Covenant is flawed and colonialist, says GAFCON

25 July, 2008
by Ed Beavan

THE GAFCON group has rejected the St Andrew’s draft text of the Anglican Covenant, describing it as “seriously limited and severely flawed”.

The draft forms the latest version of the document which is being considered by the Lambeth Conference as a means to steer the Communion through its current difficulties.

The GAFCON response comes at the same time as its reply to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s comments on GAFCON’s Jerusalem Statement (News, 4 July).

The GAFCON Theological Resource Team says the document is “defective”, “theologically incoherent” and its proposals are “unwork-able”. Their response alleges seven serious theological flaws in the draft, the first being that it does not recognise “the mischief it seeks to address”, which they describe as “a crisis of obedience to scripture . . . or apostasy”, prompted by the “determined departures from the teaching of scripture on human sexuality by the Episcopal Church [in the US] and the Anglican Church of Canada”. the rest