Anglican Covenant

Pre-empting the Covenant

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Kenneth Kearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, issued a statement on 7th June 2010 stating that he had already written to the Church of the USA telling them they were no longer members of a representative committee, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order.

We wrote to him to ask:

Could you please explain

1) the formal basis on which action is being taken at this stage. We are aware of the consecration of Mary Glasspool and the Archbishop of Canterbury's Pentecost Letter, but the Anglican Communion is not run by his personal fiat and there must have been some process by which his proposals were approved for further action.

2) the ecclesiological justification for taking action at this stage. We quite understand that the Anglican Covenant may, if established, achieve the Archbishop's aim of splitting the Communion into 'first track' and 'second track' provinces, but until that stage is reached - and we hope it never will be - it is not clear on what basis the action is being taken now.

3) the choice of provinces affected. Why, for example, the USA but not Nigeria?

4) your statement 'However, the recent Episcopal election in Los Angeles has created a situation where the Archbishop has been forced to act before the Covenant has been considered by most provinces.' Who forced him? Did he have no way to resist the force?

We still await his reply.

This story illustrates one of the many fault lines in the new system. Provinces which refuse to sign the Covenant will not consider themselves any less Anglican than the ones which do, and there is no reason why they should. In this way the Covenant, by deliberately creating a means for the signatories to ignore the views of the others, is preparing the ground for further disputes in the future.

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