Defeat for Archbishop as Covenant draft is rejected

Monday, 11th May 2009
By George Conger

The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) will not endorse the Anglican Covenant, and has voted to send it back to committee for further review. The vote comes as a major defeat for the Archbishop of Canterbury who had championed the covenant as the one way to keep the Anglican Communion from splitting. However the defeat was self-inflicted, as Dr Rowan Williams’ ambiguous intervention in the closing moments of the debate led to the loss.

Delegates adopted a compromise resolution, whose provisions Dr Williams had rejected at the start of the May 8 debate but backed by its end, to appoint a committee to review and revise section 4 of the covenant and report its recommendations to the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and the ACC for adoption. A process, the ACC’s secretary general Canon Kenneth Kearon said would likely take up to year to bring to fruition.

Questions of treachery and incompetence were lodged against Dr Williams by conservative members of the ACC in interviews with Religious Intelligence following the vote, but the next day softened to exasperation with the archbishop’s ambiguous way of speaking that critics said was unsuited to the political rough and tumble of a meeting where many delegates had limited English-language abilities. the rest

BabyBlueOnline: Anglican Covenant now back in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury