Merciful Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that we, being illumined by the teaching of thine apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of thy truth, that we may at length attain to the fullness of life everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

We give thee thanks, O Lord of glory, for the example of the first martyr Stephen, who looked up to heaven and prayed for his persecutors to thy Son Jesus Christ, who standeth at thy right hand: where he liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting.

Hark, how all the welkin rings,
“Glory to the King of kings;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”

Joyful, all ye nations, rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
Universal nature say,
“Christ the Lord is born to-day!”

Christ, by highest Heaven ador’d,
Christ, the everlasting Lord:
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a Virgin’s womb!

Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see,
Hail the incarnate deity!
Pleased as man with men to appear,
Jesus! Our Immanuel here!
Hail, the heavenly Prince of Peace!
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings.

Mild He lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth;
Born to give them second birth.

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.

Now display thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp Thy image in its place.
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.

Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner Man:
O! to all thyself impart,
Form’d in each believing heart.

You can find the 1940 Episcopal Hymnal version here (the 5th stanza is missing). The 1982 Episcopal Hymnal only includes the first three verses (with modified language)–KSH

Yet the preoccupation with single key events, the high politics of 1989, also distorts reality, by passing over the process of maturation which made them possible. This is top-down history, a mix of realpolitik and celebrity told from establishment perspectives. In reality, the revolutions were made not by regime politicians and opposition leaders, but by ordinary people who gathered in their thousands to turn ideas into real events. It was in this “people power”, the mobilisation of hearts and minds, that the Church’s contribution was made. Ignoring it distorts the truth and looks like crude revisionism.
Some church leaders have taken issue with the 1989 anniversaries. Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who was based in the Communist German Democratic Republic as Bishop of Berlin, has criticised the commemorations for focusing only on the final step in his country’s reunification, without mentioning “the 999 steps taken earlier”, in which Christians provided a “biblical testimony of non-participation”.

“Throughout these years, Christians formed a living protest against this inhuman system,” the cardinal told Germany’s Catholic news agency, KNA, this October. “Yet in the many declarations, speeches, interviews and books appearing for the twentieth anniversary, the Church’s role is being evaluated and covered only very superficially. We must hope everything experienced by the mass of often nameless, lonely people will be written about and documented, people who positively influenced society with their suffering and helped bring about the changes through unspectacular resistance along the way.”

Whatever one may think of church controversies after 1989, no serious historian in Eastern Europe would question the critical role of the Catholic Church ”“ and, to a lesser extent, of Orthodox, Lutheran and Calvinist communities ”“ during the final stages of Communist rule, in helping sustain opposition and give it moral certainty.

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Judge eternal, throned in splendor, who gavest Juan de la Cruz strength of purpose and mystical faith that sustained him even through the dark night of the soul: Shed thy light on all who love thee, in unity with Jesus Christ our Savior; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

To a Catholic boy like Tim Dolan, growing up in the heartland when Protestant neighbors still made casual jokes about the “papists” next door, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen rode into town in the 1950s on the new main street of the United States, the television set, like a true-blue American hero.

“He showed the broad American public that the truths of our faith were consonant with the highest values of the society: patriotism, God, family and the struggle against Communism,” said that boy, now known as Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York.

Archbishop Dolan led a memorial Mass on Wednesday evening at St. Patrick’s Cathedral to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of Bishop Sheen. An auxiliary bishop of the New York Archdiocese from 1951 to 1965, the man whom the Rev. Billy Graham called “the greatest communicator of the 20th century” is buried in a crypt under the cathedral altar, which was open for public viewing before the Mass.

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[Kendall] Harmon, who is a spokesman for Charleston, South Carolina, Bishop Edward Salmon Jr., told The Charlotte Observer that the diocese will call its own special convention to decide its next step. “You’re already beginning to see what the dramatic realignment will look like,” he said.

Many of Harmon’s colleagues agreed. David C. Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council, was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as comparing Robinson’s confirmation to domestic abuse. “We have been beaten up in the Episcopal Church for a long time,” he said. “We’re not leaving the Anglican Communion but the Episcopal Church now has.”

Anderson’s group has scheduled a meeting of “Anglican mainstream parishes” (i.e. orthodox leaders) in early October in Plano, Texas, saying it is “committed to remaining part of the Anglican Communion and will find a way for mainstream Anglicans in the Episcopal Church to stay in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

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This decision represents an intransigent embrace of a pattern of life Christians throughout history and the world have rejected as against biblical teaching. It will add further to the Episcopal Church’s incoherent witness and chaotic common life, and it will continue to do damage to the Anglican Communion and her relationship with our ecumenical partners.

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina

Confirm our minds, O Lord, in the mysteries of the true faith, set forth with power by thy servant John of Damascus; that we, with him, confessing Jesus to be true God and true Man, and singing the praises of the risen Lord, may, by the power of the resurrection, attain to eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for evermore.

According to Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of ecumenism for the Roman Church, the target in particular is groups of dissidents who separately founded small churches beginning in the ’60s, which have come together under the banner of “The Traditional Anglican Communion.” They are made up of people who for different reasons left the Anglican Communion: the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, the admission of women to Holy Orders in some churches of the communion; and the inclusion of gay and lesbian people. Outside this little assembly of churches, there will certainly be some individuals who, for reasons of conscience, will accept this new offer by the Vatican.

That these Christians of Anglican heritage should no longer stay on the fringe of Anglicanism, but may join another part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, can only be a good thing. May God bless them and keep them!

In any case, there has always been comings-and-goings between Roman Catholics and Anglicans, as between these two communions and the Orthodox churches. Of course, all three come from the same church, divided — alas! — in the eleventh century. Though certain key ideas of the Reformation influenced the 38 national churches (called “provinces”) of the Anglican Communion, all three communions came from and continue to keep the catholicity inherited from the first centuries.

Strongly conscious of the evil effects of the various schisms, especially on the credibility of the Gospel that we all are responsible to proclaim, the Anglican Communion took the initiative of launching the ecumenical movement at the dawn of the last century. We had thought that in these last decades some real progress was being made. But the resurrection of the language of assimilation in the latest document can only disappoint all who seek the reconciliation of all Christians, whatever their particular denomination. The Vatican can rest assured that we Anglicans will not create “Roman-rite jurisdictions” for unhappy Roman Catholics!

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Most English Jesuit historians have restricted their research to the years of early recusancy, or non-compliance with the religion of state, starting in the late 16th century and continuing to the reign of King James I. Holt chose the comparatively neglected 18th century, about which he wrote with great sympathy and understanding. Specialising in the period leading up to the suppression of the order in 1773, he gave particular attention to what happened to individuals ”“ how they fared, how some returned and why others did not.

He wrote two books. William Strickland and the Suppressed Jesuits (1988) was about the administrator who minded their finances until the province was restored in 1803. The English Jesuits in the Age of Reason (1993) covered the way they worked in later penal times.

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A Yale librarian who cast doubt last year on the origins of the Serenity Prayer, adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and reprinted on countless knickknacks, says new evidence has persuaded him to retain the famed Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as the author in the next edition of The Yale Book of Quotations.

The provenance of the prayer, which begins, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” became a subject of controversy last year with the publication of an article by the librarian, Fred R. Shapiro, who is also the editor of the book of quotations. Mr. Shapiro had found archival materials that led him to express doubt that Niebuhr was the author.

But now another researcher trawling the Internet has discovered evidence that attributes the prayer to Niebuhr. The researcher, Stephen Goranson, works in the circulation department at the Duke University library, has a doctorate from Duke in the history of religion and, as a sideline, searches for the origins of words and sayings and publishes his findings in etymology journals. This month he found a Christian student newsletter written in 1937 that cites Niebuhr as the prayer’s author.

The prayer in the newsletter is slightly different from the contemporary one often printed on mugs and wall plaques. It reads, “Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.”

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Given the high profile of the [Washington] Post, and Bishop [of Washington John] Chane’s standing as a bishop of a prominent (if recently beleaguered) Christian body, one should probably take his remarks seriously. Alas, as a short history his remarks cannot be taken seriously at all, but amount to a tissue of popular myths, used to promote a tired and unfounded historical perspective whose application now has a track record of political intolerance.

Bishop Chane first argues that traditionalists are inconsistent ”” maybe even hypocritical? ”” because Jesus was against divorce and traditionalists are not “demanding that the city council make divorce illegal.” Of course, Jesus did not proclaim all divorce wrong (cf. Matt. 9:9).More important, by begging his own question here ”” just what is the status of divorce, then? ”” Bishop Chane undercuts his case: the state’s accommodation of divorce has indeed encouraged and even created turmoil in social relations. If anything the failures of church and wider culture in this area are actually a good argument for restraint on further social confusion.

Second, Bishop Chane says that traditionalists are inconsistent in their defense of the centrality of heterosexual marriage because, after all, Paul thought marriage inferior to the celibate life. But, of course, the apostle Paul’s teaching does not claim that marriage is an inferior state, but rather that it is often an impractical one in comparison with celibacy. Bishop Chane’s disingenuous assumption that traditionalists ought to apply Paul’s teaching to all of human life was certainly not shared by other writers in the New Testament (or by Jesus), and such an attitude made only partial inroads into the Church’s practical life some centuries later. Most Christians, including Christian priests even in the Middle Ages, understood Paul’s teaching within a larger theological reading of the Scriptures that included a created sexual difference, the blessing of procreation, and the social responsibilities of church and state to nurture families. Within this reading, celibacy is a great gift, and an evangelical vocation for some, and it remains so.

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I think of Martin Rinkart every thanksgiving; his gift of this hymn is simply stunning given the circumstances in which it was written. Read it all–KSH.

Reformer and forefather of much Puritan theology, Martin Luther, in his doctrine of vocation, taught that God gave each individual an occupational “calling.” Man’s vocation was not seen as impersonal and random, but as from a loving and personal God who bestowed each individual with natural talents and desires for a particular occupation. This thought further deepened the Puritan’s sense of purposefulness, fortifying him in difficult times.

Much like modern work is separated into white and blue collar, 17th-century tradition held that sacred occupations (like priest or monk) trumped secular ones (like farming or blacksmithing). The Puritans, however, rejected such a distinction. Holding to “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10), the Puritans sanctified the common, believing that all work, however lowly, if done for the glory of God, was good. Christ Himself “was not ashamed to labor; yea, and to use so simple an occupation,” said Puritan Hugh Latimer. The farmer’s plow became his altar, his tilling an act of service to God every bit as holy and valuable as the priest’s, reminding the unemployed that temporarily taking a step down in pay or status does not equate to failure.
Long before the days of therapists and career coaches, the Puritans learned how to cope with depression. They scorned idleness, believing it was indeed the devil’s workshop, bogging down the body in inertia, and leading to brooding. Luther had promoted the opposite, a life of diligence, saying “God . . . does not want me to sit at home, to loaf, to commit matters to God, and to wait till a fried chicken flies into my mouth.” Long before endorphins were discovered, the Puritans knew that moving and tiring the body in manual labor (even if that labor is the unpaid kind that paints the house and organizes the garage) proved a talisman against a host of mental ills.

Contrary to the misconstrued Victorian concept of ‘Puritanism,’ an idea C.S. Lewis calls “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy,” the original Puritans, serious as they were, embraced not only hard work, but the pursuit of joy.

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Almighty God, by whose grace thy servant Elizabeth of Hungary recognized and honored Jesus in the poor of this world: Grant that we, following her example, may with love and gladness serve those in any need or trouble, in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

During the discussion, panelists recounted how the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Miami would outcast black Episcopalians.

“I remember when we couldn’t walk by Trinity church,” said Gay Outler, referring to the then all-white Episcopal cathedral.

Outler, chair of the anti-racism commission said the oral history project will preserve what happened in the past and serve as a catalyst for continued dialogue on how to improve race relations in the church and society.

Many churches are in different stages of archiving and documenting their oral history.

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When Simeon moved to put benches in the aisles, the church wardens threw them out. He battled with discouragement and at one point wrote out his resignation.

“When I was an object of much contempt and derision in the university,” he later wrote, “I strolled forth one day, buffeted and afflicted, with my little Testament in my hand ”¦ The first text which caught my eye was this: ‘They found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear his cross.'”

Slowly the pews began to open up and fill, not primarily with townspeople but with students. Then Simeon did what was unthinkable at the time: he introduced an evening service. He invited students to his home on Sundays and Friday evening for “conversation parties” to teach them how to preach. By the time he died, it is estimated that one-third of all the Anglican ministers in the country had sat under his teaching at one time or another.

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He grew downward in humiliation before God, and he grew upward in his adoration of Christ.

Handley Moule captures the essence of Simeon’s secret of longevity in this sentence: “‘Before honor is humility,’ and he had been ‘growing downwards’ year by year under the stern discipline of difficulty met in the right way, the way of close and adoring communion with God” (Moule, 64). Those two things were the heartbeat of Simeon’s inner life: growing downward in humility and growing upward in adoring communion with God.

But the remarkable thing about humiliation and adoration in the heart of Charles Simeon is that they were inseparable. Simeon was utterly unlike most of us today who think that we should get rid once and for all of feelings of vileness and unworthiness as soon as we can. For him, adoration only grew in the freshly plowed soil of humiliation for sin. So he actually labored to know his true sinfulness and his remaining corruption as a Christian.

I have continually had such a sense of my sinfulness as would sink me into utter despair, if I had not an assured view of the sufficiency and willingness of Christ to save me to the uttermost. And at the same time I had such a sense of my acceptance through Christ as would overset my little bark, if I had not ballast at the bottom sufficient to sink a vessel of no ordinary size. (Moule 134f.)

He never lost sight of the need for the heavy ballast of his own humiliation. After he had been a Christian forty years he wrote,

With this sweet hope of ultimate acceptance with God, I have always enjoyed much cheerfulness before men; but I have at the same time laboured incessantly to cultivate the deepest humiliation before God. I have never thought that the circumstance of God’s having forgiven me was any reason why I should forgive myself; on the contrary, I have always judged it better to loathe myself the more, in proportion as I was assured that God was pacified towards me (Ezekiel 16:63). . . . There are but two objects that I have ever desired for these forty years to behold; the one is my own vileness; and the other is, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ: and I have always thought that they should be viewed together; just as Aaron confessed all the sins of all Israel whilst he put them on the head of the scapegoat. The disease did not keep him from applying to the remedy, nor did the remedy keep him from feeling the disease. By this I seek to be, not only humbled and thankful, but humbled in thankfulness, before my God and Saviour continually. (Carus, 518f.)

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O loving God, who orderest all things by thine unerring wisdom and unbounded love: Grant us in all things to see thy hand; that, following the example and teaching of thy servant Charles Simeon, we may walk with Christ in all simplicity, and serve thee with a quiet and contented mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Although later perceived as a “church in socialism”, it was a Church in opposition which understood itself as a fellowship of the Crucified, thus echoing Bonhoeffer’s words in The Cost of Discipleship: “Every call of Christ leads to death.” A key text for them was Bonhoeffer’s influential book Life Together, first published in 1939 and greatly influenced by his time at the Anglican Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield in West Yorkshire.

What the Church achieved in East Germany before 1989 cannot be underestimated. Great sacrifices had to be made. There was no room for cheap grace; it was sacrifice lived as well as believed in. It was their network of contacts, which enabled them as a minority church to survive against a background of discrimination that was not always subtle. The University Church in Leipzig, for instance, had been pulled down by the communists and a bust of Karl Marx placed where the altar was.

However, during the 40 years of the German Democratic Republic the churches provided the forum where people could speak freely and democracy be exercised. Their strong pacifist emphasis was particularly inspired by the vision of Isaiah of turning swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.

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It is the mid-1760s, and in Dublin’s grand St. Patrick’s Cathedral the famed revivalist John Wesley is preaching with all of his might. He is aware that the congregation of St. Patrick’s is filled with the city’s more successful, comfortable, perhaps self-satisfied souls. And so he thunders against their self-centeredness, rails against their disregard for the poor. “Oh who has courage to speak plain to these rich and honorable sinners?” Wesley writes afterward in his journals.

In the congregation is a young businessman who only a few years before has begun to make his mark in the city. Born in nearby Celbridge and raised on the archbishop’s estate that his father managed, this young man has gained something of a reputation for his skill at brewing beer. In fact, he has purchased a defunct brewery at St. James’ Gate, along the River Liffey, and, having married well and embedded himself skillfully in Dublin’s merchant class, he fully intends to rise.

Now, listening to John Wesley speak of the obligations of wealth, of a God-given duty to care for the hurting of the world, this gifted young man is reminded of values he learned on that archbishop’s estate and at his father’s knee. They are values that resurfaced in the Reformation of Calvin and Luther and that were set aflame and made personal in the Methodism of John Wesley. This rising entrepreneur hears and allows Wesley’s words to frame a vision for his fledgling company: a vision for producing wealth through brewing excellence and then for using that wealth to serve the downtrodden and the poor.

We should be glad that he did, for that young man was Arthur Guinness, the founder of the renowned brewery whose 250th anniversary we celebrate this year.

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On a recent afternoon, stagehands prepared the Protestant meeting hall on the Place de la Fusterie for a musical, “The Calvin Generation,” to be performed there that evening. Springtime for Calvin?

Not quite. The religious reformer, best known for his doctrines about a depraved humanity and a harsh God predestining people to hell or heaven, would not dance or sing that night. But the show was one of a vast program of commemorations ”” theater, a film festival, conferences, exhibits, even specially concocted Calvinist wines and chocolates ”” described by some who have tasted them as somewhat bitter ”” of the birth of John Calvin 500 years ago.

“Our idea was to show Calvin so that people could see his personality in the richness of his thought and activities,” said Roland Benz, 66, the Calvin Jubilee chairman, as he watched workers preparing the stage, lights and costumes.

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The Catholic League was formed to promote reunion. Many do not know this, but the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity began in 1908 as an Anglican initiative to promote unity between Anglicans and Catholics; only from 1936 was it decided, under the influence of a French priest, Abbé Paul Couturier, to widen its scope to embrace all Christians.

After the Appeal for Christian Unity at the 1920 Lambeth Conference, Cardinal Mercier of Belgium and Lord Halifax gathered a group of theologians into what became known as the Malines Conversations, producing a plan for a Uniate Church similar to that proposed in the reign of Charles II. The talks ended when the Archbishop of York visited the Pope, the first Anglican archbishop to visit the Pope, and explained that Lord Halifax had no official standing.

It was not until the Second Vatican Council that the time became more auspicious, and through the visit of Archbishop Michael Ramsey to Pope Paul VI in 1996, the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC)_was created “to work for the restoration of complete communion of faith and sacramental life”. Archbishop Ramsey had already indicated what form he thought it might take.

Building on the plans of past centuries he suggested: “Unity could take the form of the Anglican Communion being in communion with Rome, having sufficient dogmatic agreement with Rome, accepting the Pope as the presiding bishop of all Christians, but being allowed to have their own liturgy and married clergy and a great deal of existing Anglican customs….”

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Christianity is the world’s biggest religion, yet the BBC has not produced a major documentary series about it for decades. That will be rectified tomorrow, when BBC Four begins A History of Christianity, a six-part series presented by Diarmaid MacCulloch, an Oxford history professor whose books about Cranmer and the Reformation have been acclaimed as masterpieces.

MacCulloch is a vicar’s son who grew up in “one of those great Georgian rectories where Agatha Christie murders took place”. He has mastered the tricks of TV presenting without hamming it up: he has all the donnish passion of David Starkey but comes across as much more self-effacing ”“ not difficult, admittedly. Underneath it all, however, the bespectacled professor is just as opinionated. Judging by the first episode of A History of Christianity, there is some vigorous axe-grinding going on.

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A top Vatican official has joined other global Christian leaders in the eastern German town where Martin Luther broke with the papacy, at a tree-planting ceremony that looks to closer ties on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017.

The ceremony took place in Wittenberg, the German town known as “Lutherstadt”, 492 years after Luther nailed his epoch-changing 95 theses to a church door there, leading to the breach with the 16th-century papacy

“It is possible for us today to together learn from Martin Luther,” said Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity as he planted the first of 500 trees on 1 November in a landscaped Luther Garden, forming part of the celebrations for 2017.

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…the Anglican experiment is far from over. For in a world of mounting religious tension, now more than ever we need the witness of precisely the sort peace treaty attempted by the Church of England.

Not, of course, that we as a church have been very good at resolving our differences over women bishops. Which gets us to the core of the problem. What happens when principles clash?

This isn’t a churchy problem to be waved away by those not involved. For what’s at stake here is how we live alongside those with whom we fundamentally disagree. The Anglican answer has always made peaceful co-existence the priority. And that can mean compromising one’s principles in the name of a greater good. And yet, of course, compromise has a limit – especially when the issue is regarded by many as a fundamental question of justice. So here then is the tragedy: even in a church of natural compromisers, compromise can’t always keep people together.

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There is much litigation going on currently in State courts over the polity of the Episcopal Church. At the same time, there do not appear to be any online versions readily available of ECUSA’s early Constitution, either as originally adopted or as subsequently from time to time amended. The commentary on the history of the Constitution and Canons published in 1981 by Messrs. White & Dykman, and reprinted in 1997, is available for download from this site (along with two supplements written by others, carrying the account through General Convention 1991). However, even it does not have in one place a complete version of ECUSA’s original Constitution, which is so important for understanding the nature of ECUSA’s mixed form of ecclesiastical polity.

Since the nature of ECUSA’s polity is so much in dispute these days, I have decided that as a public service, I will publish in this post the earliest version of the Church’s Constitution, as well as some further historical materials leading up to its formulation. The purpose will be so that everyone may access and understand the Church’s organic evolution (see this earlier post for even more detail and background), out of a meeting of delegates from the various successors, in each new State, of the previously established Church of England in the respective colonies.

Let us begin with the six principles for the formation of a national replacement in the States for the Church of England, as it had existed in the Colonies prior to the Revolutionary War. The Rev. Dr. William White, of Christ Church in Philadelphia, later one of the first Bishops in the newly established Church, first proposed them in a pamphlet which he had published in 1782, entitled The Case of the Episcopal Churches in the United States Considered….

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Was Pope Benedict XVI inspired by Cardinal John Henry Newman, whom it is hoped he will beatify in England next year, when he suddenly threw open the gates of Rome to disaffected Anglicans on Tuesday morning?

The official website for Newman’s Cause hinted as much when it greeted the announcement with a reminder of Newman’s support for a proposal to establish an Anglican Uniate Church for converts, similar to that provided for Byzantine-rite Catholics. The plan was conceived by Ambrose Phillips de Lisle and Newman rightly guessed that it would be unworkable. But if it could be made to work, he said, he was all in favour. As he wrote to de Lisle in 1876:

“Nothing will rejoice me more than to find that the Holy See considers it safe and promising to sanction some such plan as the Pamphlet suggests. I give my best prayers, such as they are, that some means of drawing to us so many good people, who are now shivering at our gates, may be discovered.”

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Turning to the TEC constitution, we find that it has no supremacy clause giving General Convention priority over diocesan conventions. There is no language of supremacy or any of its synonyms, such as “highest” or “hierarchical.” The closest the TEC constitution comes to this concept is in the provision making the Bishop and standing committee “the Ecclesiastical Authority” in the diocese. If the bishop is “the” ecclesiastical authority in the diocese, the Presiding Bishop, the General Convention and the Executive Council are not.

So in TEC we have concurrent jurisdiction without supremacy among the General Convention and the various diocesan conventions, and each can theoretically undo what the other has done. But since the diocesan conventions meet three times for every one time the General Convention meets, this gives a distinct legal advantage to the diocese, and as a practical matter, the diocese gets the last word.

Now: what does this mean for the Anglican covenant? I will conclude with three observations.

First, given this concurrent jurisdiction and lack of a supremacy clause, dioceses have the inherent authority to commit themselves to the covenant as soon as it is available. Moreover, given the principles just discussed, if General Convention were someday to adopt the covenant, dioceses that do not want to assume the obligations of mutual responsibility and interdependence entailed by the covenant””and we know there are many such dioceses in TEC””those dioceses would be able to nullify that adoption and those commitments for their dioceses. So TEC’s polity makes it inevitable that dioceses will have to consider the covenant, and they will be able to do so at any time after it is finalized and sent to the member churches of the Anglican Communion early next year.

Second, what does the Anglican covenant, or the Anglican Communion more broadly, have to say about TEC polity? The short and clear answer to this question is: “Absolutely nothing.” The covenant is explicit in saying that nothing in it alters any provision of the constitution or canons of any church. And that has always been understood as a hallmark of the Anglican Communion. Member churches are autonomous. The covenant and the Communion have no say in how we do what we do””unless, I suppose, we abolished bishops altogether. So the frequent complaint directed by some in the House of Deputies to the wider Communion, “you don’t understand our polity,” is irrelevant. The Communion does not need, or perhaps even care, to understand our polity. They have no interest or say in how we do what we do.

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