There is not much written in Anglican ecclesiology that risks being outdated within a year. Anything written on proposals for an Anglican Covenant, however, does run the risk of such outdating simply because of the succession of developments in this important response to Anglican Communion tensions.
This book of essays edited by Mark Chapman emerged largely from a conference organized under the auspices of Affirming Catholicism in Westminster early in 2007. The book deals with the text of the draft covenant appended to The Windsor Report and a revised draft released by the Covenant Design Group in 2007. Since then, there have been two further drafts released. There has also been a Lambeth Conference attended by more than two-thirds of the bishops of the Communion that met without formally considering resolutions, but firmed in support for the Covenant proposal while providing important suggestions as to its nature. There has been a Global Anglican Futures Conference attended by bishops, clergy and laity, with a large number of the bishops attending not going on to Lambeth.
Most recently, the Anglican Consultative Council met in the Bahamas and gave broad support to the ‘Ridley Cambridge Draft’ for an Anglican Covenant, subject to revision of Section Four (‘Our Covenanted Life Together’), with its provisions for dispute resolution and maintenance of covenant relationships.
So much has happened since the chapters of this book were so recently written; the Covenant texts under consideration at the time of writing are now out of date and Communion processes have moved on. However, this volume of essays has not been outdated. This is because it focuses mostly on the broad principles and issues of a covenant for the Anglican Communion rather than the details of a particular draft.
The contributors represent a range of theological traditions within and beyond Anglicanism. Most express an understanding of the need to enhance the ways that the churches of the Anglican Communion recognize all they have in common and to maintain unity while discerning together the limits of diversity and responding to those who fracture unity by breaching agreed limits. Overall, there is cautious support for a covenant as an instrument to serve these purposes, but at the same time very real concern about its nature and workability.
Andrew Goddard summarizes a recurring reservation about the nature of any covenant proposal, when he urges that ‘it should not replace the bonds of affection with the chains of law’ (p. 73). The one African writer, Victor Atta Baffoe, draws on what he terms Akan epistemology (‘I exist because I belong to a family’), as he makes a similar point:
…the idea of covenant must not be approached from the legal, but rather from the missiological and pastoral point of view. The Communion as a theological community must ensure that the key determinant in the drawing up of a Covenant is the emphasis on the responsibility of all for all, rather than simply stressing ‘my right’ and ‘your right’. (p. 151)
Mark Chapman raises concerns about the workability of a covenant. He suggests that none of the current ‘Instruments of Unity’ may command sufficient authority across the churches to make a covenant workable and that what might be required is ‘some form of Anglican Representative Council which would command respect and to which member churches would be content to delegate their sovereignty’ (p. 39). Even then, he argues, the differences within the Anglican Communion over human sexuality are so deeply held that ‘unless there can be a diversity of opinion about homosexuality there can be no possibility of a workable covenant’ (p. 32).
Among the ecumenical contributors, Paul McPartlan suggests that as Anglicans move towards an internal covenant in seeking to adequately accommodate questions of authority, conciliarity and primacy, there is much to be gained by reflecting on the Roman Catholic–Orthodox dialogue where similar themes are to the fore. Considering questions around the authority that Anglicanism’s ‘Instruments of Communion’ have in supporting a covenant, McPartlan draws on the Roman Catholic–Orthodox dialogue to propose the phrase ‘authority-in-communion’ to place alongside the Windsor emphasis on ‘autonomy-in-communion’.
Authority-in-communion is the authority that an instrument has in communion, precisely because of the internal dynamics of the life of the communion; if anything it is weightier than mere ‘jurisdiction over’. Appreciation of that fact needs to be nurtured (p. 171).
Questions and themes such as these, as well as issues of workability, will continue to be debated as proposals for an Anglican Covenant move, as it appears they now will, beyond the draft stage to consideration and possible adoption in provinces.
Considered as a resource to the Anglican Communion through these processes, perhaps the greatest shortcoming of this book is that the full diversity of the Communion is not well reflected in its contents.
Reading the book as an Australian Anglican and living in an Anglican neighbourhood where there are great polarities of opinion about Communion issues and some very strong voices aligned with the Global South, prompts the observation that, despite the fact that there is one African contributor, this is mostly an Anglo-American work. The Global South is not well represented, nor are the strongest voices either in support of, or opposed to, an Anglican covenant.
This is at least, in part, understandable given the conference origins of most of the chapters. It will not prevent The Anglican Covenant: Unity and Diversity in the Anglican Communion making its contribution as a useful resource to important Anglican discussions and debate over the coming years.
