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If all the words that have been written about the Anglican Covenant were laid end to end, they would surely circle the earth several times over. And we seem no nearer getting the hierarchy to consider whether it is, after all, possible that the Communion is being led down a blind alley, cul de sac, impasse or dead end.
The powers that be refuse absolutely to consider how insanitary it is never to change their minds. Presumably they change their socks and underpants at regular intervals; now we have to find a way of persuading them that their minds need frequent laundering also (particularly considering their obsession with ‘who does what and with which and to whom’).
The No Anglican Covenant Coalition, an international group, was launched on 3 November 2010,
“the date the commemoration of the sixteenth century theologian Richard Hooker. “Hooker taught us that God’s gifts of scripture, tradition and reason will guide us to new insights in every age,” according to the Canadian priest and canon law expert, the Revd. Canon Alan Perry. “The proposed Anglican Covenant would freeze Anglican theology and Anglican polity at a particular moment. Anglican polity rejected control by foreign bishops nearly 500 years ago. The proposed Anglican Covenant reinstates it.”
The NACC convenor, the Revd Lesley Fellows, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury explaining why the NACC and its supporters are opposed to the Covenant. After a delay of three months, she got the equivalent of ‘the bug letter’ from the Revd Canon Joanna Udal, the Archbishop’s Secretary for Anglican Communion Affairs.
There have been articles in the press, and the Church Times of 18 March 2011 was devoted to it. Many of us have blogged about it, and I’m sure we have all prayed about it. Some are more exasperated than others, but few can match the exquisite courtesy of Tobias Haller. Overall, I am very proud to be associated with such a reasoning, courteous group of people. We have covered every angle, and have put our arguments most persuasively.
But it seems to be of no avail. I sense battle-fatigue setting in, and no wonder. What can we do next?
Well, perhaps we should go for some form of direct action? I did consider modelling myself on the suffragettes, but admit to being too much of a coward to relish the prospect being trampled to death at Ascot or force-fed in Wandsworth gaol. I thought of chaining myself to ‘the railings’ at Lambeth Palace, but unfortunately there are no railings, only a high and solid wall. I could chain myself to the gates, but would have to run backwards and forwards every time they opened or shut, which would be hard work in this heat and rather undignified.
Thanks to our own Church Mouse, we now know that the Archbishop is defended by a team of Ninja nuns, so unfortunately my chances of emulating the girl in the cartoon above must be considered poor to nil.
Another suggestion: we get a ghetto-blaster and put the following song on perpetual repeat outside the walls of Lambeth Palace until we get a change of heart:
My considered solution is as follows. We brainwash both Archbishops with Fortune Cookies. The plan is as follows:
- We order a large number of fortune cookies, with the mottoes below enclosed.
- We recruit anti-Covenanteers from amongst the domestic (and possibly office) archiepiscopal retainers.
- Said retainers hide these at regular intervals in the biscuit tin, sock drawer, bathroom cabinet etc.
Well, all right, all right. I’m sure you can come up with a better plan. The comment box below would be a good place to offer your ideas for better plans or – failing that – better mottoes for the fortune cookies.
He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. ~Harold Wilson
They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. ~Confucius
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in travelling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place. ~Washington Irving
Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. ~John Kenneth Galbraith
Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one’s eternal peril. ~Laurens van der Post
Growth is the only evidence of life. ~John Henry Newman, Apologia pro vita sua, 1864
The circumstances of the world are so variable that an irrevocable purpose or opinion is almost synonymous with a foolish one. ~William H. Seward
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. ~William Blake
You can avoid having ulcers by adapting to the situation: If you fall in the mud puddle, check your pockets for fish. ~Author Unknown
Stubbornness does have its helpful features. You always know what you are going to be thinking tomorrow. ~Glen Beaman
We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
~W.H. AudenThose who expect moments of change to be comfortable and free of conflict have not learned their history. ~Joan Wallach Scott
All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. ~Ellen Glasgow
Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves! ~Andre Gide
The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. ~Japanese Proverb
God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me. ~Author Unknown
Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly. ~Francis Bacon
Note
1. The headline quote (It is not necessary to change…) is from W. Edwards Demers, the American management guru.
2. The illustration/cartoon is from www.sangrea.net and is covered by a Creative Commons Licence
3. The You-Tube video is ‘Change Your Mind’ (3.38 minutes) by the ‘All-American Rejects’
No gain without pain? Seems to me to be operative here. Trouble is we have nothing to gain, and everything to lose with the Anglican Covenant.
I'm unsure about brainwashing the Arch Bishops, as that would most likely produce something worse.
My fear is the covenant going through by default due to the battle weariness you write-off.
What we need is a mass letter writing campaign to all MP's and opinion formers within and without the church.
Even Colonel Blimp from Tonbridge Wells was heard when writing to the Times, so why not us.
The other thing is of course for all of the laity enmasse to write to the Arch Bishops and Synod telling them that they can accept whatever they want but 'NOT IN MY NAME'.
The voice of common sense – just as well, as I realise mine is a piece of midsummer madness!
Both your points are really good – a 'writing-in campaign (and there is a long tradition isn't there of giving petitions to kings written out on scrolls); and also the 'Not In My Name' phrase which was so powerful at the time of the anti-Iraq war demonstrations.
In a way what worries me most is the apathy from so many Anglicans who cannot see how it will affect them. But if we can 'raise consciousness' somehow, the writing campaign must be the way to go.
It's not just the Covenant most Anglicans are supremely apathetic about.
When have you last heard anyone outside blogland and Synod even talk about women bishops, although the topic has led to people leaving for the Ordinariate?
When have you heard them discuss civil partnerships, gay priest or bishops with any level of "this might affect our parish" urgency?
We have this awful tendency to look at what we call "squabbles", tutut a little and go back to "concentrating on what really matters".
There's a remarkable tolerance and genuine appreciation about what Christian life should be about in it, but collectively, it also represents the suicide of the tolerant, big tent CoE and no-one will notice until it's too late.
Oh, Erika, I fear you are right. As Anglicans, we look at the Bible Belt, the Creationists, the Prosperity Church and the Pentecostals and quietly pray 'Thank-you, Lord, that we are not as they'.
Our tolerance is our greatest quality, but the obverse of the coin is perhaps passion, and that we could do with a generous dollop of. Without it, we may suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs…
I think the place where Lesley and I part company is that among the many other important issues (and Erika alludes to them quite rightly) is that I don't regard the Covenant as having the slightest relevance to parish life or that of the ordinary Christian. I don't think that I ever did hence my fairly lengthy silence on the matter. Bloggers are gusset-rotated about it, and perhaps my head is in the sand, but I can't work up a sweat over it.
That all said, I advocate the efforts of those who seek to debate these issues that seem to emerge, but in the very male pragmatic sense that I apply to many things, I find myself (perhaps alone, I don't know) in a place of 'so what?'. I think it all partly feels very distant to me, whether that be right or wrong.
The issues that do exorcise me are those surrounding gender and sexuality, and the fair treatment of those on the margins of our society. Those are real and in the face of every Christian, and in those debates I have stronger and more publicised views. They affect people on the ground in the way that the AC surely does not. This is a good post, despite all that I say, and I thank you for writing it.
Will I still go to Blogger Heaven?
I seriously begin to wonder if the CofE will be around in another 50 years.. It seems to be experiencing the 'death rattles'.. There seems little or no growth / it is alienating itself from its clergy & laity alike. Making itself appear moribund to those of no faith & appears to have lost the plot.. There is a christian gospel to proclaim & I hear none of it.. What I do see is Islam on the rise in this Godforsaken land – so it appears. God help us.
First of all, I am sure your place in Blogger Heaven is safe, assured by intercessory prayers from all your blogging beneficiaries.
99.99% of all the people that surround me here in the Test Valley agree with you about the threat assessment from the AC. I certainly hope you are right.
My concerns are well-expressed in this piece on 2 August 2010 for the Guardian by Jonathan Clatworthy:
"The text does not mention same-sex partnerships. It is worded to apply more generally to any future controversy. Whenever an innovation by one province is opposed by another, the standing committee's judgment will become the Anglican teaching. Step by step Anglicanism will accumulate teachings to which all are expected to assent. We shall be turned from an inclusive church into a confessional one.
Defenders of classic Anglicanism prefer the opposite. We should allow differences of opinion as signs of growth; it is the intolerant who are being un-Anglican. Our Christian duty is not just to accept inherited dogmas but to acknowledge our errors and welcome new insights, using the full range of God-given faculties – so that our faith will continually be made new, creative and exciting."
I suspect your views on doctrine might be different in significant ways from mine, yet we both consider ourselves adherent members of the Church of England. It is not part of my tradition to believe in transubstantiation, but in the last few years I have realised that I do in fact so deeply believe. The present Anglican Church accepts such fuzzy beliefs. My understanding is that after the Church has on our behalf dotted every possible i, and crossed every conceivable t in the covenant, the Creed will need to be re-written so that every Anglican signs up to this contract (much more detailed than the 39 Articles) on a weekly basis.
How can it be otherwise? What would be the point of the Primates agreeing that Anglicanism means something, if every individual Anglican cannot subscribe to every sub-clause?
Even if I did agree with every sub-clause, I would not want to worship in a church that was that disciplinarian and exclusive.
Thank-you, christophbowman, for commenting.
I agree that Islam is on the rise, but think this is mostly for demographic reasons rather than refelcting a failure of Christianity in general or Anglicanism in particular.
I don't altogether share your gloom about the outcome. Although the 'management structures' of the Church of England could do with a good spring clean, in my view, there is also much that is alive and vibrant in the Church.
The introduction of women priests has, in my view, already made a difference. If the Church were to put aside its obsession with homosexuality, raise women to the episcopate, make more use of the laity and tear up the Anglican Covenant, we'd be home and dry!
"Even if I did agree with every sub-clause, I would not want to worship in a church that was that disciplinarian and exclusive".
I think that this is the bottom line for most people. One of the reasons I left the RC church was a disagreement with their arbitrary and authoritarian way of running the church. Tninking for yourself was basically forbidden and following in blind obedience seemed to be the way of being a member.
My issue with leaving the CofE, is that I feel very strongly about having being 'called' to be where I am and I have never been happier than I am now. In the Church, particpating in so many ways and having experiences of God and evidence everywhere of his actions in our lives. So, leaving for me would feel very much of being a traitor or homeless and without hope.
I can see that the covenant is authoritarian in tone and purpose. It appears to be a recipe for Ultra-Orthodoxy (whose orthodoxy?) and an attempt to maintain a status quoe, involving male supremacy and a denial of the real humanity of those who differ from their 'orthodox' position. It leaves no room for the Holy Spirit to work within it and is a made-made instrument of repression.
So, I stand against it in principle and purpose but will perhaps as David says, will ignore it if implemented as my membership of the CofE is to precious to sacrifice.
UKViewer, I think I will be able to ignore the Covenant if implemented, since I am from the laity (though it will be difficult if our priest is has to toe the line, as I will feel some obligation to show loyalty to him or her). But you may well be a priest by then, or at least an ordinand. Will you have the option?
Fr Cloake
I don't really understand your view.
The Covenant will, in principle, give people who stronly oppose you in your battle for the fair treatment of some of those on the edge of society a structured way of preventing your church from developing towards a more inclusive official policy.
How can that be irrelevant?
The reason I am so passionately against the Covenant is precisely because I want to be able to focus on equality in the church and I find it inexplicable that my own General Synod should be happy to give formal powers over CoE business to a body outside its own boundaries.
That's a safe thing to do while we're still officially trying to come up with reasons why Jeffrey John cannot be bishop, but it will eventually stop the church from growing beyond that.
Do you not see that as a danger?
Laura,
you say that you can ignore the Covenant if it's implemented because you're only a lay person and your only moral obligation might be to support your priest.
I don't think that's true. I could be in your congregation. For all I know, there are people like me in your congregation.
I am not allowed to train for any church ministry, my marriage had to be blessed by priests whose names still have to remain secret in a location that has to remain secret.
Those who started developing the Covenant would be happy to see this continued for ever. Some even believe I should not be in the church at all.
At the moment there is still some faint hope that the CoE will eventually grow up on these issues. But if it ties itself in to the Covenant now that will become even more unlikely.
This Covenant diminishes us all, it ties all our hands.
Erika,
I'm sorry, this was unfortunate drafting on my part. I was really just trying to make the point to UKViewer that he would be unable to ignore the Covenant because by then he would be part of the establishment.
In general, if lay people do not mind averting their eyes from the uncomfortable truth of what the Church of England will have become, then I dare say services will continue as normal and lay people may be able to persuade themselves that nothing has changed.
This is not my position. I was about to say 'Surely you know me well enough to know that', but of course you may feel you do not know me well enough!
I hope I will not be thought melodramatic if I quote the statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the purging of their chosen targets, group after group.
"First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me."
My position is that I would not want to worship in a church that is anything less than completely inclusive. I felt strongly enough about this to have started the blog and in my own small way have been chipping away at the glacier (would that it were more effective than that sounds!) with my bare hands. If I fail, and if we fail, I shall have to leave the Church of England and look for a spiritual home elsewhere. As a devout Anglican for 62 years. I do not say this lightly.
Laura,
thank you. Of course I had not meant that you would safely withdraw behind a wall of ignoring injustice.
And I think I explained myself badly.
Lay people can ignore the Covenant now. But in 5, 10, 15, 20 years time there will be a topic the Church of England feels passionate about, like parishes finally felt passionate about women priests when they had identified enough potential ordinands in their own midst.
At that point, if the other members of the Covenant are firmly against whatever the CoE has discerned as right, everyone will wake up and realise they tied their own hands.
Like the Niemöller poem shows, this is not just about injustice, it is also about stupidity if you cannot see that the strategy you now either support or ignore will eventually have the power to backfire against you.
That's what I really don't understand about people voting for the Covenant. To me, it is such a no brainer that you do not tie your own hands behind your back that I will never understand why Synods are sleepwalking into it.
And because I genuinely don't understand it I'd love Fr Cloake, who is an intelligent and sensitive man, to explain to me why he is so supremely unconcerned about this.
You say it all very eloquently. To me it is self-evident. Like you, I am having real difficulty in understanding the position of those who dismiss the threat as unreal.
Erika, thank you for your reply. People will always and have always disagreed. On that there is no debate. The power that individuals have to act in accordance with their own consciences will always supersede any pointless document (I regard the AC as pointless and without value, hence my attitude to it). Individual parishes and diocese can walk away at will, and already do. Actions are already taken in contravention to established rules and always will. The AC has as must valency as my blog! I really cannot see what jot of difference it will make when people have views that they will exercise. Already in twenty-first century Britain Anglican churches pick and choose which Canons to follow properly or lightly – and where that is the case with Canons are treated lightly in some cases, then I see the same with the AC. However, this is just my view and I can only hold accord with my own view.
I think that the Church would be impoverished by your absence, incidentally. Whatever the issue you are passionate and that passion is in the image of Christ. Praise be for you, if I may.
More later … got to dash for now
Thank-you, David. I hope (and pray) that you are right that the CofE will continue to operate as it always has, in a rather anarchic way. This is what we have always understood to be the character of the CofE, allowing for a wide range of individual views and backgrounds. That is why both the tone and the content of the Covenant are so suprising. If God is an Anglican (which I grant you is by no means a certainty), I imagine he does not know whether to laugh or cry at the Covenant!
David
thank you for your reply.
My fear is precisely that the Church of England will no longer be able to continue has it always has.
Every major change in society and in a church starts out with a group of extremists perceiving an injustice and trying to put it right. At first they're seen as cranks and are derided. As they get a little more successful they become hated. Extreme preservation groups on the opposing, traditional side spring up. It comes to a turf war and the silent middle looks on, bemused, wondering why they can't just stop arguing and get on "with what really matters".
But slowly, slowly, the silent majority shifts ground and the former extreme innovators become more and more mainstream.
It is as that point that legislative changes are being discussed and, after a while, implemented.
The caravan then moves on, leaving behind the small still disgruntled remainder of traditionalists who will never like blacks, Pakis, women, homos, tree huggers, people who ever thought loudly about sex before marriage or whatever the cause happens to have been.
And it is precisely this last stage that will no longer be organically possible in a CoE that ties its own policies and canons to the approval of an international Instrument of Unity.
If "relational consequences" had been an official threat to any of the previous moves towards inclusion, we would now either have a tiny and fractured Communion, or we would still be nowhere near as inclusive as we are.
Ultimately, it's not about some decent priest secretly blessing a loving gay couple and decent priests all over Britain to continue to do this for eternity. Ultimately, it's about having at least the credible hope that the secrecy can eventually be dispensed with and a new truth proclaimed by all.
Imagine a church that had not accommodated any of the social changes in Britain in the last 50 years. A church that does not recognise "bastard" children, that will not marry cohabiting parents, will not baptise children whose parents aren't churchgoers or not married, a church that will not truly support pregnant teenagers but that still engages in forcing pregnant girls who "went away for a year before returning home" to give up their children for adoption…
It just cannot work. A church that cuts itself off from the society that sustains it and that allows people from completely different societies a legal say in its own internal affairs and that does everything it comes to believe in under a cloak of eternal secrecy…. Why would anyone take the risk?
There is not a word of your thesis that I can disagree with. If anything, I perhaps would want to defend a different use of the word 'traditional' as distinct from the hijacked version in the hands of my more misogynistic Anglo-Catholic brothers – but that would be about it.
I think our positions differ not on the wider implications for communicative change, but on the potency of the piece of draft legislation at the heart of this discussion. You regard it as having considerable scope, and I regard it as having none. That is not to say that I am right and you are wrong (or t'other way around either).
I have always trusted my instincts, and they are normally alerted by clear and present dangers. I read the document even before Lesley started thumping her tub and tossed it aside with a fairly cursory 'so what'. I have, in the light of our discussion here (for which I thank you) pondered why I should have taken such a relaxed attitude and I think that it is simple. The church of which I am part is a sum of parts. Yes, it is greater than that sum but like a beach, is made up of millions of grains of sand. In the church, each of those grains of sand will and do act on their own conscience and if another hot-potato replaces, for example, the women in episcopacy debate, then the AC can no more influence those grains of sand in every town and village of every Christian country of our world than I can a beach of sand with a broken shovel. The AC has no teeth, it seeks to create an aspiration which, when people disagree, can be the thing they can withdraw from at will. It has no power, cannot be 'policed' and cannot force or engender commitment. That, therefore, renders it a waste of paper (in my opinion).
If we took Issue X, for example, and I and my parish/diocese/Province disagreed with you and your parish/diocese/Province, I could (and possible would) just walk away from you as many have already done. It would be a poor behaviour on my part, but I would be free to do it. There would be nothing that the AC could do to stop me, except for wagging the proverbial finger and telling me that I am a very naughty boy. So what!
David,
The Lambeth conference is nothing but a friendly get-together, The Windsor Report is just that, a report without any legislative power. The Primate Meeting has no official authority and the Instruments of Unity never existed until they were defined like that a year or so ago.
And yet – everything that has happened in the Communion in recent years is based on the above. They have been touted as Truth and Authoritative until they simply became it.
I have no problem with parish x ignoring what parish y does.
What worries me is not the status quo but the status I'd like there to be.
And that status needs official GS approval.
Like women bishops, like same sex marriages in church, like absolutely no bar to any of the church offices for reasons of gender, sexuality and marital status etc.
This is not something your parish can do and mine can ignore.
And looking at recent Anglican Communion history, and at how things that were never authoritative suddenly are so, and if I look at the decisions General Synod will have to take in the next 10-20 years… I just cannot be as unconcerned about this little piece of paper, that unlike its predecessors will actually HAVE some authority because all the provinces will have signed up for it.
It legitimises all the previous documents and bodies and will, retrospectively, give them the authority they have successfully claimed but not really had yet.
No?
David,
I am sorry if this feels like three-handed tennis with you having to take on two feisty women of a certain age!
Can we go back to first principles for a moment?
-The Church of England has never before had a Covenant or any other piece of paper on this scale. But if the 39 Articles were part of the prayer book, it suggests that the Covenant would be part of Common Worship (or its successor). Would it not also become part of Canon Law? Because the CofE is the established church in England, is Canon Law not also part of the British constitution (see the role of the consistory court as compared to military tribunals and the civil courts?) I am well out of my depth, as you can see, but think this is beginning to look like the invasion of Iraq where no one seems to have considered what happens next.
-What are the real implications of belonging to an episcopal church? Does it not already imply the attempt to impose order and discipline from above on any 'non-conformists'? No names, no pack-drill, but I have certainly known some very 'inventive' liturgies which would horrify the Liturgical Commission but which no one objects to this far out on the frontier and away from Lambeth. The adoption of the Covenant, let alone the formalisation of the 'Primates Meeting' and 'Instruments of Unity' (?Torquemada, anyone), send strong warning signals to me, at least, that this cosy laissez-faire attitude that we are used to is in grave danger.
It is gratifying to see that The Episcopal Church may have come to the same conclusions as me (!)
Simon Sarmiento has just posted on Thinking Anglicans (http://networkedblogs.com/jMydQ)
'The Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church has issued a report on the Anglican Covenant.
See this ENS news report: Task force releases report on Anglican Covenant.
“The SCCC is of the view that adoption of the current draft Anglican Covenant has the potential to change the constitutional and canonical framework of [the Episcopal Church], particularly with respect to the autonomy of our Church, and the constitutional authority of our General Convention, bishops and dioceses,” says the report.'
David,
I think your analysis is based on an interpretation that everyone can do what they want and if they like, they can walk away.
My problem stems from the instances where people do not want to walk away but still believe they’re doing the right thing.
Gene Robinson was not invited to Lambeth, TEC has been removed from the ecumenical body of the AC, despite the church being very firm in their commitment to the Anglican Communion and in their wish to remain a full member.
Border crossing into TEC territory, equally condemned by a Lambeth meeting, has not been criticised anywhere near as sharply.
What suddenly happened for a smallish group of churches to claim that level of authority over other, supposedly equal members of the Community?
Why should it be acceptable that they can do this?
Why should it not be scandalous that the liberal end of the Communion is expected to either comply or to leave?
There’s a very open step by step bullying process happening right in front of our eyes, and the Covenant legitimises that process.
I believe that it’s not enough to say if you don’t like the bullying, get out. Rather, isn’t it our task to say that we’ll stop the bullying? The Covenant doesn’t only condone the bullying process it arose from but it legitimises it.
…. we ought to have this conversation in a pub over a pint! …
While the covenant, if agreed, will be “binding” on the Archbishops, I wonder if it will have any real effect in the pews. I’ve seen enough lively and happy parishes, and enough morbid and poorly ones, to conclude that what matters is the willingness of the people – and more importantly their clergy and leaders – to allow the Holy Spirit to work in them.
I am reminded of two quotations that I include in sermons from time to time:
1. Constant change is here to stay.
2. The Holy Spirit did not stop working on earth when John wrote “Amen” at the end of his Revelation.
Constant change is certainly alive and well where I live and worship. Indeed, the ministry team has got the bit between the teeth…
Thank-you Keith. There seems to be something of a Gordian knot here, or have I perhaps made a fundamental mistake in logic?
1. Anglicans follow a Christ who engaged with all conditions of men and women.
2. Anglicanism therefore should be, and historically has been, inclusive so far as its congregations (though not its priesthood) are concerned.
3. As affirmed by Hooker, Anglicanism has so far been allowed to vary its practices according to local perspectives.
4. The Episcopal Church (TEC), with others, has ordained priests and consecrated bishops from the female sex & lgbt community, seeing no doctrinal objection (see 1 above).
5. The Anglican Church in Nigeria, with others (GAFCON), refuses to admit lgbt people to the priesthood, citing Leviticus, a specific interpretation of St Paul and the inerrancy of the Bible.
6. Under the 1888 Quadrilateral, both (4) and (5) would have been regarded as acceptable variations, according to local perspectives.
7. BUT the GAFCON churches refuse to accept this status quo (Hooker and Quadrilateral) and demand that Anglicanism be re-defined to accord with their understanding of it.
8. This re-definition has been codified in the Anglican Covenant.
9. Anyone not prepared to sign up to GAFCON Anglicanism is to be excluded from the Communion.
10. The Church of England can either refuse to sign the Covenant on the grounds that it is against our basic understanding of Christianity (1) OR collectively hold its nose, bury its head in the sand and sign.
11. If the Church of England refuses to sign the Covenant, it will be excluded from the Communion under the terms of the Covenant.
12. If it signs the Covenant, it will be signing up – and committing its members – to a doctrine which most members of the Church of England regard as profoundly un-Christian.
As to the effect in parish churches up and down the land (we too are a long way from Canterbury and the General Synod) I, like you, do not discount the possibility that if we sign the Covenant the churches will continue to run services and undertake pastoral work as if nothing fundamental has changed. But it will have changed – if you put a brain transplant into the Body of Christ, sooner or later the effect will be felt in the fingers and toes.