Rowan Williams defends the Anglican Covenant

Here are notes taken during Rowan Williams defense of the Anglican Covenant today at the ACC meeting in Jamaica:

The AC suffers from a lack of clarity of what kind of fellowship its meant to be. So long as we have that unclarity we will be unclear about what we really mean by church. The AC has never called itself a church. Yet as a world wide communion, it has claimed for itself that it is precisely more than just an assembly of local churches. It has tried go behave in a church like way. Do we want to be a communion behaving in a church like way with some sacraments, ministry, and doctrine, with some clarity …or do we want to operate in a way where Anglicanism is a far more dispersed family …where we no longer act like a unit in the Anglican world. I am not persuaded by that case but its there. It is possible to think about and Anglican future where churches exist in a vague global cluster with no organs for acting together. That is a very significant step away from what we have regular assumed about the communion. I maintain that something more “covenantal” is needed.

We are not quite sure what sort of church we believe in for ourselves. Its not as though we had a stead state of Anglican identity. Its not as though if we did nothing it would just go on. I believe our choices re between those two poles – more or less cohesiveness. I want to see a communion that is more cohesiveness and theologically self aware. That is why we’ve got these questions.

What is not clear is whether The Episcopal Church representation will succeed in basically shelving the Covenant for years until years after the Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori leaves office.

Tip of the Tinfoil to RL.