Executive Council thanks covenant study guide responders
Episcopal News Service. July 2, 2007 [070207-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The Episcopal Church's Executive Council is sending its thanks to all those people who responded to questions in a study guide aimed at helping the Episcopal Church consider the draft version of a proposed Anglican Covenant.
The study guide, prepared by a subcommittee of the Executive Council's International Concerns Standing Committee (INC), was released in mid-April with invitation for response by June 4 to a series of questions it contained. The General Convention office collected more than 400 responses, many of them representing more than one person’s input.
Those who responded via e-mail received an electronic thank-you note late last week. Individuals and groups who responded by mail or fax should be receiving the Council’s thanks via a letter. Council approved a resolution during its June meeting in Parsippany, New Jersey, to thank to the responders.
"The Executive Council is very aware of the brief time allowed for response and was gratified by the hundreds of thoughtful responses it received," the Rev. Dr. Gregory S. Straub, executive officer and secretary of the General Convention, wrote in the letter. "Members of the Standing Committee on International Concerns assured me they had read each and every one of the responses. Your point of view has been heard."
Rosalie Ballentine of the Virgin Islands, chair of INC’s draft-covenant subcommittee, told the Executive Council in June that her group was surprised and pleased with the depth of the responses.
Among the responses, 201 came from the laity, 100 from priests and deacons, 64 from organizations and groups including General Convention deputations, 27 from parishes, and 18 from bishops. The stack of responses is about three inches high and they range from one-sentence replies to each of the guide's questions to 10-page replies.
The comments are meant to help Council create a response to the draft covenant at its October meeting in Detroit, Michigan.
"The drafting committee will be informed by these responses but will not be constrained by them," Ballentine told Council, adding that the sub-committee will urge the drafting group to consider stances taken by previous meetings of General Convention about issues that are now included in the draft covenant.
In a related action at its June meeting, the Council approved Resolution INC021, authorizing Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson to appoint a work group to draft the Council's response. That group will also 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 appointment of that group is due to be announced soon.
The Executive Council's guide and the 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.
The Windsor Report, released in October 2004, proposed a covenant as a way for the Anglican Communion to maintain unity amid differing viewpoints. The Primates released the draft during their February meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. They then released both it and an accompanying report to the entire Communion, asking for comment from of the 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 consideration.