Bishops’ approval of Covenant hangs in the balance

by Bill Bowder
31 October, 2008

THE RESPONSES of the bishops at the Lambeth Conference to the Anglican Covenant were made public last week by the Covenant Design Group. More than half the bishops said they believed that the current draft hit the right balance between interdependence and centralisation in the Anglican Communion.

A Lambeth Commentary on the Saint Andrew’s Draft for an Anglican Communion runs to 33 pages, and was compiled by the Covenant Design Group at its meeting in Singapore in September. It gathers up the views of the bishops who attended Lambeth, and sets out the group’s brief reaction to them. The group has circulated it to all the provinces of the Communion, in order “to assist in their discernment and response” to the Covenant. They have until 9 March to respond.

Provinces are being asked whether they can “in principle” commit themselves to the Covenant process. The Design Group is seeking to find out what this would involve for the provinces, and whether they require significant changes to be made to the draft to help it through their syn­odical processes. the rest