Introduction:

If you do not already know him, may I introduce you to

Anglican Covenant

@AngCovenant

Out to take over the world, one province at a time. Sign up!

Things have come to such a pass that it seemed necessary to invite him to offer a guest post. Prepare to shiver your timbers!

Silence!

Greetings from the many corners and folds of the world where I am being debated and weighed. Greetings from the few places where I have been enthusiastically embraced as a way forward out of the mire. Greetings from the recycling bins of councils that have passed me along (but only in principle, with some great reservation or other, noting as they have done so that I do not ultimately change those churches’ sense of autonomy – a concept beyond my orbit).

Does my tone make me seem like someone who feels guilty over all the stomach acid people have expended on his behalf? It might, but I don’t. I’m not guilty any more than the sky is green or the grass is blue.

For I am the Anglican Covenant. I am an inanimate piece of paper with words written upon it. My creators did not intend for me to feel anything, so I don’t. In fact, I’m a perfectly rational substitute for the bonds of mutual affection some of you lot have come to treasure so.

Even so, one day you will all bow down to me. I am sure of this, even as I totter on the edge of non-adoption, because I was made to be sure of it.

Some say I am a futile project borne of yesterday’s clerics, and that said clerics were desperate to lock down some sort of position, some kind of certitude, while their ship tottered and sank. Some say I am the impulses of a West-fearing Southern Cone wary of the importation of sexualized culture. Some say I was simply present at the creation but it took a crisis, a rift, to see my necessity and to breathe my articulation into life.

I like this last bit because it makes me feel especially important. I like feeling important. I will not be thought of as irrelevant, and neither will I tolerate your thinking that I am. For as I mentioned, I will be reverenced someday soon.

Some say, too, that I’m about power, and that bores me. Everybody always talks about power, and some of your clerics (the less canny among them, I’m afraid) even talk about giving it away to the people, and in turn those people giving their power to the marginalized and disenfranchised. Not me; I’m going to accrete all I can and never expend it – only threaten and pose, strut and cajole. I love being me, for as I have said, that’s how I was made.

Never mind all that rubbish from Jesus about loving everyone equally and treating your brother as you would want to be treated. Never mind about your revelation, or of how God’s Holy Spirit works through localized contexts and in particular persons acting and speaking in particular circumstances.

That’s enough theology. Theology makes me tired. I like games and sports – nothing too deep, mind. Otherwise I have to go to the counselor, who says I have accute narcissistic personality disorder. I don’t know what that means and haven’t the slightest interest in looking it up.

Look, the point is, freedom – your freedom, I mean – is illusory. Eventually we give it all over to someone else. Don’t believe me? Pop round to the old-folks’ home; who do you think’s running the show down there?

So here’s the deal. Give me your power, your freedom, your sense of what makes for justice and right and wrong, and I promise to hold it as one who … well, “cares” is too strong a word. Let’s just say tries to appear to care. That’s it.

Well, I suppose that about covers it for now. See you soon.

◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊

Notes

Since @AngCovenant does not deign to show his face, it seemed best to ask the dark Lord, Darth Vader himself, to do the honours. Wikimedia offers us this version under a creative commons licence.