That's My Church!

From the Diocese of Virginia:

In the fall of 2006, a Covenant Design Group was appointed by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to create a Draft Covenant for the member Churches of the Anglican Communion. In the Group’s report, issued to the primates of the Anglican Communion at their annual meeting in Tanzania in February, the Group affirmed that the Covenant should be designed “to hold together and strengthen the life of the Communion.” They also recognized that “while a definite text which held all such elements in balance might take time to develop in the life of the Communion, there was also an urgent need to re-establish trust between the churches of the Communion.” Keeping the content and urgency in mind, the Design Group released a seven section draft on Feb. 19. The sections address topics including common catholicity and confession of faith; Anglican vocation; unity and common life; and common commitments.

The Executive Council of The Episcopal Church will create a response to the Draft Covenant at its October 2007 meeting. The Council wants the input of the people of the Episcopal Church in creating this response, and so Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson appointed an ad hoc Committee of Executive Council to develop a study guide of the Covenant.

Clicky the link above to get at the Draft Covenant and the accompanying study guide. They'll be attached to the May 3 news item. (Warning - they're in pdf format and I haven't found any better links to them.)

I've only scanned the docs very, very briefly, so don't have much of an initial opinion.

We're having a pair of meetings in my parish later this month so that people can offer their input. Although I feel obligated to go and toss in my two cents, the cynic in me says that this isn't going to make a single damn bit of difference: TEC is going to serve up whatever the gang at 815 decide. However, by going through this exercise, they probably hope to add a democratic veneer to it.

I've noticed in discussions of late the renewed emphasis on the fact that TEC is nominally governed from the bottom up, not the other way around like most members of the Communion. I've also noticed a new meme to the effect that the Communion is a relatively new arrangement and that nobody has ever really taken the time to sort out exactly what membership in it means.

IMHO, both of these talking points are designed to condition our flock into thinking that if TEC "needs to be in another place," then really it won't be all that bad a thing anyway, since we're a group of enlightened thinkers and they're all just a pack of imperialist crypto-Roman zombies.

"You SPOKE to Bishop Akinola?"