In the past ten days the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia rejected the Anglican Covenant and the Episcopal Church in the USA voted to “decline to take a position on the Anglican Covenant,” and to continue to monitor the progress of the Covenant until the next General Convention in 2015.
Connecticut Bishop Ian Douglas, (and member of the ACC) chair of the Episcopal Church’s World Mission Committee, commented following the vote that the resolutions are “a genuine pastoral response because we are not of one mind, and to push a decision at this time would cause hurt and alienation in our church on both sides and instead we chose to stay in the conversation.”
That said, it is difficult to disagree with the assessment of “No Anglican Covenant” Moderator, the Rev. Malcolm French, that the USA resolution is little more than an abstention. Furthermore the same General Convention in a budget trimming exercise phased out funding for the Episcopal Church staff position for Anglican Communion affairs.
Throughout the Anglican Communion, seven provinces have approved or subscribed to the Anglican Covenant. They are Ireland, Mexico, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, South East Asia, Southern Cone of America, and the West Indies.
Two provinces – the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia – have voted against adopting the covenant. The bishops of the Episcopal Church in the Philippines also have rejected the covenant.
In March, it became clear that the Church of England could not adopt the covenant in its current form when a majority of its dioceses voted the document down.
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa has adopted the document pending ratification at its next synod meeting later this year.
The Church in Wales last April gave the covenant “an amber light, rather than a green light.” The church’s governing body said it feared the recent rejection of the covenant by the Church of England jeopardised its future and clarifications about that were now needed before a decision could be made. It sent questions on the matter to the Anglican Consultative Council, which meets in Auckland, New Zealand, in the autumn.
It may indeed prove impossible to obtain a document which binds Anglicans globally across cultural and theological differences. And it looks as though the Episcopal Church is continuing to put in place arrangements which maintain and build links with other Churches and provinces across the Anglican Communion, especially through the Continuing Indaba programme.
This may indeed be a model which may appeal to other churches and provinces. Regrettably it may reflect the process which is evident even in Ireland of having only ‘safe’ inter-diocesan links, where de facto “we only meet and speak to people who agree with our theological stance”. If the member churches of the Anglican Communion retreat into models in which they do not sincerely dialogue with fellow Anglicans of divergent and different views, can they avoid an assessment that it diminishes the witness the Church is intended to bring to a very divided world? How does the Anglican Communion demonstrate that people can dialogue with difference? The Covenant in its present form may vanish, but the challenge of the dialogue and the witness will not.
Houston McKelvey