Niceness may be enough to carry a measure through an inexperienced and supine General Synod, but it can hardly make the covenant a transformative consciousness raiser, let alone the turbine of a more mutually engaged global denomination. However the General Synod votes, the big issue for the covenant process thereafter will be securing buy-in, confronted by zealots’ disappointment and majority indifference.
It is often observed that individual Anglicans around the world recognise, like and enjoy each other’s company. They generally get on like a house on fire at local level. Their institutional quadrille is where the problems lie. Covenant afficionados may hope beefing up the formal denomination will improve informal relationships. Others fear beefier formalities will sour them.
One Conservative blogger announced this week, tongue slightly in cheek perhaps, that he had believed the covenant useless, until it had been drawn to his attention how much it annoyed Liberals. Et voilà . Even as a kicking foetus, the covenant is already annoying people. This doesn’t imply that once born it will only be used only to promote understanding and harmony. Nice people will use it nicely ”“ others won’t. Real copper-bottomed zealots will almost certainly carry on regardless. The god of unintended consequences will stand in the background, smiling.
[blockquote]The god of unintended consequences will stand in the background, smiling.[/blockquote]
Is Bishop Alan a polytheist?
Oh come on Pageantmaster. 🙂
I know I use technically [i]polytheistic[/i] phraseology on occasion. It doesn’t mean that I’ve abandoned trinitarian Christology does it?
That said, I do dislike the Bishop of Buckingham’s tone and the rather flip way in which he chooses to address the issue. It also doesn’t seem to occur to him that a two tier Communion might actually lessen the tensions that he presently deplores. It’s ironic that if Alternative Primatial Oversight had been accepted in 2006, we would probably all still be muddling along in the US and the Presiding Bishop wouldn’t be contemplating such a sobering deficit.
#2 Yes – the god of ‘flip’ is another deity in Bishop Alan’s pantheon.
It is a shame – he has been more and more flip and cynical recently: whether giving us his views of the Covenant; or personal comments directed at individual leavers who have conscientious problems with women bishops, and generally this has been getting more and more noticeable. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy his blog. It may not be how he intends it, but his writing increasingly reminds me of an opinionated 14 year old in a school magazine, writing instant jokey articles of doubtful intellectual rigour, presented with the all the aplomb that goes with youth and inexperience.
One of the things I don’t understand is what status quo Bishop Alan believes is a) OK, and b) workable. Do people on ‘his side’ who oppose the covenant also believe the communion is just fine as it is, crumbling apart? My point is that the status quo is unworkable, as a fact on the ground. Is this a good thing so far as Bishop Alan is concerned? Is the idea that the collapse of communion wide associations is all for the good, as then he gets to do as he wants — including writing blogs and making flip commentary?
A covenant is a waste of time just like a dusty Bible on a shelf unless it is read, understood, and used as a basis for orienting mission. Perhaps that is what people are afraid of; that we will actually use the covenant to guide decision making.
There must also be agreement on the minimal requirements to recognize each other as Christians. If someone says they are Christian or Anglican but do not believe Jesus is Lord, that God exists, and that we need God’s intervention then what is the point of being Christian? It is like saying I am a republican but I always vote for democrats. (Just to be clear, I do believe it is possible to be both republican and Christian.)
Oh dear, I just haven’t been paying enough attention to what this particular suburban bishop has been saying. Consider this offering:
[blockquote]I very much doubt that places where they are less into deference, infantilism and amateur inexperience than England will buy the covenant wholesale on this basis.[/blockquote]
That must be the god of the supercilious grinning out from Bishop Alan’s blog.
Well, at least we know where to find the strychnine.
RE: “Do people on ‘his side’ who oppose the covenant also believe the communion is just fine as it is, crumbling apart?”
My sense of liberals in TEC is that they are very content with the way things presently are — and any future crumblings too — in the Anglican Communion as long as they are members within the AC and capable of attempting to change individual clergy and bishops in the AC through money and influence. So far, nothing particularly inconvenient has happened — they’re still able to peddle their wares and the fact that the divisions grow steadily broader and deeper is not important to them as long as they remain members with no consequences for their actions — and to them, the divisions aren’t significant consequences at all.
For them, the status quo is very workable — again, for them.
I have trouble seeing how ACC meetings will be attended or make much sense; what will prevent divisions in the C of E that simply fester; any meaningful Primates Meetings; an ignoring of the See of Canterbury as anything other than an historical vestige. In short, a ‘victory’ for the mentality that brought us the SC of the AC, which will meet on behalf of nobody. I wonder if this kind of ‘throw it all into a maelstrom of deconstruction’ thinking is the consequence of always seeing things in terms of ‘will this advance the GLBT cause’ or not.