Anglican Covenant rejected in more English dioceses : Fraser balks : The ‘no’ crowd gets an American patron : Due process and the lack thereof
Anglican Covenant rejected in more English dioceses
Four dioceses in the Church of England voted on the proposed Anglican Covenant today. All four voted against it. To date, ten of the church’s 44 dioceses have voted against the covenant, which is supported by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, while five have voted in favour of the covenant. Voting in the negative were the dioceses of Leicester, Portsmouth, Rochester and Salisbury. Eighteen of the remaining 29 dioceses will need to vote in favor of the proposed covenant if it is to be returned for a vote at the church’s General Synod.
In Leicester the voting was:
Bishops: 2 for 0 against Clergy: 15 for, 21 against, 3 abstentions Laity: 21 for, 14 against, 4 abstentions
It appears that there was confusion at the synod in the interpretation of this outcome, but we believe that the defeat in the House of Clergy means that the motion is defeated, and that this will be confirmed in due course.
In Salisbury the voting was:
Bishops: 1 for, 1 against Clergy: 11 for, 20 against, 2 abstentions Laity: 19 for, 27 against, 0 abstentions
In Portsmouth the voting was:
Bishop: 1 for, 0 against Clergy: 12 for, 17 against, 0 abstentions Laity: 13 for, 17 against, 2 abstentions
In Rochester the voting was:
Bishop: 1 for, 0 against Clergy: 8 for, 30 against, 3 abstentions Laity: 14 for, 26 against, 7 abstentions
What’s interesting is that it’s being defeated uniformly in the clergy order.
Stats from : http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/005378.html
Covenant doings: Fraser balks; the ‘no’ crowd gets an American patron
In Church Times, Giles Fraser says he’s against the proposed Anglican Covenant.
The idea that all the different Churches of the Communion can be held together only by signatures on a page rather than years of tradition and common baptism and liturgy is an unnecessary bureaucratisation of theology and fellowship.
If you allow one province a quasi-legal mechanism for pushing out another province, then you are providing a context for acrimony, not for reconciliation. Reconciliation comes when those divided by differences learn to see Christ at work in each other. Mostly, this is achieved through patient friendship and listening.
The reason why the Covenant is such a terrible idea is that it replaces the search for common ground with a fear that the Other is out to get me. It gives the Other a means of my exclusion, and thus turns the Other into the enemy.
His sentiments would be echoed by someone like Marilyn McCord Adams, Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and former Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University and Residentiary Canon at Christ Church, Oxford. Adams has joined the fight by signing on as an American patron to the No Anglican Covenant Coalition.
“The proposed Anglican Covenant was conceived in moral indignation and pursued with disciplinary intent,” according to Professor McCord Adams. “Its global gate-keeping mechanisms would put a damper on the gospel agenda, which conscientious Anglicans should find intolerable. The Covenant is based on an alien ecclesiology, which thoughtful Anglicans have every reason to reject.” – See recent report on CNI and –
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=124500
Anglican Covenant: Due process and the lack thereof
Jim Naughton writes at Episcopal Cafe – Not long ago I edited a study guide for the Chicago Consultation on the proposed Anglican Covenant. It was called The Genius of Anglicanism (Link to PDF below) , and while it included many excellent essays, one in particular has stuck with me, perhaps because I covered a few trials during my days as a reporter.
In an essay called “Section Four: The Devil you know”, Sally Johnson, a lawyer who served on the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons for six years, examines the quasi-judicial process outlined in the final section of the covenant. She writes:
In essence, the Standing Committee receives a question, receives assistance from unspecified “committees or commissions” mandated by unspecified authority, takes advice from any body or anybody it deems appropriate and decides whether to refer the question to the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting. The Standing Committee then decides whether to request a Church to “defer” a decision or action and what relational consequences should result if it does not. It then moves on to a determination of whether or not a Church’s action or decision is or would be “incompatible with the Covenant.” The Standing Committee does this “on the basis of advice received from the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting,” not on the basis of a process or procedure in which the Church whose action is in question participates in any way, other than to the extent it has representatives on the ACC (from which it could already be barred) and a primate at the Primates’ Meeting (from which its primate could have been excluded). …
Agreeing to an undefined, unspecified process in which the decision-making bodies have full discretion to act in any manner they deem best–not only as to the process but as to the standard and burden of proof, information considered, and all other aspects of the dispute resolution system–is what the covenant contemplates. In the words of the rule of law, there is no procedural due process and no substantive due process guaranteed by the covenant. The outcome is to be trusted and respected based on the persons/bodies making the decisions rather than a system based on how the decision is made. (italics added.)
I thought of Johnson’s article on Saturday when I learned that all four of the dioceses in the Church of England that had voted on whether to adopt the covenant that day, had voted in the negative. Thus far, ten of the 15 dioceses that have considered the issue have thought the covenant a bad idea. Twenty-nine dioceses are still to vote, and at least 18 of them must vote in the affirmative if the covenant is to be considered by the Church of England’s General Synod.
Arguments about the covenant often deal in lofty theological concepts, and are spiced by rival interpretations of Anglican history. But we can also examine the document through the lens of common sense.
No one would want to be tried under the legal system that Johnson describes. No one would their loved ones tried under such a system. So I ask my Anglican sisters and brothers, if it isn’t right for us, why is it right for our churches?