¨YES to the Anglican Communion; NO to the Anglican Covenant¨ -- UPDATED DIOCESE VOTING from the Church of England

Four more Church of England dioceses:  No Anglican Covenant

¨Six more Church of England dioceses voted on the Anglican Covenant today. Two voted to support it and four voted against, bringing the total to 10 for and 17 against. If a majority of the dioceses (23 of 44) vote for the Covenant, the motion to adopt it will return to the General Synod in July. If at least half (22) vote against, the motion to adopt cannot return to General Synod in the current quinquennium.

Across all 27 dioceses, the votes by houses look like this:

Bishops: 82.0% for, 10.0% against, 8.0% abstentions

Clergy: 44.6% for, 50.8% against, 4.7% abstentions

Laity: 50.1% for, 45.2% against, 4.7% abstentions

Comparing against last week's figures, one can see that support is dropping in all houses, opposition is growing, and confidence is growing (judging by the declining number of abstentions) except in the House of Bishops.

The bishops seem very much out of touch with the rest of the Church. Clergy and laity are almost evenly split for/against. It's clear that the arguments for the Covenant are not convincing at all. The clergy are decidedly against, and the laity hardly overwhelmingly for.

Overall: 48.4% for, 46.8% against, 4.8% abstentions

Overall (clergy and laity only): 47.6% for, 47.7% against, 4.7% abstentions

·  Thanks to The No Anglican Covenant Coalition, HERE

http://blog.noanglicancovenant.org/

LAY ANGLICANA: ¨Yes to the Anglican Communion; No to the Anglican Covenant¨

‘We don’t want the Covenant. We do want the Communion.’*

¨...So what does the Covenant really say, should you vote yes or should you vote no? Alan Perry (a Canadian archeacon with a background in canon law, in case you do not already know his blog) has written tirelessly about every conceivable aspect of all four sections of the Covenant. Here he writes on ‘A Tale of Two Covenants’ HERE . And  HERE he writes about the frequent problem that those who are in favour of the Covenant often seem to read into its text provisions which sound attractive but are not actually in the printed text.

The Revd Tobias Haller, an American priest, has also blogged at length about the Covenant,  HERE on possible alternatives. He concludes: ‘the proposed Anglican Covenant is not the way forward for the Anglican Communion, either as a Communion, or for the sake of its members, or for our ecumenical relationships.’

Finally, in the words of *Kelvin Holdsworth of the diocese of Glasgow and Galloway HERE  :

‘We don’t want the Covenant. We do want the Communion.’

· Thanks to Lay Anglicana: ¨Yes to the Anglican Communion and no to the Anglican Covenant¨ please read it all,  HERE

ARE YOU IN OR OUT OF THE ANGLICAN FAMILY? A covenant mandated ´house cleaning´ is in order and Bishops Drexel Gomez and Gregory K. Cameron intend for it to be so!



THE WORDS OF ARCHBISHOP DREXEL GOMEZ: The Anglican Covenant Design Group ¨family¨ knows who should stay in the Anglican ¨family¨and who ought go!! 

“...in many families, you remain in the family but you can’t stay in the house because your presence in the home is a bad example to other young people, and so you are forced to move out because what you are doing is an offense to the integrity of the family.”  Archbishop Drexel Gomez, co-Chairperson of the Covenant Design Group (along with Bishop Gegrory K. Cameron)

¨In the most recent St. Andrews Draft of the covenant, provinces would pledge to uphold historic Christian faith inherited by Anglicanism and to promote and proclaim the Biblically-based Gospel through mission.


Archbishop Drexel Gomez, Chairperson of the Anglican Covenant Design Group: ¨...constitutional autonomy of provinces exists within a larger framework of communion that sets limits on that autonomy.¨

Signers of the covenant, Gomez explained, are called on to pledge themselves to the understanding that the Anglican Communion requires mutual accountability among provinces and that the constitutional autonomy of provinces exists within a larger framework of communion that sets limits on that autonomy.

The covenant also would provide a mechanism or process by which provinces, once they have signed the covenant, could be determined to have violated the covenant and, thus, to be deemed to have removed themselves from the Communion...¨ please read it all,  HERE

UPDATE:

Archbishop, I beg to differ

The Archbishop of Canterbury is clearly anxious that the Covenant project is endangered in England. There is still a long way to go and neither side can be confident of victory for a few more weeks.

So, to shore up support, Rowan Williams has had to put out an appeal on YouTube HERE. He has also sent it to those Dioceses which have yet to vote on the Covenant and asked diocesan officers to circulate it.

What's the problem?
What sort of future?

The Archbishop is asking us to accept a vision of the future of the Anglican Communion that I, for one, simply and fundamentally disagree with. I disagree with the diagnosis of the problem that the Covenant is trying to resolve and I disagree with the medicine. I accept I can't offer an alternative blueprint but I also know there are much more creative and constructive alternatives to blueprints.


I think that the immediate problem the Covenant is seeking to resolve is the perceived arrogance and exceptionalism of The Episcopal Church (US) evinced in the decision to officially regard a same-sex relationship as not in itself a bar to ordination or preferment in the Church - and the choice of 'The Episcopal Church' as its official name as symbolically annoying - without consulting the rest of the Communion...¨ please read it all,  by Paul Bagshaw HERE

·  Thanks to Not the same stream, sidebar
·  Thanks to Paul Bagshaw
·  Thanks to The No Anglican Covenant -- Comprehensive Unity

ROWAN WILLIAMS GOES TO ROME TO PRAY WITH THE POPE ON SATURDAY (the rest of Anglicandom will be watching six English diocese synods vote pro Anglican Covenant or Against and praying with one another)

¨The Archbishop of Canterbury saw fit to upload a video on 5 March in which his usual charm is nowhere to be seen.¨

The Right Hon. Gentleman is afraid of an election is he?… Afraid? Frightened? Frit? Couldn’t take it? Couldn’t stand it?*

¨...The most exciting spectator sport on offer this Saturday, 10 March 2012, is the Pro Anglican Covenant v Anti Anglican Covenant encounter being played out in another six diocesan synods across the land. These are exceptional times we live in – it has been said (rather rudely) that a deanery synod is a collection of people waiting to go home, and I have not heard that diocesan synods are any more gripping. But, if you have any imagination at all, this contest should have you on the edge of your seats with excitement.


Let us recap the current state of play (since we seem to be stuck in sporting metaphors). Voting on whether the Church of England should or should not adopt the Anglican Covenant has been rolling out in the dioceses since 12 March 2011 when (we hope prophetically) Wakefield rejected it. Since then, a further 20 dioceses have voted. The tally is currently 13 against the Covenant, 8 in favour.


I think it is probably fair to say that the results so far have been a great surprise to everyone. The Church of England hierarchy has certainly been taken aback by the strength of feeling in the country against it. The Archbishop of Canterbury saw fit to upload a video on 5 March in which his usual charm is nowhere to be seen. This feels like being reprimanded in the headmaster’s study: HERE

·  Thanks to Lay Anglicana, sidebar

http://blog.noanglicancovenant.org/

* ”Prime Minister’s Question Time, House of Commons (19 April, 1983). The use of ‘frit’, an unusual Lincolnshire dialect abbreviation of ‘frightened’ which Mrs Thatcher evidently recalled from childhood, was missed by MPs in a noisy chamber but heard very distinctly on the audio feed from the chamber” (Wikipedia)

PRESS RELEASE -- NO ANGLICAN COVENANT -- NEW PATRONS: ¨ "An Anglican Covenant would impose a legalistic and damaging uniformity on the rich diversity of the autonomous national churches of the Anglican Communion,”

New Patrons from New Zealand, Australia and England

LONDON – No Anglican Covenant Coalition Moderator, the Revd Dr Lesley Crawley, has announced the appointment of three new patrons:

· The Rt Revd James White, Assistant Bishop of Auckland, Anglican Church Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia;


· Dr Muriel Porter, OAM, journalist and author, Anglican Church of Australia; [wikipedia]

· The Revd Canon Dr Sarah Coakley, Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, Cambridge University, Church of England. [wikipedia]

“I’m absolutely thrilled to welcome Bishop White, Dr Porter and Prof Coakley into this role with the coalition,” said Crawley. “We now have patrons from four provinces of the Anglican Communion, which indicates the breadth of concern about the centralization involved in the proposed Anglican Covenant.”

The Revd Canon Dr Sarah Coakley

“The future of the Anglican Communion depends on genuine, God given ‘bonds of affection,’ and nothing more or less,” according to Bishop White. “The proposed Anglican Covenant is an attempt to get the toothpaste back in the tube with a spatula, and it won’t work.”

Dr Muriel Porter

"An Anglican Covenant would impose a legalistic and damaging uniformity on the rich diversity of the autonomous national churches of the Anglican Communion,” said Dr Porter. “Those churches would lose the freedom to respond prophetically to the Spirit of God as a sign to other churches, as many did over the issue of women clergy. Further, it would threaten our cherished synodical governance."

“The disturbing theological vacuity of the Covenant document nonetheless comes with a hidden iron fist: do not be misled by its rhetoric of friendly collaboration between national churches,” according to Prof Coakley. “The Covenant bespeaks a quite different ecclesiology from that of Cranmer's ‘blessed company of all faithful people,’ and profoundly alters what it means to be Anglican. The deepest theological challenges of our day cannot be answered by hapless bureaucratic manipulations of our theological tradition.”

Today’s appointments bring the total number of No Anglican Covenant Coalition patrons to seven. The previously appointed patrons are:

· The Rt Revd Peter Selby, retired Bishop of Worcester, Church of England;

· The Rt Revd John Saxbee, retired Bishop of Lincoln, Church of England;

· Dr Diarmaid MacCulloch, Kt, Professor of the History of the Church and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford University;

· The Revd Dr Marilyn McCord Adams, Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, former Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford University.

To date, the proposed Anglican Covenant has been approved by eight dioceses of the Church of England (Lichfield; Durham; Europe; Bristol; Canterbury; Winchester; Sheffield; Bradford) and rejected by 13 (Wakefield; St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich; Truro; Birmingham; Derby; Gloucester; Portsmouth; Rochester; Salisbury; Leicester; Sodor and Man; Chelmsford; Hereford). Approval by 23 diocesan synods is required for the Covenant to return to General Synod. Rejection by 22 dioceses would effectively derail approval of the Covenant by the Church of England.

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition is an international group of Anglicans concerned about how the proposed Anglican Covenant will radically change the nature of the Anglican Communion.

COPREHENSIVE UNITY -- NO ANGLICAN COVENANT: ¨ ....conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms are inherently a good thing. But best practice surely entails parties entering into the process voluntarily and with no threat of sanction.¨

¨The fact is we disagree so passionately precisely because all participants in the debate love the Communion.¨

What is not being said about the Covenant?

NOTE: The following is a small segment of a concluding statement taken out of the essay  ¨What is not being said about the Covenant?¨  by Paul Bagshaw. 

The fact is we disagree so passionately precisely because all participants in the debate love the Communion.

¨....We do not want to see the Communion held to ransom by provinces in one part of the world who disagree with what is happening in another. Those opposed to the Covenant value the Communion we have inherited and do not want to see its 'bonds of affection' replaced by a single, centralising, coercive, excommunicatory Anglican constitution.

To the contrary: we wish to reaffirm the Communion's traditional mutual regard, its rich diversity, its varied traditions, its mutual aid and mutual criticism, its awkward dispersed authority and its uneveness of orders.

For all these reasons we reject the Covenant.¨  please read it all, by Paul Bagshaw, HERE

·  Thanks to Not the same stream, sidebar
·  Thanks to Paul Bagshaw

THE ANGLICAN COVENANT: It´s a dangerous and open-ended bamboozlement!

A warning message from the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO)

·  Thanks to Mail Today

ALL OF OUR BEST ANGELS, BISHOP MARTIN BARAHONA and GRANDMERE MIMI APPROVE THIS MESSAGE: ¨Why do we need another covenant?¨ BREAKING NEWS -- Church of England dioceses of Chelmsford and Hereford vote NO on Covenant!

WHY DO WE NEED ANOTHER COVENANT?

“The Windsor Report,” he said. 

“It’s just a report. When did it become like The Bible?

 The Covenant.

Why do we need another covenant? We have the Baptismal Covenant. We have the creeds. What else do we need?”

Archbishop Martin Barahona, Bishop of El Salvador and Primate Emeritus of Central America

Elizabeth I and Grandmère Mimi endorse this message  (Angels, both seen and unseen, told me)

No Anglican Covenant: Church of England diocese of Sodor and Man Vote Against the Covenant

Sodor and Man Vote Against the Covenant

¨The Church of England Diocese of Sodor and Man has just voted on whether to send the Anglican Covenant back to the General Synod for final approval. As 10 English dioceses have done before it, the diocesan synod voted against the Covenant.

Of the 44 dioceses, 11 have voted against the Covenant, and 7 have voted for it.

Recall that majority votes are required both of clergy of laity for the measure to pass. The voting was as follows: Bishops—1 for, 0 against, 0 abstentions; Clergy—5 for, 12 against, 0 abstentions; Laity—21 for, 15 against, 1 abstention. HERE

·  Thanks to The diocese of Sodor and Man, Church of England
·  Thanks to Anglicans for Comprehensive Unity, sidebar
·  Thanks to The No Anglican Covenant Coalition, sidebar
·  Thanks to Wikipedia

http://blog.noanglicancovenant.org/

IN ORDER TO DEPOSE OUR FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT: The Moral Authority of Mormon and Roman Catholic Bishops and Their Evangelical Pals

¨A Moral Authority¨

¨It’s like a bad joke opening, “Two Roman Catholics and a Mormon walk into a bar and demand that all the women stop using contraception...”

To make the joke complete let's examine the “moral authority” credentials of these three clowns and that of the "religious authorities" who want to make religion – say the “issue” that President Obama is not a “real Christian," or he is “anti-religious freedom" – an election year talking point.

Who is it that claims this moral authority and that also demands to be taken seriously? Why the Roman Catholic bishops and a former Mormon missionary of course!

I didn’t bring this up, they did! So cool your jets everyone who only wants religion to be respected and never criticized, even when that "religion" plays hardball politics.

Who are these paragons of tolerance demanding that the rest of us respect the reclassification of robbing women of their right to use contraceptives as “religious freedom?”

Using religion as an election issue in order to depose our first black president.

Back to our “two Catholics and a Mormon walk into a bar,” or rather back to Newt, Mitt and Rick walk into a bar. So what about the moral authority of the religious bodies they are "defending" -- as a way to actually attack the President? They brought religion up so lets talk about it! What right do they or their bishops have to lecture the rest of us?

When Mitt was working for his church as a missionary he was working for a church that at that time banned black men from being ministers.

When Newt and Rick speak for their church’s tender conscience on not being forced to insure women’s health, they are speaking for a church body run by old men who have presided over 50 years of covering up child abuse, sexual molestation and the codling of fascist regimes from Franco to Mussolini.

Like I said, this may be impolite to mention but the rest of us didn’t start talking about religion as an election issue in order to depose our first black president.

And what of the fellow traveler evangelicals ready to yell that they may be "personally" for "allowing" women to use contraception but that they just want to "defend religious liberty?"

Aren't they the people spouting anti-Muslim nonsense from coast to coast? Aren't they the people trying to ban gay men and women from marrying? These evangelicals seem eager to strip lots of people of actual rights these days while crying wolf about their own.

Like they say, people who live in class houses shouldn't throw stones. If the bishops want this fight, bring it on!...¨   please read it all, HERE  (photos and color emphasis added by Leonardo Ricardo)

Frank Schaeffer is a writer. He is just launching a speaking tour called Theocracy or Democracy.

·  Thanks to Frank Schaeffer, sidebar
·  Thanks to MSNBC, photo