Covenant Design Group publishes Lambeth Commentary; provinces have until March 2009 to respond
Episcopal News Service. October 22, 2008 [102208-03]
Matthew Davies
The Covenant Design Group has published a document "which sets out the responses of the bishops at the Lambeth Conference in their discussions of the St. Andrew's Draft for an Anglican covenant," an October 22 news release from the Anglican Communion Office announced.
The 33-page Lambeth Commentary, compiled at the Covenant Design Group's recent meeting in Singapore, has been sent to all 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion "to assist in their discernment and response to the St. Andrew's Draft," the news release said.
The provinces have until March 9, 2009 to respond to the St. Andrew's Draft, which will also be sent -- along with the Lambeth Commentary -- to ecumenical partners of the Anglican Communion, inviting their reflections and responses.
The Covenant Design Group says it hopes that the Lambeth Commentary "will stand alongside the St. Andrew's Draft as a critique and as a stimulus for study and response. We are grateful to the bishops at the Lambeth Conference for the honesty and wisdom of their responses, and the opportunity that it has given us to address some commonly voiced concerns."
The idea for an Anglican covenant comes from the 2004 Windsor Report (paragraphs 113-120) and has been supported by all the Instruments of Communion as a way for the Anglican Communion to maintain unity amid differing viewpoints, especially on human sexuality issues and biblical interpretation. The bishops attending the 2008 Lambeth Conference this summer in Canterbury, England, spent two days discussing the St. Andrew's Draft -- the second draft of the Anglican covenant that was released in February 2008.
Appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury on behalf of the primates of the Anglican Communion, the Covenant Design Group has been meeting since January 2007.
"It is very important that [the bishops'] views are made available to the communion as the provinces assess the St. Andrew's Draft," said West Indies Archbishop Drexel Gomez, chairman of the Design Group, in an interview with the Anglican Communion News Service.
While there was a "surprisingly high degree of satisfaction" among the bishops with the current draft, Gomez acknowledged some concerns that arose at Lambeth with the part that "tries to express the interdependence that Anglican churches share around the globe."
Gomez said there was "a very high approval rating" for the ministry of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference, but he noted that the bishops raised questions "about the place of the Anglican Consultative Council, and there were a lot of questions about the role of the Primates' Meeting in Anglican polity." He said such matters would "have to be the object of careful reflection" in the period leading up to the 14th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), the main policy-making body of the Anglican Communion.
The Covenant Design Group will meet in March 2009 to develop a new draft and prepare a report to the ACC for its May 1-12, 2009 meeting in Jamaica.
Meanwhile, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told members of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council October 21 that if a proposed Anglican covenant is released in mid-May for adoption by the Anglican Communion's provinces, she will "strongly discourage" any effort to bring that request to the 76th General Convention in July.
She said that "the time is far too short before our General Convention for us to have a thorough discussion of it as a church and I'm therefore going to strongly discourage any move to bring it to General Convention. I just think it's inappropriate to make a decision that weighty" that quickly.
Gomez said he anticipates it would take three to five years for the provinces to sign up once a final draft was ratified by the ACC. "There is a strong feeling in some parts of the Communion that the covenant, setting out our mutual responsibilities as a family of churches, needs to be in place as quickly as possible -- although there are other voices which still believe we have a way to go before we arrive at a mature text," he said. "The responses of the provinces will give us a clearer idea of what might be possible."
The members of the Covenant Design Group are:
- Archbishop Drexel Gomez (West Indies), chair
- Dr. Victor Atta Baffoe (West Africa)
- Archbishop John Chew (South East Asia)
- Dr. Katherine Grieb (The Episcopal Church)
- Bishop Santosh Marray (Indian Ocean)
- Archbishop John Neill (Ireland)
- Chancellor Rubie Nottage (West Indies) - unable to be present at the Singapore meeting
- Dr. Ephraim Radner (The Episcopal Church)
- Dr. Eileen Scully (Canada)
The full text of Gomez's interview is available here.
A PDF of the Lambeth Commentary is available here.
The Lambeth Commentary (Survey Report) is available here.
Further information about the Anglican covenant is available here.