(ENS) Episcopal Church House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson has asked diocesan General Convention deputations to find ways to comment to their bishops about the second draft of the proposed Anglican covenant.<\/p>\n
Anderson made her request in an April 21 letter emailed to all deputies and first alternate deputies. The full text of the letter is below.<\/p>\n
“We are told that the bishops at the Lambeth Conference will not be making a decision on the Anglican covenant, nor will they be ratifying any draft of the covenant,” Anderson wrote, reminding deputies that “the only body with authority to commit the Episcopal Church to an Anglican covenant is the General Convention in which bishops, priests and deacons and lay persons share authority.”<\/p>\n
Thus, she wrote, “the input of the clergy and laity of the Episcopal Church is especially important as the Anglican Communion considers the development of a covenant.”<\/p>\n
“In the Episcopal Church the belief that God speaks uniquely through bishops, laity, priests and deacons, enables our participatory structure and allows a fullness of revelation and insight that must not be lost in this important time of discernment,” Anderson wrote. “The joint work of the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops is the highest institutional expression of this belief. It is thus crucially important that our bishops go to Lambeth with a sense of where their General Convention deputations (and their diocese) are with respect to the current state of the Anglican covenant.”<\/p>\n