not able and did not want Presbyterian structures, despite the name. For Unitarians, tradition is the information of history and the inheritance of language. Scripture became a critical device, and then was superseded by individual conscience. What is 'wrong' with the Covenant is that it is credal with consequences. It shows that the present creeds and the nod towards the 39 Articles is weak, at least weak in terms of the whole of Anglicanism. The Church of England is culturally sensitive to its place, as are all Anglican Churches, and each innovates or does not as it sees fit. What this Covenant does is impose another's cultural outlook on an Anglican Church with the effect of slowing down any of its responses to its own situation. As for freedom to believe and just to join for worship, that is something that does have boundaries. I do not believe in the incarnation or resurrection, for example, and I am not a religious realist. So in the end the liturgical stretch gives way, whereas the Unitarian setting is freedom to believe and just to join for worship, even if it has a Puritan shadow across it and would seem 'thin' to many an Anglican. 
Posted by: Graham Kings
Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 11:21pm
Thanks for the comments on my article. Thanks especially to you, Jonathan Clatworthy, for engaging on this Fulcrum thread, since you at Modern Church, together with Giles Goddard at Inclusive Church, prepared the original advert against the Covenant. In my article I did not respond point by point to the advert since I knew Andrew Goddard was preparing a long article, which Fulcrum has now just published, and I linked into his earlier shorter response. Tony, I think it is worth having a separate thread on Andrew's new article since that relates specifically to the advert. Jonathan, on the other points you raise: 1. Agreed, yes the Covenant is part of the outworking of the Windsor Report. If people did not like the Windsor Report - as is clear IC and MC don't - then it makes sense that they are against the Covenant. 2. Concerning Richard Hooker, I am very surprised at the irony of you - and Simon Barrow at Ekklesia - trying to coopt him, with his central concept of integrating 'law', to your case against the Covenant. Yes, at the end of the 16th century, Puritans in the Church of England were indeed pushing to impose Presbyterian order and lack of ceremony on the Church of England, but this is hardly the case with the Covenant. Presbyterian? Lack of ceremony? Richard Hooker answered this serious, polemical controversy with massive hinterland learning, something on which I commented in reviewing Rowan Williams's, Anglican Identities. Last Wednesday I had dinner at Hooker’s Rectory, in Boscombe a few miles north east of Salisbury, where he was Rector from 1591-1595 and where he wrote most of his multi-volume work ‘The Laws of Ecclesiasitcal Polity’. Benjamin Guyer has recently written a fine article 'Law, Liturgy and Wisdom: An Introduction to Richard Hooker', published on the Covenant site, and is currently preparing a response to those who use Hooker against the Covenant. Posted by: Tony Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 10:04pm Andrew Goddard has now provided is with very nearly 15000 words to explain why those who have read the covenant document and concluded that it its punitive -- and all the rest of it -- are quite simply wrong. Like Don Alfonso, one might simply growl 'finem lauda' -- but by then it will be too late. Come on Andrew, just a bit of candour about disciplining churches you disapprove of would not be out of place Posted by: Peter Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 09:26pm Please, Jonathan, this 'intolerance' rhetoric is way past its sell-by date. Everyone is 'tolerant' of some things and 'intolerant' of others. The irony is that liberals claim to be the guardian of all things rational, but here you are using emotive and empty rhetoric in a crude attempt to demonise those disagreeing with you. You are in danger of losing your integrity along with the argument. And what on earth do Christian Unions have to do with it? How bizarre to mention them!! I suppose your post is a generic one posted on various sites and it's a dog-whistle to beleagured SCM students, but still !!!! Posted by: Rogelio Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 07:55pm When comprehensiveness develops into anythingness (a.k.a. the widest possible variety of opinion), centrifugalism is blessed and any possibility of identity is given up. Are there any limits to "widest"? Is the only content of Anglicanism the decision of anybody to call their opinions Anglican? If anythingness leads us to wooliness we might soon find that the best definition of Anglicanism is actually "nothingmuchness' Posted by: WATERANGEL Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 06:18pm Jonathan hi I agree with you that the covenant may cause scisms and splits, and where Richard Hooker believes that disagreements should be allowed to take their course. However i ask the question whether that has to be the route in order to achieve unity. It is also true that the perception that Anglicans will no longer be Anglicans if they accept the covanant,. Rather they will be Anglicans working under the new covenant in the same way as when people changed from the older version of Common book of Prayer to the newer one. There is change , resistance to change, there is God and the truth; and there is a perception of the truth. Selective choosing of biblical passages to support a position of oppression of anyone will always be unacceptable, and a large obstacle in evangelicism. The real issue though is one of fear and grief, and sometimes tyranical belief.To inform someone that to steal from or murder another is a basic principle of all that makes society an environment to be safe in. If an individual chooses to stand at the alter on his head with a goldfish bowl on his feet whilst reciting the psalms 'then thats clever, unconventional, but certainly is not going to cause a schism. It would not put members of the general population at risk or deny them a relationship with God, by virtue of personal prayer. I remember the prayer book changing and i understood how some felt they had lost God in the transition because they could not relate to the way it was being communicated, so they were faced with losing the familiarity of the people and the comfort of the building or accepting a form of service which made it hard for them to tune in on the same wave length. (they should be like me on their own planet it would never be a problem lol) But seriously i hope you understand my point, that the covanent has not been suggested or drafted to minimise the faith but to maximise it for leaders and congegation as a whole body of Christ. Schisms may be inevitable in some quarters but not nessesarily bad. Most growth is found at such times, unless doors are closed because people die in transition. Waterangel Posted by: Jonathan Clatworthy Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 03:21pm Graham Kings, like the other defenders of the Covenant against our advertisement, suggests that we haven’t understood it, and thus excuses himself from the task of responding to our argument. Instead he reflects on the nature of covenants in general. The closest he gets to describing this Covenant is: This covenant of unity seeks to hold the Anglican communion together organically in the face of increasing fragmentation. The choice in this debate is to opt into intensifying our world-wide relationships in affection and commitment or to allow splits to develop further and irrevocably. Do we consider each other and decide we belong together, or do we do our own thing and hang apart? Part of our argument is that this Covenant would encourage schism. It was in the first place conceived as a method for legitimating the threats of schism by those who said they would rather split the Communion than permit one gay bishop to take office. The Windsor Report, which should have insisted on permitting diversity of opinion, instead capitulated to their threats, blamed the Americans for not consulting sufficiently, and proposed the Covenant as a process by which future such objections could have binding force. In other words, right from the start it was a manifesto for the intolerant. The present Covenant is nowhere near as punitively worded as earlier drafts; but it still remains the child of that project, and it still therefore contains an iron fist inside the velvet glove. Churches wishing to move forward on any matter at all will find the onus lies on them ‘to act with diligence, care and caution in respect of any action which may provoke controversy, which by its intensity, substance or extent could threaten the unity of the Communion and the effectiveness or credibility of its mission’ (3.2.5). Those who object to a particular development, whatever it may be, will have available to them a procedure for seeking to block it, provided only that they kick up a fuss with sufficient ‘intensity, substance or extent’ – just as they did in 2002-4. The difference will be that whereas then there was no ready-made process for obliging the rest of Anglicanism to toe their line, once the Covenant is in force there will be. The apparent fragmentation of Anglicanism is caused not by a lack of ecclesiastical procedures but by a clash of beliefs about religious truth. When, in the sixteenth century, Protestants denied the authority of the Catholic Church to interpret the Bible, they argued two things which turned out to be incompatible: that every individual should read and understand the Bible for themselves, and that society, government and the church should be run entirely on biblical principles. It soon became apparent that different people interpreted the Bible in different ways. In the debates between Richard Hooker and the Puritans of his day, the Puritans argued that every question of doctrine and ethics has a biblical answer which is binding on all Christians. They therefore expected that true Christians should agree with each other on all such matters, so dissent was unacceptable. It is this tradition which has produced endless splits: time after time half a congregation has disapproved of their minister’s teaching, walked out and built a rival church across the road. This intolerance of dissent has been revived in recent decades, especially through its popularity in student Christian Unions, and is the theological driving force behind those who insist that one gay bishop, even thousands of miles away, undermines the spiritual legitimacy of the whole Anglican Communion. The Covenant has been designed to legitimate their intolerance, and if passed will pave the way to split, split, split and split. The alternative is to accept, with Richard Hooker and his Classic Anglican successors, that our knowledge is neither complete nor certain. We therefore need to learn from each other in open discussion. This happens best when the widest possible diversity of opinion is allowed. Far from setting up a committee with power to decree the right answer (or in the Covenant’s terminology, ‘make recommendations’), every disagreement should be allowed to take its course for as long as it takes to reach consensus. These contrasting epistemologies are incompatible. If A is willing to belong to the same church as B but B refuses to belong unless A does x, then the only way they can keep together is for A to capitulate to B. This was the situation which led to the Windsor Report’s proposal for an Anglican Covenant: to declare that ‘if the gay bishop stays, we go’ is to demand a uniformity more in keeping with Puritanism than Anglicanism. The present Covenant, albeit much less denunciatory than earlier drafts, still represents that capitulation to the most intolerant. Posted by: Rogelio Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 02:40pm We all have been aware for a long time of strong diverging centrifugal forces in both the Anglican Communion and the CofE. What are the commonalities that could keep together the Anglican Communion, and the CofE? As soon as anybody attempts to answer that question, you've got a form of Covenant in the making. Laissez faire, laissez passer is not an answer. It is just the renunciation of commonality. And renunciation of identity is not a form of identity. Outside the CofE the question feels more urgent. They do not have the (false?) sense of security that too many clergy in this country seem to derive in practice from being the Established Church --for how long? Posted by: Tony Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 12:49pm Thank you, Mark. That is pertinent and very helpful. It would also be a help if those who are so keen to promote the covenant were a bit more frank. As I said in a separate thread, to suggest that all remain equal in any system where some but not others have an 'enhanced' position (as the ACO text does) is nonsensical. Otherwise I could have enhanced pay and my colleagues would nevertheless feel that they were being treated as complete equals. Enhanced means different. And I think it is simply disingenuous to claim that no attempt is made to intervene in the governance of another church while at the same time making it clear that any failure to fall into line will have 'relational consequences'. Maybe these won't be enough to keep GAFCON in the Communion, but it's hard to accept that siuch a prospect of 'consequences' isn't actively designed as a means to prevent some developments from happening at all! There are political nuances, as you say, but as some of my conservative friends here at fulcrum are keen to remind us, there is also plain sense. Posted by: Mark Bennet Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 10:53am I am interested in the comment that the intention of the Covenant text has been misinterpreted by those who oppose it. I think there is a hidden ambiguity in that statement which could do with some unpacking: There is the intention of the sponsors of the text (Archbishop of Canterbury etc); and The intention of the people who have been drafting the text; and The intention of those like Fulcrum, who support the text; and The intention of those who say, or have said, they want to use the text to achieve particular outcomes. And others too, I am sure, invest the text with their particular intentions. And there is also the question of whether the text will be effective in achieving those intentions. Given the redrafting, there is some doubt, I would say, that those who want to see off the 'liberal' wing of the church will find the Covenant 'strong enough' to achieve that outcome. But if it is not strong enough in that direction, will it be enough to hold the 'conservative' provinces in? So there are logical jumps on both sides - 'We (believe we) can see what this text will do, and we can hear what people want to do with it - so those things must be the intention of those who are drafting and sponsoring it', 'We intend the text to do X, so people who say it will do Y are wrong'. The urgency of the debate - what seems to be at stake for people - means that rhetoric is concealing some of these issues rather than opening them up for debate. I'm sure the Covenant is intended by sponsors and drafters to promote careful conversations rather than rhetorical battles. Let's hope this thread becomes an example of that care. 
Posted by: Jody
Wednesday 17 November 2010 - 10:31am
Dear Friends we have just published the Fulcrum Newsletter for November: The Anglican Covenant is the only way forward, by Graham Kings, also published in the Guardian Online. Please use this thread for discussion. blessings, Jody |
LATEST
|
‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold’ is a celebrated line in