Sunday, June 10, 2007

The Modern Churchpeople's Union responds to the Draft Anglican Covenant

http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/3525/

[TitusOneNine] 10 June 2007--We oppose the Draft Anglican Covenant on the grounds that

• it would transform the Windsor process from admonition and counsel into an unprecedented and unjustifiable ecclesiastical coup d'état;

• its central proposal is to transfer power from the presently autonomous Provinces to a Meeting of the 38 Primates. The ambiguity of the text leaves open the possibility that this power would be unlimited, unaccountable, and irreversible;

• the consequences of this development for Anglican theology and polity, and for ecumenical agreements, would be extensive and have scarcely been explored;

• the proposed innovation in granting juridical power to the Primates’ Meeting would be a distortion and not a legitimate development in Anglican ecclesiology;

• the consultative processes and time table are wholly inadequate and in particular they completely marginalise the voice of the laity;

• the proposals have not been adequately justified in their own terms (the creation of trust) nor in the wider terms of better ordering and facilitating the mission of the Church;

• and yet Anglicanism has a rich storehouse of dispersed authority, of hospitality, mutual respect and trusting co-operation, of valuing difference and openness to new developments, of the honest and open search for truth, all of which can provide analternative to the Draft Anglican Covenant as grounds for hope for the future....

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