Regarding recent efforts at offering an apologetic for the anomaly of an "Anglican Covenant," it bears repeating that the assumption that our "Anglican roots" involve "re-affirming together the essential doctrines of Christianity" is thoroughly mistaken. If our official history is correct, there are no such things as Anglican roots. Yes, there are roots in the Church of England. But, again, if history is correct in the telling, the roots of the Churches that rose from the Church of England's colonial expansion had nothing to do with a desire to create a global allegiance of independent Churches. At this juncture, it seems to me of critical importance that we reflect upon the facts, not the myth.
Clearly, the embrace of the idea of covenant among so-called 'conservatives' is driven by hope for punitive powers that they can exercise against the Episcopal Church in the U.S., the Anglican Church of Canada, and eventually even the Church of England. There's little mystery about this anymore for anyone who is paying attention. I think it serves us also, though, to examine why it is that some so-called 'liberals' are embracing the notion of a Covenant. At the risk of being overly-simplistic, I suggest that much of the motivation for the their zeal is rooted in the myth of a unity that has never really existed amongst the Churches whose roots are 'Anglican,' i.e., Churches emerging from the Church of England. Evidence that this idealized unity is indeed myth is found in the fact that there is no such thing as a singular and distinct Anglican theology, or a singular Anglican ethos, common to all the independent and autocephalous Churches of the Anglican Communion.
For instance, just as there is wide diversity among dioceses of the American Church, there is diversity among the Churches of the Communion. Some of the Churches are far more 'Romish' in their respective theologies of the sacraments than are other 'Anglican' Churches. There is no such thing, not yet anyway, as a global Anglican Church. But rather than lamenting the fact, I have to wonder why it is we're not reclaiming and celebrating the liberty from which this arrangement springs, and which it serves. A covenant beyond the bonds of fellowship, i.e. beyond bonds which are purely voluntary, only destroys the privileges and responsibilities of our mutual freedom. And this point is wonderfully demonstrated by a review of the origins of the growing demand that the Churches of the Anglican Communion surrender their autonomy and become in effect a single covenanting denomination.
It appears to me that the liberalism of an older generation is helping to drive this obsession with a proposed covenant. Once upon a time, in the America and Europe of the 1960's, reality wasn't real, success wasn't achieved, conversion not genuine, unless and until there existed a document that said so. Only when the document was signed and celebrated would everybody then be free to return home, feel good about themselves, and leave the real work to be carried out by those few who knew better than to put their faith in a piece of paper. Perhaps those of older generations still hold the view that a document matters, that a signed covenant will make some sort of meaningful statement. God bless them. But when I look around at the world of my teenage daughters, the people freshly graduated from college, those trudging all week at work or at looking for work, I notice that the signing of a document makes for a seven-second sound byte on a cable news show, perhaps repeated for a single 24-hour news cycle. Then the document and its intended significance fade quickly into the irrelevance from which they emerged.
Thus, the proposed covenant in my view, proves to be a project of the Church's narcissism. Some may wish to believe that 'the whole world is watching,' but it isn't. Coupled with the increasing number of departures of those disgruntled provocateurs whose ranting instigated the thing, the proposed covenant is now, in my humble opinion, fantastically useless. I find it fascinating that few if any are noting that the very Primates whose rancor clearly disturbed the palaces of Lambeth and Buckingham as far back as 1998 are now spinning further and further away from anything that has every been identified as Anglican. They are now claiming to 'recognize' a 'new Anglican entity' in North America, presuming to have the authority to validate the thing as Anglican. They are constantly demonstrating their utter lack of interest in participating honestly and collegially with the Primates of the Churches of the Anglican Communion, including the Archbishop of Canterbury (and the Queen of England), much less with the Lay leadership of any of these Churches.
Simultaneously, they continue to succeed in distracting the Episcopal Church and other Churches of the Communion from the genuine mission of the Church. They have succeeded in convincing us that our collective mission is to formalize some codified documentary unity, causing us to dismiss completely the mystical reality that we are one in Christ already. And classic liberalism has fallen right into step, responding with utopian disregard for these folks as they are, and instead trying to impose upon them by force of their response a manner and behavior that they think they ought to have. It is a form of colonialism still at work. The most honest loving thing to do is to honor the rights of the malcontents to choose who and how to be. They need not continue to be Anglican in order to serve Christ as they seem called to do.
A covenant document is not to going to change this. The dissidents no longer care about a covenant, and they are right. No covenant will be embraced by those whose poor behavior initiated the process by which it has emerged. The bad behavior should have been noted as such at the time, then our attention returned to the more noble focus of the larger fellowship. Instead, like a poorly prepared teacher new to the classroom, the Archbishop of Canterbury has given his attention to the most ill behaved little boys in the classroom, while the well-mannered and attentive members of the group have been ignored, and dismissively so. Very poor pedagogy indeed. The influence of Buckingham Palace on that of Lambeth cannot be ignored here. In any case, the complete abandonment of his personal, heretofore defining, principles by Dr. Williams has been breathtaking. As a result, we are all of us now paying the price for the Archbishop's (and the Queen's?) rewarding of bad behavior with greater attention. The same ill-mannered discontent whom a proposed covenant was meant to appease are now themselves abandoning the Communion with zeal. It can be said for them, however, that they at least retain the integrity of their own misguided and warped principles. Meanwhile the Archbishop of Canterbury seems determined to drive through the Covenant, which means that we continue wasting time with the distraction of discerning the wording of a document that is increasingly meaningless, and while the credibility of the Anglican Communion as a principled Christian fellowship is being reduced to that of a tired old English joke.
The fact is, our 'Anglican roots' have never been about the creation of a miniature version of the Roman Church. If anything, our roots are found exactly in an English rejection of the interference of a foreign prelate. To claim that an instrument that creates precisely such interference is somehow grounded in our Anglican roots is absurd. It would be laughable if not so seriously consequential. To the contrary, our Churches have labored, sometimes fought, for their own respective independence from the Church of England. This is not an evaluation; it's an observation of fact.
There is no such thing as some time-honored Anglican Communion. It's time we ceased pretending there ever was one. Over time, due perhaps to a mutual recognition of our relative similarity in manner of worship, the late 1800's found the first gathering known as the Lambeth Conference. Then, with its initiation in 1968, the Anglican Consultative Council became what is clearly the modern phenomenon that comes closest to a formalized constitutionalized association of Churches of the Anglican tradition. There is nothing else in history that resembles that Anglican Communion of favored myth that many people seem now to be wringing their hands to preserve.
Certainly,the independent Churches whose roots are in found in the Church of England have elected to work together cooperatively around specific matters and efforts; they continue to do so. The notion that these same Churches would now wish to seek to create a covenant in order better to do what they already are doing is plainly silly and is plainly false. If the motivation behind a covenant is to re-create the very problems created by Roman polity that led to England's Reformation, then so be it. But let us be honest with ourselves about it. Perhaps we feel inadequate. Perhaps size really does matter. But none of this is about creating a new deeper level of fellowship, for fellowship and cooperation amongst the Churches already exists. In those few instances where it does not, no 'Anglican Covenant' will correct this.
The impetus for this proposed covenant emerged not from a common desire for collective effectiveness in proclaiming the gospel. This proposed covenant has risen solely from the ranting voices of those very same Primates who are now seceding from the Communion with increasing determination. Meanwhile, we are busying ourselves with confusing the gospel call to life in Christ with a call to the world to 'Look at us; we're creating a document that declares us officially united.' It could not possibly be less relevant. To suggest that efforts to establish this proposed covenant and earlier efforts of true collegiality around ministry are somehow equal does a gross disservice to those earlier efforts. They are completely opposite in origin; they are fruit from two entirely different trees.
I can sympathize with people who clearly have a favorable disposition to the establishment of an 'Anglican Covenant.' They believe, and want to believe, that it would make a positive difference. I would ask them, though, with all due respect: 'What is the relevance of this proposed covenant, and of the consuming process to drive it through, with the wider world around us and with this Church's mission and ministry thereto?'
The rest of the world doesn't care whether or not Anglicans know how to play nice with other people who like to identify themselves as fellow Anglicans. We shouldn't either. The world around us cares instead about whether or not we care about the world around us. Outside the insular world of the Anglican Communion,it matters not at all how one is or is not truly an Anglican. The wider world is concerned with having enough food to eat, with having a place to stay, with being safe from prejudice, ignorance, and bigotry, with meeting God in the stranger, and with finding God in oneself. The wider world doesn't care now about the presence or the absence of a covenant, and the world won't care in the future. Neither should we.
The proposed covenant does pay lip service to the rightful concerns of the world around us, but is preoccupied with encouraging, then with enforcing, uniformity. With all due respect, I say to hell with it. It's time we of TEC refuse to be distracted with this covenant nonsense for even one more day. The Church of England seems constitutionally incapable of leading on this matter; but the Episcopal Church can and should set the pace and lead the way back to mission. The Episcopal Church in the U.S., along with Anglican Church of Canada, is capable of leading the Communion back to its roots, it's 'Anglican roots' if you must; to a collegial fellowship of independent Churches, working and praying interdependently to bring Christ to the wider world around us, and to find Christ there waiting for us there in the world.
God's Peace.
Jim Stockton +
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