If GAFCON and its supporters are genuinely seeking to be not an alternative Communion hoping for the breakup of the existing Communion but a reform movement within the Communion then rather than majoring on the covenant’s minor weaknesses and disparaging and distorting its content they should be embracing and working with the covenant as a reform which moves us in the right direction. Although not without its problems, by God’s grace and through our patience and perseverance the covenant holds out the prospect of gradually bringing greater faithfulness and order to global Anglicanism and so strengthening us to share in the mission of God.
In this essay, he seems to put a lot of faith in the “Standing Committee” doing the right thing. After seeing how the current “Standing Committe” has been manipulated to the point of failure, I don’t believe that you can fault someone for believing that a Covenant that has “teeth” only when the Standing Committee chooses to act is in-fact toothless.
A strange article.
He begins with decrying the selective quoting of the Samuel/Sugden piece — but the selective quoting was merely to illustrate the first point of the piece which was, namely: “Many primates have indicated that they cannot support the Covenant in its present form.”
That appears to be a fact supported by Samuel/Sugden’s quotes.
It’s called “thesis/support” writing. They stated a thesis and then supported that thesis. For Goddard to complain that they didn’t start with quoting from the Covenant is odd — how would quoting from the Covenant support their initial thesis, which was “Many primates have indicated that they cannot support the Covenant in its present form”?
He talks about Chew serving on the Covenant Design group — as if that has anything whatsover to do with the appearance that “Many primates have indicated that they cannot support the Covenant in its present form” — [i]in its present form[/i]. Various Christian Primates being involved either peripherally or centrally in the actual construction of the “Covenant” does not have much to do with the Covenant’s *present form* which it appears that many Primates cannot support.
Goddard’s second through fifth points deal with the muddle of the Samuel/Sugden piece — I certainly agree that it’s muddled.
Then Goddard brings up the sixth point: “Sixthly, it is alleged that ‘the current Covenant process interminably delays judgement…we are left in a permanent state of dialogue and conversation’. Here again it is hard to square this with the wording of the covenant.”
Hard not to smile at that.
Andrew Goddard can assert that the Covenant won’t establish and set in concrete *further* interminable delay till the cows come home — I’m reminded of many people’s predictions of how long it would take to actually establish the Covenant — and the ACI’s/Fulcrum’s sunny predictions of how short a process it would be, listing years like 09 as to when it would become “operative” or even in one instance, 08! Heh. We all know which prediction turned out to be correct. Instead they later tried to redefine the word “operative” to account for the sunny predictions. But again — anyone who read this blog remembers there were pessimists about the delay and optimists. History now stands on the side of the pessimists.
But this all turns back to what is considered to be “interminable delay” for no sooner does one bring that up then now the “there will be no interminable delay” side claims that things haven’t been so bad and the past seven years of meltdown couldn’t be characterized as “interminable delay.”
So what this comes down to is an antithetical set of values. One side — the pro-Covenant-this-will-be-a-great-thing group — will view seven years — 10 years — 30 years — as “not interminable delay.” That’s fine of course — but the other side — the side of “Covenant is merely a smokescreen for further delay and maintaining a facade of unity where there is none” views all of that as “interminable delay.”
I don’t really say a way out of that impasse of mutually opposing values. I suspect that it comes back even further to this: large swathes of the pro-Covenant side don’t really see that the actions and beliefs of TEC are an aggressive, parasitical cancer that will hollow out the organism and kill it faster than anyone can imagine.
He then goes on to say, as a part of his seventh point: “The covenant is not to be judged simply in terms of whether or how it might address our current difficulties – it is something much bigger and forward-looking and the question is whether this is a biblical vision of life together in the body of Christ whose articulation is an advance on the current situation in the Communion.”
Yes — I think we all understand that the Covenant will not “address our current difficulties.” The best that can be hoped for — [i]the very best[/i] — from the Covenant’s being signed would be the dividing out of the Covenant signatories and the non-Covenant signatories into two theoretical groups, both residing within the Communion, all pretending to participate [or not participate] in the various so-called “Instruments” of the Communion, each going their separate ways in an ever-widening and deepening chasm of division, while residing in the shell of what was once a “Communion.”
That being the case, the question arises — then if we’re going to have two groups of Provinces in two theoretical entities both residing within the Communion — why not the one group — [i]the actual group of Provinces whose leaders most probably believe and preach the Gospel[/i] — actually agree and form around a significant document rather than the bizarre amalgam of limb-sprouting paragraphs of the current “Covenant” that enshrines the faux “Standing Committee” as an actual adjudicating body?
Goddard goes on in the essay to say: “However, like them, they offer no constructive alternative to the covenant. Anyone unwilling to support the covenant but who wishes to be responsible and to show due care for the unity and witness of the Communion must answer this crucial question – if not this, then what are we to do instead and why is that more faithful theologically and more practical politically given where we are?”
Obviously, the Samuel/Sugden faction would trumpet out “the Jerusalem Declaration.”
I think we can all also see that that’s a non-starter since it fails to attract the Provinces in the “informed moderate right” group.
My idea is that those who are interested in agreeing to *a* Covenant actually get together and come up with the document, based loosely on what the current draft is, only actually creating a coherent and stronger version. Then those Provinces could agree to that one, without the horrible idea of first submitting to the fatally flawed current “Covenant”, then embroiling themselves ever further in a bureaucratic, ACO/ACC centered process of “amending” the ill-formed document. Such emendation would be highly likely to go the way of, oh, say, the last seven years with the Windsorish process, the “Panel of Reference,” the last ACC meeting, the last Primates meeting, the last Lambeth Conference — we all know the drill by now.
The result is the same anyway — one group of Provinces whose leaders actually may believe and preach the Gospel in one set over there, and one group of Provinces whose leaders obviously do not believe and preach the Gospel in one set over here, both groups within an entity oddly named “the Anglican Communion.” One group could deal with their own adjudicating systems, and the other group — the TECUSA group — could participate in a greatly diminished, practically emaciated set of the so-called “Instruments” of Communion.
That’s obviously what’s going to happen anyway. Why not actually have a substantive Covenant behind that outcome rather than the current one which it appears, as Samuel/Sugden point out, many Primates cannot support “in its current form”?
Goddard rounds out his analysis by pointing out the obvious: “One suspects that the authors may hope that GAFCON/FCA will benefit if the covenant fails . . . ”
Sure — I think most of us recognize that the Gafcon/FCA group wants to attempt to re-organize the group of gospel-Primates around the Jerusalem Declaration. I think they seriously misread those possibilities [demonstrating a degree of lack of awareness and of obtuseness that I find stunning], but that’s been the case for years now.
But Goddard mistakenly attempts to draw a line between the Gafcon/FCA folks and those who have no interest in Gafcon/FCA, yet rightly see that the Covenant does [i]not[/i] “move us in the right direction” at all. The Covenant as it stands moves us ever deeper into a morass, attempting to navigate and “work with” something that is intrinsically not fit for purpose. It doesn’t unify the actual GAFCON/FCA folks, nor does it appear to earn the trust of the informed moderate conservative Primates who rightly recognize that in its current form we have something that merely continues the whole failed “Windsorish” approach of process and dialogue that Rowan Williams has constructed.
Why in heaven’s name would the informed moderate conservative Primates wish [i]to continue[/i] the debacle of the past seven years any further?
Goddard argues that a distinction should be made between the actual text of the Covenant and its meaning, on the one hand, and the perceptions of that text by others and how such people may act on their perceptions on the other. Further, he argues that a vote at General Synod regarding the Covenant should be made on the basis of what the text actually says and means, and not on the basis of people’s perceptions and their tendencies (“pessimists” or “optimists”): does the Church of England want what the Covenant embodies, or does it want something else or nothing at all (perhaps what pessimists and optimists embody)?
To be sure, the text of the Covenant includes elements in Section 4 that do not cohere with real-world entities at present — e.g. a credible “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion”. But the real-world entities that exist at present are not what the Covenant text envisaged (I can say that because I was part of drafting it, and even the Working Group’s revision of Section 4 predates the emergence of the real-world entities that do not cohere with the text’s meaning).
This is not an ideal situation, but Goddard points out that there are no ideal situations readily at hand. So the Church of England, like other Anglicans, have a choice: embrace what the Covenant text says and means, and work to implement its meaning, or do nothing (since nothing else has been proposed). The “interminable delays” of the past few years — well, they cannot quite be “interminable” in such a context, but that’s another matter — are not part of the Covenant’s text or meaning; they are bound up with the decisions of Anglicans and their leaders, of all stripes. Indeed, the problem with the Covenant has always been one, not of the text, but of “how to implement”, that is, “who will act with integrity?”. It has been a “people problem”. But that has been a problem with the Gospel’s receipt by the Church as a whole in this world from day one: Christians, like many others, make a mess of what they have been given. Pessimists like Sarah may be right in putting little trust in the ability of the implementers, but fortunately — and this is at the heart of the Christ’s mission itself — such trust does not found the salutary history of the Gospel. Nor does it let Christians off the hook from tying themselves to the demand for integrity, whatever their expectations as to its likely achievement.
Goddard’s arguments seem quite reasonable. I would note too that Goddard himself has worked and lived in the midst of some of the thorniest challenges of the Church of England’s struggles, involving the Evangelical wing of the church especially, and has done so with a grace and intelligence — and a great deal of engaged knowledge — that has been tried in more than one crucible. Sarah’s dismissal of his outlook as one born of a “sunny” naivete is so far off the mark as to make me wonder sometimes what the value of public commentary really amounts to in this context.
RE: ” Sarah’s dismissal of his outlook as one born of a “sunny†naivete is so far off the mark . . . ”
Yes — it would be off the mark certainly . . . had I dismissed Goddard’s “outlook” much less his ideas or even less his arguments as “sunny naivete.”
But obviously Dr. Radner did not read my comment with the attentiveness with which I read Goddard’s essay, so further comment is indded fruitless . . . .
“Public commentary” in “this context” is certainly fruitless when someone doesn’t bother to read one’s words or arguments against someone else’s arguments.
RE: “Pessimists like Sarah may be right in putting little trust in the ability of the implementers . . .”
And of course, as I made crystal clear in the not-very-closely-read comment #2, the *text* needs to be fixed first.
Let me repeat that section, just in case someone else other than Dr. Radner might want to read it:
[blockquote]My idea is that those who are interested in agreeing to *a* Covenant actually get together and come up with the document, based loosely on what the current draft is, only actually creating a coherent and stronger version. Then those Provinces could agree to that one, without the horrible idea of first submitting to the fatally flawed current “Covenantâ€, then embroiling themselves ever further in a bureaucratic, ACO/ACC centered process of “amending†the ill-formed document. Such emendation would be highly likely to go the way of, oh, say, the last seven years with the Windsorish process, the “Panel of Reference,†the last ACC meeting, the last Primates meeting, the last Lambeth Conference—we all know the drill by now.[/blockquote]
And:
[blockquote]Why not actually have a substantive Covenant behind that outcome rather than the current one which it appears, as Samuel/Sugden point out, many Primates cannot support “in its current form�[/blockquote]
Interesting spluttering and backpedaling in #4 and 5 after the PhD smackdown above.