Ross TenEyck (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ross_teneyck) wrote,@ 2009-05-13 13:49:00 |
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Another Anglican update: the Anglican Consultative Council meeting
The Anglican Consultative Council met in Jamaica last week, and among other things considered the most recent draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant.
The ACC is a body composed of bishops, priests, and lay members from the various provinces of the Anglican Communion, and is thus the only one of the four Instruments of Communion that has members who are not bishops. Its designated role is to "facilitate the co-operative work of the member churches of the Anglican Communion."
You may recall that this most recent draft, dubbed the Ridley Cambridge draft, is the product of the Covenant Design Group (CDG) and incorporates extensive feedback from the provinces and from last summer's Lambeth conference. The CDG suggested that the draft covenant be submitted to the ACC meeting for a straight up-or-down vote and submission to the provinces for them to sign on or not.
Expecting a group of Anglicans to give a straight up-or-down vote on any text was a vain hope, of course, and so when the ACC took up the matter of the covenant draft last Friday there were immediately resolutions for tinkering with it. What happened next is not entirely clear -- according to most of the observers, the meeting quickly descended into procedural confusion, with multiple resolutions being debated at the same time and some delegates not entirely sure what was being voted on at any given moment. When the dust settled, the meeting discovered that it had done the following:
Section 4 of the Ridley Cambridge draft is the disciplinary section, although the draft delicately does not refer to it that way (it calls it, "Our Covenanted Life Together"); but it's the one that talks about how provinces that tick off the rest of the Communion can be admonished.
Note that this section was sent for revision not to the CDG, but to some as-yet-unformed "small working group."
Another thing worth noting is that if and when a complete covenant text is approved by the Standing Committee, it will be sent "only to the member Churches of the Anglican Consultative Council" (emphasis added) for adoption. This is significant because the covenant draft text itself was deliberately vague on what kind of entity could sign on to it -- whether, for instance, an individual diocese could sign on if its parent province did not; or whether wanna-be Anglican entities like the splinter Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) could sign on. The ACC says: no. Only provinces may adopt the covenant, and only those provinces that are already official members of the Anglican Communion will be asked to do so. On the whole this is a blow to the conservatives, some of whom had visions of the Episcopal Church falling out of the communion (either by not signing the covenant in the first place, or by signing it and then being kicked out by the disciplinary process) whilst they, the conservatives, stayed in by virtue of having signed the covenant independently of the Episcopal Church.
But for the most part, the conservatives are reading this as the death of the covenant idea -- they have no confidence that anything resembling what they wanted will come out of this "small working group" and the Standing Committee. Opinion on whether this is a good thing is divided; some conservatives, the ones who never liked the covenant plan in the first place, are seeing this as good riddance to bad rubbish and hoping that groups like the Global South-led GAFCON will from now on just ignore the structures of the Anglican Communion, tainted as they are by heresy and liberalism. Others, the ones who saw the covenant as the sole hope of keeping the Anglican Communion together in anything like its current form, are naturally disappointed and a little bitter about it (see, for example, here.) Both groups are united in condemning the parliamentary chaos (some say deliberately manipulative obfuscation) under which these resolution were passed.
So whence now? The Archbishop of Canterbury is still committed to some kind of covenant, so it seems likely that there will indeed be a small working group and that it will report some kind of revision of section 4 to the Standing Committee, and that revised draft will indeed be sent around to the provinces. But it means more delay and more debate, and parts of the Communion -- for instance, the formerly-mentioned GAFCON -- are getting increasingly impatient with delay and debate. Many GAFCON bishops did not attend Lambeth out of principle; and the Primate of Uganda skipped the ACC meeting this time around because of a "schedule conflict" -- and I'm sure he was sincere, but it means that he considered a meeting of one of the Instruments of Unity of the Anglican Communion to be less important than the other things on his calendar.
I think this is likely to be the shape of the (as I see it, now-inevitable barring divine intervention) schism in the Anglican Communion -- no formal declaration of poxes on our houses, no official anathemas; just a large number (let's be honest: the majority of the members of the Communion) simply excusing themselves out of the Communion as it exists now.
During the Civil War, the Episcopal bishops of the southern states did not show up at General Convention. The convention simply noted them as absent, and after the war was over the southern bishops came back and that was that. (Well, there may have been pointed words in the hallways; but officially, at least, that was that.) In this case, though, I don't see the conservatives coming back to their empty seats any time soon.
The Anglican Consultative Council met in Jamaica last week, and among other things considered the most recent draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant.
The ACC is a body composed of bishops, priests, and lay members from the various provinces of the Anglican Communion, and is thus the only one of the four Instruments of Communion that has members who are not bishops. Its designated role is to "facilitate the co-operative work of the member churches of the Anglican Communion."
You may recall that this most recent draft, dubbed the Ridley Cambridge draft, is the product of the Covenant Design Group (CDG) and incorporates extensive feedback from the provinces and from last summer's Lambeth conference. The CDG suggested that the draft covenant be submitted to the ACC meeting for a straight up-or-down vote and submission to the provinces for them to sign on or not.
Expecting a group of Anglicans to give a straight up-or-down vote on any text was a vain hope, of course, and so when the ACC took up the matter of the covenant draft last Friday there were immediately resolutions for tinkering with it. What happened next is not entirely clear -- according to most of the observers, the meeting quickly descended into procedural confusion, with multiple resolutions being debated at the same time and some delegates not entirely sure what was being voted on at any given moment. When the dust settled, the meeting discovered that it had done the following:
- Thanked the CDG for their "faithfulness and responsiveness"
- Asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to "appoint a small working group to consider and consult with the Provinces on Section 4 and its possible revision" and report back to the next meeting of the Standing Committee, which will vote on the revision
- Asked the Secretary General, after this has been done, to "send the revised Ridley Cambridge Text, at that time, only to the member Churches of the Anglican Consultative Council for consideration and decision on acceptance or adoption by them"
Section 4 of the Ridley Cambridge draft is the disciplinary section, although the draft delicately does not refer to it that way (it calls it, "Our Covenanted Life Together"); but it's the one that talks about how provinces that tick off the rest of the Communion can be admonished.
Note that this section was sent for revision not to the CDG, but to some as-yet-unformed "small working group."
Another thing worth noting is that if and when a complete covenant text is approved by the Standing Committee, it will be sent "only to the member Churches of the Anglican Consultative Council" (emphasis added) for adoption. This is significant because the covenant draft text itself was deliberately vague on what kind of entity could sign on to it -- whether, for instance, an individual diocese could sign on if its parent province did not; or whether wanna-be Anglican entities like the splinter Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) could sign on. The ACC says: no. Only provinces may adopt the covenant, and only those provinces that are already official members of the Anglican Communion will be asked to do so. On the whole this is a blow to the conservatives, some of whom had visions of the Episcopal Church falling out of the communion (either by not signing the covenant in the first place, or by signing it and then being kicked out by the disciplinary process) whilst they, the conservatives, stayed in by virtue of having signed the covenant independently of the Episcopal Church.
But for the most part, the conservatives are reading this as the death of the covenant idea -- they have no confidence that anything resembling what they wanted will come out of this "small working group" and the Standing Committee. Opinion on whether this is a good thing is divided; some conservatives, the ones who never liked the covenant plan in the first place, are seeing this as good riddance to bad rubbish and hoping that groups like the Global South-led GAFCON will from now on just ignore the structures of the Anglican Communion, tainted as they are by heresy and liberalism. Others, the ones who saw the covenant as the sole hope of keeping the Anglican Communion together in anything like its current form, are naturally disappointed and a little bitter about it (see, for example, here.) Both groups are united in condemning the parliamentary chaos (some say deliberately manipulative obfuscation) under which these resolution were passed.
So whence now? The Archbishop of Canterbury is still committed to some kind of covenant, so it seems likely that there will indeed be a small working group and that it will report some kind of revision of section 4 to the Standing Committee, and that revised draft will indeed be sent around to the provinces. But it means more delay and more debate, and parts of the Communion -- for instance, the formerly-mentioned GAFCON -- are getting increasingly impatient with delay and debate. Many GAFCON bishops did not attend Lambeth out of principle; and the Primate of Uganda skipped the ACC meeting this time around because of a "schedule conflict" -- and I'm sure he was sincere, but it means that he considered a meeting of one of the Instruments of Unity of the Anglican Communion to be less important than the other things on his calendar.
I think this is likely to be the shape of the (as I see it, now-inevitable barring divine intervention) schism in the Anglican Communion -- no formal declaration of poxes on our houses, no official anathemas; just a large number (let's be honest: the majority of the members of the Communion) simply excusing themselves out of the Communion as it exists now.
During the Civil War, the Episcopal bishops of the southern states did not show up at General Convention. The convention simply noted them as absent, and after the war was over the southern bishops came back and that was that. (Well, there may have been pointed words in the hallways; but officially, at least, that was that.) In this case, though, I don't see the conservatives coming back to their empty seats any time soon.
