The Church's One Foundation is NOT an Anglican Covenant

The hymn starts simply:

The Church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.

Sometimes, it seems this is the one foundational fact that gets lost as those who are in positions of power within the church seem to think God needs their masonry skills to lay a new or different foundation. That, I believe, is one of the major flaws with the proposed Anglican Covenant.

In the need to control how the Holy Spirit is speaking in some parts of the Anglican Communion, this covenant threatens to place a gag on any member body that doesn't conform to certain beliefs on the role of women and human sexuality and concentrates power in a central body of bishops.

I have joined with an international team of Episcopal and Anglican bloggers to call on those in the Church of England's General Synod considering this "final draft" of the covenant to pay attention to some of the language in part IV:

(4.2.4) Where a shared mind has not been reached the matter shall be referred to the Standing Committee. The Standing Committee shall make every effort to facilitate agreement, and may take advice from such bodies as it deems appropriate to determine a view on the nature of the matter at question and those relational consequences which may result. Where appropriate, the Standing Committee shall refer the question to both the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting for advice.

(4.2.5) The Standing Committee may request a Church to defer a controversial action. If a Church declines to defer such action, the Standing Committee may recommend to any Instrument of Communion relational consequences which may specify a provisional limitation of participation in, or suspension from, that Instrument until the completion of the process set out below.

(4.2.6) On the basis of advice received from the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting, the Standing Committee may make a declaration that an action or decision is or would be “incompatible with the Covenant”.

Even though the Archbishop of Canterbury maintains this isn't a punitive document, I don't think you can read the above as anything put punishing and punitive. Suddenly, to be "Anglican" means to submit to a central authority, or you are out. That might work for the Pope, but we took care of the question of papal supremacy with the Reformation in England. Would the CoE really want to go backward?

Or as the Rev. Canon Alan Parry, a Canadian priest and canon law expert, notes, "The proposed Anglican Covenant would freeze Anglican theology and Anglican polity at a particular moment." Locking us inside a box is not what Anglicanism is all about!

Though with a scornful wonder men see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder by heresies distressed; yet saints their watch are keeping, their cry goes up, "How long?" and soon the night of weeping shall be the morn of song.

The Archbishop and those who support the Covenant need to back down from this document. Forcing relationship will explode and those members who are currently uncomfortable with each other will only be driven further apart. Our foundation, and our future, should be in Christ, not man-made covenants.