The House of Bishops is meeting this week. Among the topics of conversation is the proposed Anglican Covenant. Bishop Kirk Smith live-tweeted the first set of conversations: Bishop Smith’s tweets. There’s also a brief and not very informative report from ENS.
But there have been other developments in recent months. The Church of Ireland held a colloquium recently with papers for and against, as well as proposals for that Church’s response. The papers are well-worth reading. The full report is here.
For background, Kate Turner’s essay is helpful. Jonathan Chatworthy argues against the covenant with several salient points. Among them, he argues that the definition of the church put forward in the document is “far too steeped in Reformation Protestantism,” and that the description of Anglicanism put forward in Sections 1-3 would become foundational for Anglicanism. He also argues convincingly that it would lead to centralization of power, limit provincial autonomy, and have dire implications for local initiative, theological development, and ecumenical efforts.
Chatworthy sees the covenant as introducing something quite new to Anglicanism–revolutionary, in fact. He describes the approach of classical Anglicanism in the following terms:
Classic Anglicans, on the other hand, expect the insights of modern research to shed light on current church debates. The way to resolve disagreements is to allow the different points of view to be publicly expressed, defended and criticised. Debate should continue until consensus is reached. Any attempt by church authorities to curtail debate and impose their own view would be to abuse power and suppress the search for truth.
For Classic Anglicans, therefore, the Covenant is equally unsatisfactory but for the opposite reason: not because it does not draw a clear enough line between two kinds of Anglican, but because it proposes to draw any line at all. The Covenant is at fault for seeking to pre-empt theological agreement by ecclesiastical decree.
His description of the way power is deployed in the covenant is illuminating:
Critics point out that it is like a school playground. You are free to do whatever you like, but if you don’t do what we tell you we’ll all walk away and we’ll have nothing more to do with you. At the very least it’s a power game.
If that’s not enough for you, the Church Times has produced a handy guide to the covenant: Anglican Covenant_18 March. Church of England dioceses are beginning to weigh in as well. The Diocese of Litchfield approved it; the Diocese of Wakefield rejected it.
Another view against it from Nathaniel Rugh: rugh_case.
Preaching Grace on the Square 
Two additional passages from Chatworthy’s paper struck me as particularly relevant:
1. The Covenant text is often unclear. Key concepts like “faith”, “communion” and “shared mind” are undefined. If the Covenant is adopted, appeals to the Standing Committee will lead to debates about the precise meanings of terms. Over time a body of literature will develop to interpret it. We shall become increasingly dependent on lawyers. … I therefore see the Covenant as an administrator’s way of concluding a theological disagreement without addressing the theological issues. We shall carry on disagreeing, but with bigger sticks to hit each other with.
2. His advice to the Irish Church also applies to TEC: “Whether you sign the Covenant or not, you can change your mind later. But there the symmetry ends. Presumably you don’t want to be excluded from the international structures where you are in the habit of punching above your weight. If you sign, you will increase the chance that the Covenant comes into effect. Once it has come into effect, if you then decide either to leave, or to reject a Standing Committee recommendation, you will find yourselves excluded. Your relationship to the other Anglican provinces will be, as the Archbishop of Canterbury put it, “not unlike that between the Church of England and the Methodist Church”. And as you know, sad though it is, Methodists are not Anglicans. You get the message.
On the other hand, if you decide not to sign, that will encourage other provinces not to sign and you will increase the chance that the Covenant will not come into effect. In that case you can carry on playing your impressive part in the Communion’s affairs without any threats from recommendations or relational consequences. Of course if you don’t sign, the Covenant may yet come into effect without you, though I think it unlikely. If that happened you would be excluded, but there would be nothing to stop you changing your mind and signing up later if you considered it the right thing to do.
As I see it, over and above the ecclesiastical politics, there is a matter of theological principle at stake. I hope you will stand up for Classic Anglicanism, with its open, inclusive and tolerant agenda. The way to do it is to say no to the Anglican Covenant.”