This Preamble gives an account of the decisions that led to the drawing up of the Anglican Communion Covenant. It also outlines the raison d’être for the Church of the Province of South East Asia’s agreement to sign the Anglican Communion Covenant. The historical events of the past decade which caused the ”˜torn fabric of the communion’ set the context in which the Province and the constituent Dioceses see the need for this process. It follows that this Preamble also expresses our expectations that the background which has given rise to the need for this are recognised by the Churches of the Anglican Communion and provides the milieu in which it is signed.
A model of care and hard work. The covenant — if it emerges — will require this kind of clarification as to its real purpose. One can see responses from ‘liberals’ that this preface makes the Communion into a Church (one wonders where and why this kind of semantics took hold; but it has done in the ‘liberal’ camp). No, SE Asia’s preface protects the Communion as Communion. If this view does not hold we will not have a Communion but a federation of independent national entities, like the Lutheran World Federation — though the polity in defense of ‘national churches’ as desirable has never been defended as part of Christ’s mission. Independent national churches? Christ came to work and die for…autonomy and diversity?