Why review these two books together? Because, while being quite different books in subject matter and style, they are both addressing both fundamental and also current issues of Anglican ecclesiology. How should Anglicans think about the governance of the Church? What sources have we to, and should we, draw on? And how does this conversation bear on the current debate about an Anglican Covenant? Precisely because these books pay careful attention to demanding source material and use clear methods, they are very valuable contributions to this debate; as opposed to some of the flightier contributions, whose account of Anglicanism is little more than self-projection.

Avis' book is a scholarly and engaged study of the ‘conciliar’ tradition in the Church (the movement that argued that the Church should, in some sense, be governed by General Councils as opposed to more monarchical systems, and which reached its apogee in the fifteenth century). He seeks to demonstrate largely unexplored continuities between this late mediaeval Conciliar Movement and the Continental and English Reformers. He does this in part by exploring the deeper theological as well as historical foundations of conciliarism. In particular, he demonstrates connections between conciliarism and Anglicanism (for example, by discussion of ‘natural law’ as a way of moderating excessive claims to ecclesiastical authority); and while the book as a whole is a plea for a global re-thinking of the governance of the Church as part of a renewed ecumenical initiative (and in that sense is aimed mostly at Rome), key sections reflect back on how the Anglican Communion is organised and how it might develop, including via an Anglican Covenant. The book would have benefited, I think, from a final edit, which would perhaps have reduced a slight tendency to including some self-contained pieces of writing that do not always seem to connect with other surrounding passages.

Avis' book includes both solid scholarship and passionate pleading by a senior Anglican ecumenist. It finishes with a moving plea for ‘liberating’, ‘enabling’ and ‘therapeutic’ practices of church authority and for a renewed vision of the interconnectedness of ‘unity and catholicity’: ‘we should not credit any ecclesial body with participating in catholicity unless it is not only open in relationship and dialogue to other churches, but is manifestly striving to heal the wounds of division in the body of Christ’ (p 204). We shall return to this point.

Doe's book, written at speed but by someone who has been at the heart of the work in the Communion about Anglican canon law and specifically the Covenant, is an attempt to assess the concept and possible practice of covenant by using the classic Anglican method of running it through the threefold gauntlet of Scripture, reason and tradition. Inevitably, because each chapter includes this mode of analysis, there is some surface coverage of complex topics – the account of the nature of covenant in Biblical theology (pp 41–44) is adequate but not deep. Nonetheless, even when it is summarising the book is not misleading: so, for example, when reviewing the biblical material, Doe is very careful to note that a covenant between believers cannot simply be equated with a divine–human covenant.

Doe examines the various drafts of the Covenant and the responses to them in a very fair-minded way before reaching his conclusions. The book has a slightly ‘scissors and paste’ feel to it: some paragraphs read like a collection of cuttings from an old-fashioned index-card system! It is an essentially practical book, written in dialogue with current sources, and so the index does not contain many references to secondary works (and the bibliography has some surprising gaps, not least some of Avis' seminal work). But the book is very clearly structured, examining covenant under nine headings: foundational ideas (nature, employment, purposes); structure and substance (form, subject, content); and implementation (process, adoption, effects). Above all, I think, it calmly reminds Anglicans that the idea of covenant is commonplace in both classic and contemporary Anglicanism (for example, in the Ecumenical Movement). It is thus a serious, if perhaps not entirely dispassionate, commendation of the idea of covenant as being robustly Anglican. It concludes:

So why does the idea of an Anglican Covenant provoke such strong reactions and what do Avis and Doe have to say to the fearful?

The loudest voices, at least in the West, are those fearful of increased authority for the centre. But both authors remind us that covenanted communities can exercise authority in different ways (Avis – ‘conciliarity may be authentic, even when its conclusions cannot be enforced’ (p 172)), and so some of the fears of an authoritarian centre might be exaggerations. The withdrawal from proposals to locate strong juridical authority with the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Primates' Meetings is a good example of Anglican ecclesiological values (‘dispersed authority’ and the role of the laity in church governance) moderating Anglican impatience. Here we catch echoes of Avis' arguments for a ‘therapeutic’ form and practice of ecclesial authority. Doe is clearly wary of some of the more authoritarian versions of the Covenant, though he is realistic enough to know that they stand no chance of being implemented.

Conversely, there is anxiety that there will be no change, and that that in effect means increased fragmentation and conflict. Both Avis and Doe argue that Anglicans need clearer and, in a moderate way, legal structures if the Communion is to retain reality as a Christian community and institution. Doe, in particular, would stress that in real human organisations we cannot separate affective and structured relationships. ‘Bonds of affection’ and ‘autonomy’ always made strange bedfellows. Doe often reminds us that promises bring obligations, and that this underpins much of the nature of covenantal relationships. He brings to this aspect of the discussion his expertise as a canon lawyer and so reminds us that ‘Covenants are not contracts, but they have a contractual dimension, sharing fundamental similarities with contracts; they are juridical vehicles for spiritual relationships’ (p 30). It is this careful blend of the spiritual with the practical and juridical that marks Doe's book especially.

Avis argues that ‘it has long been clear that Anglicanism aspires to be an expression of conciliar catholicism’ (p 173). I agree: only an un-Anglican ultra-Protestant ecclesiology would be indifferent to the visible international unity of the Church, or of the Anglican Communion as part of the Church and as a step towards the reunited Church. Anglicanism is now, and indeed it was during the Reformation, a vision of a whole way of being church. It is more than a historical accident. Avis argues that Doe's proposals for mechanisms of unity – canon law and now covenant – are essential tools for the effective conciliarity of Anglicanism. And he argues that, if Anglicanism is serious about its identity, then it has to re-engage with the structural and therefore juridical questions: ‘since Anglicanism calls itself a “communion”, the persuasive and binding aspects cannot ultimately be held apart. Closer integration of the moral and juridical orders is called for in the interests of cohesion and the resolution of conflict’ (p 172). This is the key argument in favour of the Covenant and it merits serious attention.

Together these books provide a theologically sophisticated, broadly based, open and yet passionate argument for a more clearly defined Anglican Communion. Whatever the outcome of the Covenant debates, these books offer us rich, deep, ecumenically alert, properly self-conscious Anglicanism. The opposite seems a little emaciated in comparison.