Anglican Covenant: Teapot on the Hob?

Since writing a piece for the Church Times last year wondering whether the Anglican Covenant was a Chocolate Teapot, dioceses have been voting on it. As things stand 17 have voted against and 10 in favour; voting across the board has so far been more than half against. So what?

Well, the Covenant may be, as the Archbishops say it is, a Very Wonderful Thing. On the  level of the Trades Descriptions Act, however, if more than half the people don’t buy it, there is no way it can honestly be seen as summing up the basis of their identity. At the very least it needs a trip back to the holy drawing board to turn it into something most people actually own. The matter speaks for itself, as the lawyers say.

When I wrote my CT piece I thought I would get a flush of answers explaining its virtues to me. No such luck.

What I got instead was concerns from all over the communion founded on fears it will turn the Anglican Communion into the kind of denomination where you opt in by signing up rather than turning up. Some will face legal complications — one Canadian legal officer estimated it would add $10K to law suits over land if the dioceses had to establish their Anglican credentials in addition to what they have to do now.

Meanwhile it's also clear as day that nothing in this document would make a diocese minded to make either a Gay Bishop or an African Incursion think twice, let alone desist. If the covenant goes through nice guys will use it to include people in; nasty to exclude those of whose behaviour they disapprove. The law of unintended consequences applies.

Some have expressed concern about the rather Tony Soprano phrase “relational consequences.” Yes, but everything we do impacts others, and thus has relational consequences. If the covenant goes through these will be more formal and bureaucratic at an earlier stage, that’s all. The Anglican Communion thrives relationally, but struggles bureaucratically. If you think a bit more formality at an earlier stage will build relationships, by all means vote for it. By and large my experience in all fields of life indicates that when you call in the lawyers it stilts and blocks relationships rather than builds them.

Similarly in soothing mode, I’m not sure the Covenant will be the abomination of desolation. The New Zealanders, for example, can’t sign it as one of their three constituencies has rejected it. They have a bad history of impositions from London and didn’t buy it. Does that mean they are now slow lane Anglicans? I’ve asked around, and the answer is, apparently not. This is comforting, but raises the Kenneth Williams question about the whole exercise. (“what’s the bloody point?”)

I shall listen carefully to the debate in our diocese. I can only vote for the covenant if those who support it can produce something very much better than tendentious waffle spiced by emotional blackmail to explain it.

The row that produced this document has, mercifully, moved on fundamentally from the night of the long knives to the night of the long trousers. I don’t want to go back to where we were on the gay issue, and I don’t want to have a two-speed Church, and I don’t want to add to the burdens on colleagues abroad, and I don’t want to collude with childish attempts to punish the Americans for being children of the Enlightenment, if such they are. Neither do I think a healthy family should roll over in a supine way and pretend to believe in something it doesn’t just because Daddy will be upset if it doesn’t.

The whole thing is foolish, and founded on a damaging control fantasy. Best give it a decent Christian burial and move on.