Chaos as ACC battle on Covenant Plan

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[Anglican Mainstream] 15 May 2009--The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) will not endorse the Anglican Covenant and has voted to send it back to committee for further review. The vote comes as a major defeat for the Archbishop of Canterbury who had championed the Covenant as the one way to keep the Anglican Communion from splitting.

However the defeat appears self-inflicted, as Dr Rowan Williams’ ambiguous intervention in the closing moments of the Covenant debate confused some delegates, and resulted in the adoption of a compromise resolution that holds off acceptance of the Covenant until a new committee reviews and revises the disciplinary provisions in section 4 of the agreement —- a process ACC secretary general Canon Kenneth Kearon said could take up to a year.

Questions of perfidy and incompetence were lodged against Dr Williams by conservative members of the ACC in inter views with The Church of England Newspaper immediately following the vote. But the anger with Dr Williams’ performance softened to exasperation by the following day for some conservative delegates to the May 2-12 meeting.

Delegates from the Church of Nigeria stated they were perplexed by Dr Williams having endorsed the Covenant at the start of the debate, and then apparently reversing himself and backing the call for delay by the end of the session.

Originally published in The Church of England Newspaper.