Executive Council committee offers draft covenant study guide
Episcopal News Service. April 16, 2007 [041607-02]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
A study guide aimed at helping the Episcopal Church respond to the draft version of a proposed Anglican Covenant is now available.
Prepared by a subcommittee of the Executive Council's International Concerns Standing Committee (INC), the six-page guide in English, French and Spanish is available here. The page includes individual links to each translation, along with links to covenant-related website.
The draft text of the proposed Covenant, along with the first report of the Anglican Communion's Covenant Design Group, in English, French and Spanish are also available here.
Sandra McPhee, INC's chair, said she and the subcommittee hope the guide will assist Episcopalians in the process of studying this "new idea" of an Anglican Covenant.
"We felt it was important that people have some point-by-point things to discuss," she said.
McPhee said the subcommittee aimed to develop a neutral guide. "We're trying to get genuine responses and not ask leading questions," she said.
The guide includes information on how congregations and individuals can submit responses by June 4. Responses will be used in the creation of a report by the Executive Council at its October meeting in Detroit, Michigan.
Prior to that, at the Council's June meeting in Parsippany, New Jersey, INC will propose that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson appoint a Covenant Review Group to follow the covenant-development process, enable comments from the wider Episcopal Church and provide comments on behalf of the church to the Communion's Covenant Design Group.
The Executive Council's guide and the anticipated review group come in response to Resolution A166 passed by the 75th General Convention this past June. The resolution calls for Episcopal Church, "as a demonstration of our commitment to mutual responsibility and interdependence in the Anglican Communion," to support the process of the development of an Anglican Covenant "that underscores our unity in faith, order, and common life in the service of God's mission." It also called for the INC and the Episcopal Church's members of the Anglican Consultative Council to follow the development processes of an Anglican Covenant and report regularly to the Executive Council as well as to the 76th General Convention in 2009.
In a letter to the Episcopal Church at the close of its winter meeting March 2-4 in Portland, Oregon, the Executive Council said "responding to the draft covenant does not presuppose agreement with the terms and principles advanced in the draft."
The Covenant Design Group, appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in response to a request of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates' Meeting and of the Anglican Consultative Council, held its first meeting in Nassau, the Bahamas, in mid-January and wrote a report and the draft text of a proposed covenant.
The Primates of the Anglican Communion, meeting in February near Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, received and discussed the report and the draft. They then released the report and draft to the entire Communion, asking for comment from of the Communion's 38 provinces by January 1, 2008.
Based on those responses, it is expected that a revised version of the covenant will be presented to the 2008 Lambeth Conference of Bishops, to be followed by a final text that would be proposed to the 2009 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC). If the ACC adopts the text, it would offer it to the provinces for adoption or rejection.
The Windsor Report, released in October 2004, proposed a covenant as a way for the Anglican Communion to maintain unity amid differing viewpoints.
Sections in the draft Covenant address topics including common catholicity and confession of faith; Anglican vocation; unity and common life; and common commitments. Among other suggestions, the proposed Covenant would ask Anglican Communion provinces to commit themselves to "essential matters of common concern, to have regard to the common good of the Communion in the exercise of autonomy, and to support the work of the Instruments of Communion..."
It also notes that "in the most extreme circumstances, where churches choose not to fulfill the substance of the covenant," such churches may be seen as having "relinquished ... the force and meaning of the covenant's purpose, and a process of restoration and renewal will be required to re-establish their covenant relationship with other member churches."
The covenant study guide is not the only such tool members of the Episcopal Church can expect to receive in the coming months. At their March meeting in Texas, the House of Bishops asked its Theology Committee to develop a teaching guide for consideration of both the Primates' Communiqué and the proposed draft covenant. The bishops anticipate this guide, which will focus on the Communiqué, will be available by late May for use by bishops and dioceses in preparation for the September meeting of the House of Bishops.
Also during the Portland meeting, the Executive Council asked Jefferts Schori and Anderson (via Resolution EC008) to appoint a work group to consider the role, responsibilities and potential response of the Executive Council to the issues raised by the Primates' Communiqué. The resolution named Anderson, who is also vice president of Executive Council, to chair the work group. (Jefferts Schori is president of the Council.)
Anderson convened the group by conference call on April 4 and the members reviewed a draft foundational working paper, compiled at her request by Sally Johnson, Anderson's chancellor. After a final review by the group, the resulting draft will be used as the foundational working document regarding the role and responsibilities of Executive Council.
"The EC008 task group will have a report at the June meeting of the Executive Council. The report will be in the form of a response to the Primates Communiqué. The response will be considered by Executive Council at that time," Anderson said.
She said that, at the suggestion of the Presiding Bishop, she has been in touch with Alabama Bishop Henry Parsley, chair of the House of Bishops Theology Committee, about that committee's work. EC008 work group member the Rev. Dr. Ian Douglas, a former member of the House of Bishops Theology Committee, will act as a liaison between the two groups, Anderson said.
"Bishop Parsley and I understand that the work of the Theology Committee and the EC008 task group is to focus on the Communiqué," she said. "The covenant review will be undertaken as described in Resolution A166."