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VirtueOnline - News - Exclusives - The Covenant is Dead. Long Live the Jerusalem Declaration:
It should be apparent by now to most Anglicans that the Covenant - the brainchild of the Archbishop of Canterbury - designed to hold the communion together, is dead in the water. The proposed Covenant that was designed, in some sense, to hold the world-wide Anglican Communion together amid divisions over homosexuality and same sex unions has, to all intents and purposes, failed.
The Covenant will be presented at TEC's GC2012 in Indianapolis, but there is little hope for its passage. Liberals and revisionists alike will trash it as they balk at any attempt to hold them accountable with disciplinary Section 4 hanging over them like a Damoclean Sword. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has already declared that the Covenant is "past its shelf life" which is surely the kiss of death. Few if any in the HOB or HOD will challenge her.
Among the many reasons it has gone the way of the Dodo bird is that those who read it thought it ceded too much power to the Archbishop of Canterbury who might act in a papal like manner by declaring who was in violation of the Covenant and then act accordingly. But that would require a set of ecclesiastical cojones he does not possess nor would exercise even if he had them. Dr. Williams' style has never been confrontational or coercive. He has preferred to raise questions he would not answer.
Of course no one can tell a partnership of autonomous provinces with some theological diversity what to do and think. The Anglican Communion is not the Roman Catholic Church with Papal authority backed up by a Magisterium to deal with "scandalous and ungodly behavior". The Anglican Communion is more of a federation tied loosely together by the 39 Articles of Faith, Holy Scripture (when it is not being disemboweled on a phallic revisionist cross), a creed (that many bishops say with their fingers crossed behind their cassocks), and a neutered Prayer Book.
The truth is the covenant has been trounced in one diocese after another in the UK and USA. It is a death by a thousand cuts. A majority of diocesan synods have defeated the Covenant which means that it cannot be debated by General Synod - the diocesan synods have killed it by a majority of roughly 2 to 1.
Canon lawyer Allan Haley said the Covenant was designed to resolve disputes and strengthen unity, yet it is clear that Anglicans do not do "punitive action" (or unity) very well: we do not even do suspension, preferring instead the euphemistic "withdraw from public ministry". So we can forget anathematization or excommunication.
It is more than probable that when Dr. Williams exits as Archbishop of Canterbury in December, the Covenant will finally die with him. If all 38 Provinces in the Communion do not unanimously approve the Covenant, it cannot be authoritatively accepted.
THE JERUSALEM DECLARATION
By contrast, the Jerusalem Declaration is explicit where the Covenant is implicit. The Declaration affirms: "We rejoice in the gospel of God through which we have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God's Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today. We gladly proclaim and submit to the unique and universal Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, humanity's only Saviour from sin, judgment and hell, who lived the life we could not live and died the death that we deserve. Not least the Declaration acknowledge God's creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married."
The last sentence is the clincher as it separates the covenant from the GAFCON Declaration.
The liberal progressive, revisionist western Anglican provinces would never sign on to such a statement. That is the very reason why it should be on the agenda and pushed in London this week. It is the only hope for the Anglican Communion.
'via Blog this'
