By Covenant Design Group members Ephraim Rader and Katharine Grieb

March 19, 2007, Camp Allen, Navasota, Texas

I want briefly to say something about the Covenant's origins in a practical sense, and then move on to its rationale and content. As most of us know, the proposal for an Anglican Covenant derives almost exclusively from the Windsor Report itself (see e.g. par. 118-120). The proposal came in the context of the Report's recommendations to enhance the unity of the Anglican Communion: ''This Commission recommends, therefore, and urges the primates to consider, the adoption by the churches of the Communion of a common Anglican Covenant which would make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between the churches of the Communion'' (118). Several things about such a covenant were noted in the Report, and the ''draft'' of a possible covenant was included in the Report as an appendix and, in a sense, a ''discussion-starter''.

When the primates met later at Dromantine (2005) and received the Windsor Report, they affirmed the general idea of an Anglican Covenant (as did Gen. Convention in June, in Resolution A166). In the course of the next year, some initial work, in an ad hoc way, was done by gathering some local people in Britain to think about general aspects one might have to deal with if this idea were to go forward (''Towards an Anglican Covenant'', paper presented to and commended by the Joint Standing Committees of ACC and Primates, March, 2006).

The big push for the Covenant came in June '06 with the appearance of Abp. Rowan Williams' piece ''Challenge and Hope of Being and Anglican Today''. In this essay, disseminated as a general letter to the ''faithful'' of the Communion, Williams lifted up the idea of a common Anglican Covenant as ''the best way forward'' for the Communion's restored integrity and future. He suggested, furthermore, that the Covenant could act as the main element by which the Communion would be ecclesially reordered through a mechanism by which churches, in way yet undefined, could freely choose to adopt the Covenant or not.

A good number of responses to the idea now came in from around Communion (indeed, they had already begun to appear after the Windsor Report's initial publication). Some were critical of the idea altogether, others were cautiously encouraging of it, others offered general suggestions, and finally some provided fully-tailored proposals. In the Fall of '06 a Covenant Design Group of 10 persons was chosen by Abp. Williams, with nominees having been solicited from all the provinces. The members of this group included Primates, clergy, and laypersons, men and women, from around the Communion (although three were not able to attend for personal reasons). They were charged with meeting, reviewing the entire question of the Covenant idea in any way they chose, and reporting to the Primates' Tanzania meeting in February.

The Design Group met over four days in January of '07, and from this meeting proceeded a surprising outcome: after one day of intense discussion and prayer, common agreement about a way forward was reached. We agreed, in fact, that an Anglican Covenant was desirable on a certain basis, and that it was doable in terms of its articulation, again, on a certain basis. After another three days of actual drafting, the Design Group wrote a report and a complete draft Covenant that they presented to the Primates. This report and draft together was commended by Primates, and it is this document that they have offered to the Communion for discussion and response. My understanding is that the Executive Council, through an appropriate committee, will soon be putting out a study guide, as it were, to the Covenant, for church-wide dissemination during the summer, and will then issue a final response, ratified by the Executive Council, in October.

On the basis of comments received through the course of this year from around the Communion, the Covenant Design Group will prepare a revised draft to be presented to Lambeth '08, where it may be considered - and probably amended - for dissemination to the Provinces of the Communion. This process and timetable is important, among other things, for the way that it provides the markers for the ''interim'' recommendations offered by the Primates in their Communiqué.

Do we have precedents for an Anglican Covenant?

Theological rationale for a Covenant among churches is broad, and stretches back to the earliest days of the Church, when James, Peter, John, and Paul formally agree - in ''communion'' - to their respective ''trusts'' and mutual responsibilities, including care for the saints in Jerusalem (Gal. 2:7-10). Obviously, there are a host Scriptural realities regarding covenant - God's own with creation, with individuals, with Israel, and in Christ - that bear on this question essentially. And human relations, such as marriage, are more than marginal to the discussion.

The kind of covenant we are talking about, however, has more practical precedents. One part lies in ecumenical life - i.e. covenant agreements between separated churches, such as among some Anglicans and Lutherans. It is important to see that these covenants have been fueled explicitly by the deeper desire to restore broken Christian communion. And it is ''communion'' which, theologically, the Design Group has asserted lies at the theological basis of any covenant, as we state in the Draft's introduction. And even though we call agreements as, for example, the one we have made with the Lutherans ''full communion'', they really are not yet that. For these agreements still lack many ingredients we have assumed and indeed practiced within the Anglican Communion as in fact embodying communion: not only mutually recognized ministries, and shared sacraments, but common and accountable counsel, the accountable (and in this sense ''binding'') sharing of resources including financial resources, and finally, the ultimate act of communion, martyrdom in the service of the other. The last of these, obviously, represents the lived missionary and diaconal heritage of the Communion's churches, and distinguishes these churches in their common life from all other ecclesial relations. It was precisely from this vision of communion that the great 1963 Anglican Congress in Toronto formulated its principles of ''Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence'', adopted by the 1968 Lambeth Conference (Res. 67) and the Episcopal Church (most recently in A166 this past June).

Within the Communion, covenants articulated on this general basis already exist between individual churches, and in a way that is meant to reflect a deeper pre-existing reality. I am referring especially to those Covenant Agreements in effect between TEC and various ''autonomous'' churches once a part of the Episcopal Church's missionary structures, e.g. Liberia, Mexico, Philippines, and so on. These covenants, some with time-frames of several decades, commit the Episcopal Church and their particular partners to specific actions and attitudes with regard to money and ministerial cooperation, but also with regard to common counsel (allowing, in some cases, bishops of foreign churches to take their place ''collegially'' within the HoB). They involve, as in the case of the Covenant with the church in the Philippines, a ''mutual reaffirmation'' of a ''common tradition and heritage'' that, very precisely, derives from an intertwined history of life and death in the service of Christ. Finally, they place concrete demands upon covenanting partners, as in the case with the Anglican Church in Central America, binding agreements regarding financial accountability and forms of behavior. In one case (e.g. the Philippines), the covenant in question is explicitly stated as deriving from the reality of the Anglican Communion's life itself.

It is this sense of ''communion'' - a word specifically used by William White to locate the Anglican character of the new Episcopal Church's life in America in the late 18th century -- that lies behind the American church's willingness, indeed positive desire, to tie the parameters of our ''doctrine, discipline, and worship'' in essential matters to the Church of England (BCP Preface). She it was who guarded - indeed, by threatened sanction - our confession of the Apostles' Creed, demanding that we replace the article on Christ's ''descent into hell'' which the proposed Prayer Book had excised, and exercised constraint on a number of other topics as well.

That TEC has entered into covenants with other Anglican churches is, therefore, beyond doubt, and on mutually restraining and binding bases on a number of levels. That TEC could enter into a covenant with all the members of Anglican Communion is obviously possible, either through her General Convention (the usual way) or through Executive Council. But should TEC want to do so?

The reasons for Covenanting

Let me turn back to the theological reality of communion. Clearly communion goes beyond the character and details of polity - who tells whom what to do, or who gets to decide what and on what terms, and how it all gets organized. It is my view that communion, understood ecclesially, derives from the particular reality of God's trustworthiness, of God's making and keeping and enacting promises within the world of time and space. Indeed, this is what a ''covenant'' is from God's side: promise-making and promise-keeping in the world. And this is not just my own view. The casualty of the present turmoil in the Anglican Communion, the element whose suffering has caused the demise of communion most clearly, is that of trust, according to the Windsor Report, Rowan Williams, and the Primates themselves. Trust has suffered in our communion because we have made promises and have not kept them; because we are called to make promises and refuse to do so; because we demand promises from others that we know they will never accept because we ourselves would never do the same. The ''illness'' of our communion is the loss of trust among us, as both WR and Communiqué (9) tell us, because trust is communion's foundation.

For God's promises have in mind our own communion with God, and the tearing down of promises one to another represents a rejection of that which makes promising even possible. The fundamental promise of God is that of ''communion'', as the Introduction to the Proposed Covenant states, communion with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ (1 Jn. 1;3); it is a communion that is based on God's ''faithful calling'' of each of us, and all of us together (1 Cor. 1:9). This communion or fellowship is the promise - the calling - and it is trustworthy, because God is "faithful'', faithful enough to give His own Son, His own self, into the hands of sinful people, out of love. And in this, trustworthy promise of communion is at the foundation of all of God's purposes, for God's good will and pleasure is to ''gather all things in heaven and on earth'' together in this self-giving Christ (Eph. 1:9f.).

To get a sense of where this takes us, practically, I recommend Rowan Williams' short newspaper piece on ''Why the AC matters'' (The Daily Telegraph, Feb. 23, 2007). He explains why ''trust has suffered badly'', as he puts it, and he describes ''what happened in Tanzania'' as ''represent[ing] an effort to define what could restore trust - all round…The leaders of the Communion thought it worth trying - not because enforced unanimity matters more than anything but because the relations and common work of the Communion, especially in the developing world, matter massively. And also because the idea that there might be a worldwide Christian Church that could balance unity and consent seems worth holding on to, for the sake of the whole Christian family and even for the sake of human society itself''. And, ''for the sake'' of all the world only because this is God's way of calling us into the trustworthy love that God has promised - that is, that God has in fact enacted - in Christ death and resurrection, whereby we recognize that ''none of us has ultimate interests and concerns that are exclusively local or personal''. A much earlier discussion of this very perspective can be found in Abp. Michael Ramsey's introduction to the 1963 Anglican Congress Report.

Kathy is going to argue that the meaning of the Covenant, whatever we thought it might have been at one time, has been essentially altered by the Primates' recent Communiqué - and that ''covenant'', read in the light of their requests, is clearly meant in their minds to be a basis for discipline and exclusion, particularly over matters like ways of reading the Bible, teaching and discipline over sexual behavior, and so on.

You need to hear her argument and consider it; but I, for one, could not disagree more strongly: in the first place, those primates present on the Design Group made it clear that the Covenant process and final substance is about a positive commitment, not a disciplinary reaction - that was their word, and if we choose to distrust it, well, that says a lot right there; second, the Primates themselves, as I assume Bp. Katharine will attest, did not really spend much time on the Covenant Report, assuming its shape and purpose to lie outside the particular matters literally at hand; thirdly, the Covenant proposal is about living in trust, trustworthiness. The recommendations from the Primates in their Communiqué are quite specifically directed at a situation in which we are now living where trust has been broken, and we are attempting to hold pieces together - and people together in some fashion - in such a way that trust will find a home once again. And we are not talking simply about broken trust among different churches, but here in our own midst, within a church - as the recent events in South Carolina demonstrate. It is not enough to say ''let's take a break from the Communion to let things settle down'', but it is, in a sense, our having broken the Communion that has caused the unrest in the first place. This mistrust must be dealt with now, in this church and elsewhere, with all of its hard choices; why? So that there will be a place where trust, as the Covenant would have us do, can bear fruit. In this sense, the Communiqué's content is quite subordinate, in a very limited and pragmatic way, to the Covenant's larger purpose.

If covenant is about making promises and keeping them, in such a way as to embody God's own act of trustworthy communion in Christ's sacrificial death and new life, then we would indeed wish and fervently desire to make covenant with one another, for the sake of the whole world, ''so that the world may believe that you have sent me'', as Jesus says to his Father (Jn. 17:21), in praying for Christian unity.

What kind of Covenant?

Any embracing covenant, such as is being considered for the entire Anglican Church, must therefore be the expression of something that ''already is'', of God's promises embodied in our communion as it in fact exists, however much engaged in struggle. It is not a ''new'' communion that we are after, but the articulation of something already at work through God's grace. The last paragraph of the Report's prologue describes the fundamental working orientation of the group: it states firmly that the Covenant proposal we would offer would not be an ''invention'', but a ''restatement'' and ''assertion'' of something already ''received'', and a ''commitment'' to an ''interdependent life'' already (''in theory'') and always ''recognized'', that is, a commitment to a kind of life ''already lived''. Likewise, the Primates themselves, in the Communiqué (29), speak of the Covenant as a ''making explicit'' of something already ''meant'', and an ''articulating'' of something already lived.

And therefore, the Design Group adopted (informally and often implicitly) two principles to govern our deliberations and drafting: first, that nothing should be formalized that was not already at work - either doctrinally, missionally, or structurally - in our common life as a whole; and second, that the very formulations of these articulated realities should be drawn from existing documents within the public realm of the Anglican Communion, either in a longstanding fashion, or more recently. These adopted principles are the major reason why it was possible to formulate something in what surprised many people as being a remarkably, and in some minds unadvisedly, quick fashion. It is important to understand this, practically and in terms of the theological basis for it, as I have explained it, so as not to misjudge the meaning of the Design Group's expeditious labors.

The way this worked concretely can be categorized as follows:

a. The general template for the draft was an existing proposal, carefully composed over the previous year by representatives of the Global South. It had been circulated publicly for some months, and to this we added elements of the Windsor Report's Appendix and the Province of Australia's publicly disseminated Covenant proposal.

b. The actual content of the proposal - its specific elements and their formulation -- made use of a range of material, including the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, constitutions of various provincial churches, Lambeth Conference resolutions, Communion commissions (cf. the section on Mission), Primates' statements, etc..

c. As for the ecclesial structures and order proposed for discernment and decision-making, we made an attempt to articulate what has, in an ad hoc way, already emerged in our common life over the past few years. This is key, especially in Section 6 of the proposal which deals with an ordered process of conciliar life that gives the Primates a particular role. This proposed structure and order is not an invention at all, as some have claimed, but an attempt to lay out how in fact (and with responsible deliberation, to be sure) affairs have been sorting themselves out. One can read Section 6 as a ''history'' of the last decade of the Anglican Communion's life in counsel. This history, and its encompassing larger history, of the Anglican Communion as a whole, is, we believe, ''providential'', in that it marks the articulation in time of God's promising act. If one cannot accept this, then of course one will have a problem with the thrust of this aspect of the document as a whole. But we believe it is consistent with the very reality of what covenant is all about: God proves faithful, and our attempts, marked by repeated conversionary movements of our councils, at responding in faith embody the shape of our own growing faithfulness.

It is possible, from this vantage finally, to touch on the particulars of the Proposed covenant now only briefly, in large measure because, as I have been arguing, they are not controversial precisely in their status as ''already'' given and passed on. They represent a remarkable convergence of Global South ways of articulating their commitments and more Western ones, for they articulate the common spring.

There are three main topics (somewhat obscured by a faulty enumeration in the text): which could be denoted in terms of teaching, mission, and order. Each of these topics is subdivided in terms of ''affirmation'' and ''commitment''.

i. Thus, Section 2, ''the life we share'', follows an affirmation of the Quadrilateral, elaborated by the addition of an affirmation of common mission and of the foundational and guiding place of the classical ''Anglican formularies (the latter of which is a part of the constitutions of a large number of provinces in the Anglican Communion). These are not listed here so as to establish a renewed Protestant confessionalism so much as they are forthrightly acknowledged as a historically accepted standard for common discernment and order, particularly with respect to the Scriptures. On the ''commitment'' side of this topic, several elements are listed that range from engagement with Scripture and its authority, moral teaching, Eucharistic fellowship, leadership formation, and common life. These phrases derive from Lambeth conferences, ecumenical dialogue statements (cf. that on morals), the Windsor Report, and other sources. In many ways, this is a crucial section that cannot afford to be overlooked, for, with its earlier set of affirmations, it actually provides a framework within which the discernment of truth is to take place with the Communion, and provides a set of touchstones by which that discernment is to be measured. It is not as if the presenting quarrel over sexuality could be immediately settled within such a framework; but it would, I believe, have altered the way such a quarrel was approached some time ago had the framework been explicitly embraced. One will note, for instance, that the oft-appealed to (and only locally embraced anyway) triad of ''Scripture, Tradition, and Reason'', so confusing to so many in practice, does not appear here, not because its elements are not in fact in play, but because they are ordered within a more focused trajectory of discernment and authority.

ii. The next section (4) on shared life and vocation, contains within it both the affirmation and commitment aspects of the church's missionary existence. Here, a providential understanding of the growth of the Anglican Communion as a communion is affirmed - obviously a central claim for a notion of an Anglican Covenant to make any sense at all; and through it, the historical characteristics of the previous teaching framework are filled out on a large canvass: primitive undivided church, British origins, Reformation, and global growth through mission. This providential history was carefully noted, and its markers listed here are meant to inform the previous sections' ''confessional'' affirmations and commitments. Much of the rest of the section, along with the list of commitments, derives from existing work by e.g. the Inter-Anglican Study Commission on Mission and Evangelism, and other groups. The ecumenical context for the Communion's mission is also straightforwardly affirmed, a fact that deserves attention. In some sense, this is the Covenant's most important section: it tells us Anglicanism is at root a missionary tradition; and that the struggles of the present are the results of that tradition, in a sense, but that our resolution of these struggles will be leaven of that missionary tradition's future life. There can be no effective mission without communion, lived and loved.

iv. The last set of affirmations and commitments - on Unity and Common life - have already proved the most controversial. The first section basically lays out the Four Instruments of Communion (the Archbishop of Canterbury having been restored to this position!), all under a guiding affirmation of our Communion's episcopal leadership (something coherent with our own Prayer Book's ordination liturgy, not to mention the Quadrilateral). By and large, the descriptions of the Instruments of Unity derive from existing proposals, especially Australia's (which, in turn, derives from other sources). The attempt here is to render somewhat more coherent the particular roles of each Instrument as they function together. There has already been some concern expressed that the ACC's role has somehow been slighted; however, we believe that the descriptions given are accurate, fair, and finally helpfully integrated.

The real place of challenge for many, it appears, lies in Section 6 on the practical elements that a commitment to unity would demand. In some sense, this was the one section where the Design Group was required to write ''from scratch''. But, as I have emphasized earlier, that would finally be a misleading characterization of what we did; for our goal was to articulate ''explicitly'', as the Primates themselves said, what has in fact taken place in practice already over the past few years as the Anglican Communion has grown and faced challenges to its common witness. Our task was one of apprehending this reality, not constructing it. If one looks carefully at the order of discernment, counsel, and decision, one will see a process that matches fairly closely with actual workings of the Communion over the past decade, say, with the dispute over sexuality - from Lambeth'98 (and before, of course), through to the Primates response to General Convention '03, the Lambeth Commission, Primates, Canterbury and ACC responses, General Convention '06 and now Dar es Salaam.

While this process has been challenged by some as to its integrity, one of the major sources of anxiety over the past few years has less been the actual incoherence of decision-making as has the fact that this ad hoc process was, as it were, unknown in advance, and hence in itself difficult to ''trust'', to find ''trustworthy''. What covenanting does to this is to resolve that need, and thereby provide a common ''Yes'' to a way of discerning that will indeed make ''time'' and patience less a threat to stability - as it appears now to be for many -- but a gift for seeking the truth in love. ''We know what we have committed ourselves to, of the path it must follow, and we will be faithful in following it together.''

We are well aware, of course, that just this ordering of discernment is disputed as being somehow providential. Why, some are already asking, should the Primates be given the role of the party of appeal and the final gateway of decision-making? There are at least three answers one might give to this perfectly valid question. First, there is a practical response: someone must do this, and of all the Instruments of Unity, the Primates most effectively (in logistical terms) combine world-wide representation and coherence of council. Second, there is the response of deliberate precedence: Lambeth '98 (building on '88) requested that the Primates take on this role quite explicitly (Res. III.6), by ''intervening in cases of exceptional emergency which are incapable of internal resolution within provinces''; and this request derives from actual attempts in other cases where the Instruments of Unity did in fact intervene (e.g. the first Lambeth Conference, and, more recently, Canterbury's intervention - upheld by the ACC - in Rwanda in the mid-'90's). Finally, there is the simple ecclesiological response: given the episcopal ordering and leading of the Anglican Church - and, despite claims to American exceptionalism here, it is enshrined in our own Prayer Book (cf. pp. 517f.) - the Primates represent, in themselves, the unity affirmed and upheld - the ''yes'' of the Communion - to which the Covenant itself witnesses.

This does not mean that the Primates should or would constitute some super-decision-making power, a ''curia'' for the Communion as some of claimed. Far from it. A careful examination of the process of discernment proposed in the Covenant makes clear the conciliar character within which the Primates would operate in a special manner in limited and exceptional circumstances. And it is this conciliar context and character, as well as their representative and episcopal roles, that distinguishes the Primates' exceptional calling from curial models of decision-making and authority. Not only in the Covenant, but even in the Communique, the Primates are given no juridical authority beyond what they presently have. Their authority is to ''ask''; perhaps even beg; and then leave each church to make its own decisions.

Although there have been fears and indeed accusations that the Primates have been ''maneuvered'' and ''manipulated'' over the past few years, I believe that an even-handed examination of the actual history of our struggles will show that, despite the real passion and heat in these struggles (some of it coming from the Primates themselves), there has been a remarkable restraint and subtlety to the Primates' own decision-making - one that actually reflects, rather than imposes upon, the diversity and discernment of the larger Communion. The Proposed Covenant merely seeks to give speech to this deeper reality.

It is the task of the Communion, through its varied processes of discussion, to comment not only on this larger shape to the Proposed Covenant, but also to the particulars that provide its content. My hope here is to have shown how both this larger shape finds its contours within a specific theological vision; and that this vision is what should inform the particulars as they are articulated.

I do not see my brief here as offering you advice, or engaging in political persuasion, although God knows I have my own convictions here. But nonetheless, I would end with a small plea. And I offer it in the shadow of all the high-strung assertions being passed around as to TEC's special vocation and special polity and special illuminations. In fact, however, Americans - and we, American Episcopalians - are no different than anybody else, despite our claims to exceptionalism; we are no better and no worse, no smarter and no more stupid; we are not more spiritually mature, nor are we (in aggregate anyway) probably any less so. We are not Jesus to the other's Pharisee, Jerusalem to the other's Babylon. Not at all. We all bleed, we all hope. Having lived and worked and suffered in Africa over several years, I was tended and healed in body and soul by Africans; and conversely, there are several African families - women, children, and men - who escaped slaughter and are alive today because of what a few small American Episcopal congregations of which I was a part did. This is the ''already'' of our communion. It happened by a lot of giving away, of giving way, of receiving, standing aside, and standing in the breach. And it would be a tragedy of, yes, biblical proportions, if we let this ''already'' become something ''already long gone''. It is in our hands to prevent that. That is the ''juridical'' reality before us. And if someone says, ''yes, but it is in all of our hands'', I would say, ''precisely because of the 'all', it is ours, and first of all, ours''. That is what the ''all'' means when it comes to Christ Jesus.

Interpreting the Proposed Anglican Covenant
through the Communique
By A. Katherine Grieb

Thank you for the invitation to be with you today. My task is to speak about the process by which the Proposed Anglican Covenant came into being and to contribute one interpretation of where the text is going, that, along with other interpretations, will assist you in your deliberations on behalf of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as a whole. As a member of the Covenant Design Group, along with my colleague Ephraim Radner, I attended its first meeting in Nassau in mid-January. Ephraim and I have divergent views about the covenant process as of this point in time. I will argue that the covenant process has become considerably clearer as a result of the recent Primates' Communiqué. I'm saying, in a nutshell, that the best source for understanding the logic of the proposed Anglican Covenant and the best evidence for how it is likely to be interpreted in the future is the recent Communiqué of the Primates.

Background: Theological Assumptions and Recent History

Like many people in the Anglican Communion, when I first read the Windsor Report with its recommendation of a covenant and its draft of a possible covenant in an appendix, initially I had strong reservations about the idea of a covenant for the Anglican Communion. These reservations derived both from my legal education and from my training as a New Testament theologian. The very word ''testament'' is a partial synonym for ''covenant'' and New Testament scholars take pains to express clearly what is ''older'' and ''newer'' about God's covenant-making. Lawyers are often preoccupied with covenants in the form of contracts, breaches of contract, and various sorts of remedies.

The term ''covenant'' itself is fluid: it can range anywhere from an informal agreement to a solemn oath to a formal contract that is legally binding and enforceable. Covenants can be used for a variety of purposes: to invite or to impose, to include or exclude, to summarize a hard-won consensus or to set a limit beyond which the parties to the covenant may not go. The idea of a covenant is neutral: an agreement can be for good purposes or bad. One biblical example concerns the plot to kill Paul in Acts 23:12ff where a group of men bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. On the other hand, Paul and the Philippians are bound together in ''koinonia,'' a business partnership or covenant for the proclamation of the gospel. He writes to them from prison precisely because they are bound to one another in covenant relationship.

In Scripture, the great majority of uses of the term ''covenant'' refers not to these agreements between people, but to the covenants that God has made: with humanity, with Israel as a whole, and with particular representatives of Israel: Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, etc. Biblical scholars have for a long time connected these to the treaties by which a powerful king or emperor bound a vassal-king's allegiance in return for certain benefits. These have a familiar form and there are many examples of the genre within the Old Testament to describe the relationship between God and Israel. Probably the first reference to a new covenant came out of the exilic period, e.g., Jeremiah 31:31-34, when God and Israel recommitted themselves to one another.

The references to covenant-making between people or covenants initiated by Israel are much less frequent and not always so positive. Israel was a small and powerless nation, often tempted to form covenant alliances with stronger neighbors instead of relying on God's protections. Isaiah 7 describes the king of Judah's fear that Israel and Syria would combine against him. Isaiah 28 portrays the rulers of Israel as saying ''we have made a covenant agreement with Death and with Sheol we have an agreement'' but God says: ''your covenant with Death is annulled; your agreement with Sheol will not stand.'' Behold I am laying in Zion a foundation stone….'' God has made alternative arrangements for Israel's salvation. So a covenant that is not of God, a covenant with powers opposed to God, or a covenant constructed for an ungodly purpose, will not finally stand. Again, to summarize: a covenant can be good or bad. The idea of a covenant by itself, is neutral. Everything depends on its purpose.

As a member of the Inter Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission, I was asked to write a paper on ''covenant'' outlining these reservations and suggesting ways in which they might be overcome. That process was clarifying for me: I reviewed the biblical background, a bit of British common law tradition, Richard Hooker on ''ecclesiastical polity,'' John Locke on ''toleration,'' and some of the ways in United States history that covenants have not worked so well, for example, housing covenants where homeowners agreed not to sell their property to African Americans or Jews or Roman Catholics. The Inter Anglican Theological and Doctrinal Commission at its most recent meeting last September divided into two sub-groups and I chose to work on ''covenant.'' Part of our task there was to articulate possible models of covenant for discussion by the group.

By that time, the Archbishop of Canterbury had formally endorsed the idea of covenant as ''the best way forward'' shortly after General Convention 2006. At the same time, he hinted at a possible result of the continuing Windsor Process: some parts of the Communion might not be able to ratify such a covenant for reasons of conscience, and might then become somewhat like Methodists, historically related to the Anglican Communion and bound by many common traditions, but no longer one denomination. At the IATDC meeting the following September, we did not dwell on the potentially divisive aspects of covenant but on its unitive possibilities. I think we all came away from that meeting convicted that a covenant might be very helpful for the Anglican Communion at the present time and that a great deal would depend on the form of the covenant. We also noted that a covenant is not self-interpreting: someone has to say what it means and how it is to be applied in a particular situation.

When I was asked to serve on the Covenant Design Group for the Anglican Communion, I prayed hard and consulted some wise people, then I said yes. I assumed that the group had been carefully balanced in a number of ways (north, south, theologians, ecumenists, biblical scholars, people with legal background, male, female, lay, ordained, etc.) and I was determined not to second guess that process or mess it up. The stakes for the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church seemed to me and still seem to me to be very high.

A little more background: Before the meeting I expressed to the Presiding Bishop my strong desire to work hard for us to remain in the Anglican Communion even it what we achieved was not ideal from an Episcopal Church point of view. I also expressed my concern that I might be part of crafting something that would be harmful to us and that I might be put in a place of having to decide whether to do that or resign.

The Covenant Design Group Meeting in Nassau in January

Turning from that background to the meeting itself, I need to say as clearly as possible that I thought we worked well together and that I thought we were able to craft something that actually would be a good conversation starter about the covenant process, a more helpful approach to covenant-making than any of the documents we had looked at that went into our discussion. I also thought there were some potential dangers - I'll say more about that in a minute - but I want to say again that I was an active participant in that meeting and that I was fully part of the draft covenant we designed for discussion.

When we first formed as a group and introduced ourselves to one another, it became obvious that we were missing three of our members, no small matter in a group of that size. The representatives from South Africa, Ireland and Ceylon were unable to attend the meeting. We had been formed as a group in November, so undoubtedly they had prior commitments, but for whatever reasons they did not send replacements and we were missing those perspectives that I assume were also carefully chosen to balance the group. This was a concern to me because South Africa has been through the experience of apartheid and the powerful work of the Truth and Reconciliation process; Ceylon has recently ordained women after careful discussion, and Ireland has experienced the bitter religious conflicts between Roman Catholics and Protestants and also the peacemaking efforts. The perspectives of these three members would have been invaluable to our committee.

At the beginning of our work, one of the Primates present suggested that there might need to be a minority report, looking at me, and we were informed, again at the very beginning of our work, that an Episcopal Church bishop had already described us as ''a lynch mob.'' We set to work, reviewing the large set of documents that had either been solicited or volunteered to guide our work and to try to find a way forward that would work for everyone. We worked together well, listening to one another, respecting one another's differences. But the absence of the three members I described meant that there were only one or two voices at the table to speak for the use of the covenant as binding the whole Communion together with different points of view on issues that are not adiaphora represented in it.

As I said to the Episcopal News Service immediately after the meeting, the most well-represented view around the table was that the covenant was preventative. According to that view, the point of a covenant is to prevent any significant change from occurring in the Church's doctrine and practice. Proponents of that view were and are eager to have a covenant in place as quickly as possible, so that there will be procedures available to prevent any unwelcome innovations from their point of view. There had been discussion earlier that the covenant drafting and discussion process might take as long as ten years, but at our meeting it became clear that the covenant process would be moving at top speed. It was even suggested at one point that the completed covenant be ratified by all bishops at Lambeth 2008. The present timetable is not quite that fast: the Anglican Communion will have until the end of 2007 (so about nine months) to respond to the Proposed Anglican Covenant. Then the Covenant Design Group or some other group will re-craft the Covenant for approval at Lambeth and the ratification process will happen as soon as possible after that. The point is, we're talking about an accelerated process.

That same majority point of view was also most insistent on the key role of the Primates as the interpreters and enforcers of the Covenant. A few of us suggested that the Anglican Consultative Council, being more representative of the Anglican Communion as a whole, including women and laity, might be the better body to interpret the Covenant. But it was felt that the group is too large, that it meets too infrequently, and that the ''augmented role'' of the Primates was a major part of the rationale for the Covenant in the first place. The language about the Primates prevailed, with the reminder that the Communion as a whole would be discussing this move at length, that this was a draft document to be tested by the larger Communion.

The same sort of discussion happened around the issue of the normativity of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in section 2.5. The only footnote in the document recognizes that there are other duly authorized Books of Common Prayer in the Anglican Communion, ''but acknowledges the foundational nature of the Book of Common Prayer 1662 in the life of the Communion.'' So that section now reads that ''each member Church and the Communion as a whole, affirms''…''that, led by the Holy Spirit, it has borne witness to Christian truth in its historic formularies, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.'' Once again, objections that this would work to exclude provinces that are not ordered by the 1662 Prayerbook were met with the argument that this was the sort of thing that the provinces would need to discuss and report back about: how central is the role of the Thirty-nine Articles or the 1662 Book of Common Prayer in the Anglican Communion as a whole?

So the Proposed Anglican Covenant is most clearly based on the covenant document already widely circulated and ratified in principle by representatives of the Global South. That document served as the framework for our deliberations and we added to it language from a variety of sources: the Province of Australia's covenant proposal, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, the Windsor Report, and several other documents, all recognizably Anglican. Of course we wrote with an eye to the upcoming Primates' meeting and the point was to use language that all the Primates could ''recognize'' if not affirm in all the details, so that the conversation, critique, and reception process could go forward.

The key language about the interpretation and application of the Proposed Anglican Covenant, and where we were most innovative with respect to classic Anglican tradition, was in section 6. We spent a great deal of our short time on this section. The language about Scripture, the Instruments of Communion, the enhanced role of the Primates, and the possibility of the exclusion of a member church ''in the most extreme circumstances'' where the ''substance of the covenant as understood by the Councils of the Instruments of Communion'' was not fulfilled, were the topics most discussed by our working group. I thought then, and I continued to think that what we had drafted was clear and that it would be a useful tool for discussion by the larger Communion.

At the time, I called for widespread participation by members of the Episcopal Church in the Draft Anglican Covenant discernment process. I said,

''It is important for the entire Anglican Communion to go forward as a group and not to split into two different versions of Anglican Communion. It's worth working for; it's crucial theologically to be one body for our witness and our mission. If the covenant is the best way of holding the Communion together, then a lot of us are interested in the covenant for that purpose.''

I also expressed a vision of a comprehensive and generously orthodox Anglicanism that I thought was compatible with and could be embodied in a covenant of the sort we had drafted:

''This coming time [of response to the draft proposed covenant] will require action around the Communion if we want to continue in the Anglican tradition of comprehensiveness, generous orthodoxy, listening to minorities and welcoming the stranger - the person with another point of view. Not everyone in the Anglican tradition views that sort of tradition as distinctively Anglican.''

I said Anglicanism has a ''long tradition, not of closing our eyes to conflict, but of creating spaces where different points of view can be argued intelligently, coherently, and with attention to biblical interpretation in ways that we can move forward without everyone agreeing but with an understanding that though we don't see it the same way, we care deeply about our union.''

I rooted that tradition in the early Church and the subsequent life of the Church throughout the centuries. ''We've always been working it out; we've always been trying to figure out how to live together around the same table with different points of view. We will continue to do that unless we abandon the project of Communion.''

I spoke of two great traditions of biblical interpretation that live side-by-side in our congregations and throughout the Communion. ''As we reflect on our present context, we can recommit ourselves to welcome those who share another interpretation of Scripture and therefore another interpretation of doctrine or ethics than we do.'' I said, ''it is the time for the Anglican Communion at every level to renew its commitment to conversation about the Anglican Communion and about the history of biblical interpretation in Anglicanism.'' And I said: ''We're up to that; we can do this.'' All that was before the Primates' Communiqué.

The Primates' Meeting and Communiqué

The character of that discussion and discernment process has been clarified considerably by the Primates' Communiqué and by the specific ''assurances'' requested from the Episcopal Church by September 30 of this year. The Primates are acting in an unprecedented way, setting up a ''pastoral council'' and one or more ''primatial vicars,'' as if the Proposed Anglican Covenant process had been completed and the document already ratified by all the provinces. But the long careful process the Covenant Design Group had envisioned with respect to our section 6.6 - by which, eventually, in extreme circumstances, after all procedural due process had been followed, a member Church might be judged to have ''relinquished for themselves the force and meaning of the Covenant's purpose'' by "the councils of the Instruments of Communion'' (all of the Instruments of Communion) - that suggested process has been ignored, bypassed, condensed, or otherwise made irrelevant by the Primates' Communiqué. The Primates have given the clearest possible signal that they themselves cannot wait for the Proposed Anglican Covenant. Their section 30 states that ''an interim response is required in the period until the Covenant is secured.'' As we speculate about what could have motivated such a strong response when the work of the Covenant Design Group had clearly advanced beyond anyone's initial expectations, I think we should assume that the Episcopal Church is considered so unreliable and so untrustworthy that the Primates feel the Anglican Communion is presently endangered without these ''assurances'' and without the imposed structures (the pastoral council and the primatial vicars).

At the same time, we have been instructed to ''read" the Proposed Anglican Covenant and the Communiqué as a package. And while I agree with Ephraim Radner that the proposed draft the Covenant Design Group suggested was not especially innovative in what it affirmed, though it clearly was innovative in its section 6, this Communiqué from the Primates by which we are to interpret the Proposed Anglican Covenant is a clear innovation. One likely result, whether intended and anticipated or not I don't know, is that the reception process (discussion, critique, amendment) of the draft of the Proposed Anglican Covenant is going to be very limited, especially for members of the Episcopal Church who have, in a sense, a double deadline (one in September, another in December), which is a very short time to engage such momentous matters.

Of course, the members of the House of Bishops have already been engaging this individually in discussion of the Communiqué and the House has collectively addressed it during this meeting. But there is a sense in which the discussion of the Communiqué cannot be completed without attention to the covenant process, since the Covenant and the Communiqué are mutually interpretive documents. So, to restate my conclusion, the best source for understanding the logic of the Proposed Anglican Covenant and the best evidence for how it is likely to be interpreted in the future is the Primates' Communiqué.

Some Observations about the Primates' Meeting and Communiqué

1. The first thing to look at is the Report of the Communion Sub-Group that considered the adequacy of the Episcopal Church's response to the Windsor Report's recommendations. The group commended the Episcopal Church for taking the Windsor Report and the Primates' recommendations ''extremely seriously'' and then focused its attention on the resolutions passed by General Convention 2006. It did not, for example, note that in response to Paragraph #135 of the Windsor Report, the Presiding Bishop had commissioned the task force that produced ''To Set Our Hope on Christ'' though it did mention that the structures for alternative episcopal oversight (DEPO), taken up by the Windsor Report, were still in place. It gave the resolutions of the General Convention 2006 a passing grade on expressions of regret, noted the absence of ''moratorium'' language in the resolution calling for ''restraint'' on the part of bishops by not consenting to the consecration of any episcopal candidate whose manner of life presents a challenge and could further strain communion, and it gave us a failing grade on the same-sex blessings resolution that never made it to the House of Bishops. You all know well the extraordinary measures the General Convention took to get that much passed. But the Communion Sub-Group did mention that provisions of the Windsor Report directed to other parts of the Anglican Communion ''appear to have been ignored so far,'' and called on the Instruments of Communion to become pro-active in identifying potentially divisive issues in the future and discussing them before they become polarizing.

The Primates' Communiqué moves away from this document in several ways: it replaces the whole DEPO structure with the ''pastoral council'' and ''primatial vicar'' plan and it justifies the boundary-crossing behavior, moving it from being one of the three things the Windsor Report wanted a moratorium on, to an understandable reaction (a symptom rather than a problem) that would surely stop on its own once the difficulties in the Episcopal Church were straightened out.

2. The Primates' Communiqué makes it clear that the bicameral structure of our polity is not important to them: the House of Bishops is to give these assurances on its own, through its Primate. A polity that would require us to do this another way is our problem. This sentiment was underlined by the statement of the Archbishop of Canterbury immediately after the Communiqué. Asked about the response to the House of Bishops, he said it was impossible for him to speculate about the House of Bishops, that no one, including the Presiding Bishop, was in a position ''to deliver the whole of the House of Bishops. We hope that they will.'' He added, ''On the specifics of the wording - well, these are the terms that have been put to them. I think it would be rather difficult if there were a response in other terms.''

The Communiqué itself, as you well know, requires the House of Bishops to:

1) ''make an unequivocal common covenant that the Bishops will not authorize any rite of blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention;'' and

2) ''confirm that the passing of Resolution B033 of the 75th General Convention means that a candidate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion.''

It says that failure to give these assurances means that the relationship between us ''remains damaged at best'' and this ''has consequences for the full participation of the Church in the Anglican Communion.'' In other words, this is a highly condensed version of section 6.6 of our Proposed Anglican Covenant document. We see that the main purpose of the Proposed Anglican Covenant is directed at the Episcopal Church specifically and the issue of same-sex relationships particularly. We see that section 6.6, far from being a logical outcome of a long list of beliefs we hold in common, is the point of the covenant-making process. We also see how the Primates are very likely to interpret the Proposed Anglican Covenant when it is finally in place: as a means to bring the practices of a province holding a minority view on a contentious matter into line with the view a majority of the Primates themselves so that the Communion speaks with only one voice.

It was particularly disheartening to me to see that the Hermeneutics Project (the Primates' agreement to a worldwide study of the methods of interpreting Scripture) would begin sometime after the Lambeth Conference in 2008, that is, long after the Episcopal Church is being asked to give assurances that effectively renounce an entire way of reading Scripture that has shaped much of our recent conversation. But, that Hermeneutics Project, the work of Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, and the Listening Process focusing on the experience of gay and lesbian Anglicans from around the Communion are possibilities towards an openness to more than one way of reading Scripture not apparently present at the moment.

Some Suggestions for a Way Forward

Ephraim will remember that at our final session of the Covenant Design Group I commented that our working document did not reflect much of a theology of the Cross, and so we borrowed some language from the Oporto Statement at that time. It seems appropriate to revive that concern now, as the House of Bishops considers its response to the Communiqué that is standing in for the Covenant.

I think the Presiding Bishop's language about fasting points the way for us: It is now very clear that the tremendous concern of the Primates to obtain these interim assurances is the point of the covenant process as a whole. As painful as it is for us to think about this, the whole question of a covenant for the Anglican Communion arose first in the Windsor Report in response to the General Convention of 2003 and was pushed forward by the Archbishop of Canterbury immediately after our General Convention of 2006. It is distinctly possible, even highly probable, that these events and these responses have had a distorting effect on the Anglican Communion. We haven't actually been a covenant-based tradition and it may be that the Communion is rushing to embrace a Covenant as a short-term solution to some questions that require a much longer process. Would it help the Communion if we removed the pressure to come up with a Covenant by stepping out of the room for a while as they discuss it?

I suggest that we enter a five-year period of fasting from full participation in the Anglican Communion to give us all time to think and to listen more carefully to one another. I think we should engage in prayerful non-participation in global meetings (in Lambeth, in the Anglican Consultative Council, in other Communion committee meetings) or, if invited to do so, send observers who could comment, if asked, on the matter under discussion. We should continue on the local level to send money and people wherever they are wanted. (This is not about taking our marbles and going home.) We need to remain wholly engaged in the mission of the church, as closely tied as we are allowed to the See of Canterbury and to the Anglican Communion as a whole. But we should absent ourselves from positions of leadership, stepping out of the room, so that the discussions of the Anglican Communion about itself can go on without spending any more time on our situation which has preoccupied it.

Someone suggested that I call this five-year period a ''time out'' where screaming brothers and sisters go to separate corners of the room for a while and think about things. We certainly could use some time without the hyped rhetoric and the media attention (they probably cause one another). On some level, we all need a rest from the intensity of this discussion and from the loss of perspective that results from such heated polemic. I wouldn't want to call this season of fasting from full communion a ''trial separation'' because I think we should, for our part at least, continue to seek ''the fullest degree of communion possible'' without giving the reassurances requested by the Primates. The extent of that ''fullness'' will, of course, be determined by the Primates and I do not think we should be optimistic about how much "communion" will be allowed to us. But I hope we could ''walk in parallel'' if not ''walk together'' and see, if by God's grace, those parallel lines can in fact meet in five years.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in particular, and also the Primates, have been gracious enough to allow that there are matters of conscience on both sides. These are weighty matters indeed, which should not be entered into lightly or quickly.

For this reason, I do not think the House of Bishops can make this decision alone - a least not in our polity. It is essential for us to listen to all the representatives of the Episcopal Church, and our constitution does provide for calling a special General Convention. Article 1, section 7 says special meetings may be held as provided for by the canons. Canon 1.1.3 (a) vests the right of calling a special meeting of the General Convention in the bishops. The Presiding Bishop summons the meeting, designates the time and place, with the consent of the requisition of a majority of the bishops expressed to the Presiding Bishop in writing. Canon 1.1.3 (b) says that deputies elected to the preceding General Convention shall be the deputies of the Special Convention. This could be a stripped down, more tightly focused General Convention and somebody who knows a lot more about this than I do can tell us if there are ways to streamline the resolutions process to deal with the Primates' request as directly as possible. Perhaps the Presiding Bishop could appoint a group of Bishops and Deputies to structure this important conversation so that we could hear one another past the sound bytes.

If the Special General Convention decides to instruct the House of Bishops and the Presiding Bishop to fast from making hasty assurances to the Primates and to fast from full participation in the Anglican Communion, then we should ask the Theology Committee of the House of Bishops or some other group appointed by the Presiding Bishop to lead us in an active process of prayer, listening, and discernment, so that the five years are well spent. During that time, the Anglican Communion should have begun its Hermeneutics Project and continued its Listening Process. We would continue to do the same thing in parallel.

But if the Special General Convention decides to instruct the House of Bishops and the Presiding Bishop to give precisely the assurances required by the Primates - if it is actually possible to do that without amending our Constitution, I'm not sure that it is - that would not guarantee us a place at the table. The wording of the first assurance seems to require 100 percent of the bishops with jurisdiction to agree not to authorize same-sex blessings. The word ''authorize'' by itself could do us in: although we use the word in the technical sense of passing resolutions, the Primates might well interpret it in a non-technical sense, so that if any priest in the Episcopal Church blessed same-sex unions and the diocesan bishop did not discipline or inhibit that priest, arguably the diocese would have ''authorized'' the action.

As to the second assurance, you all know better than I do whether a clear majority of you would be willing to promise to withhold consent to a candidate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union. But it may be a long time indeed before ''some new consensus on these matters emerges across the Communion'' and who knows whether the bishops elected in subsequent years will consider themselves bound by your promises or whether some of you will become convicted to renounce your promises? All indications from the Primates' Communiqué are that the words will be interpreted very literally and without much concern for matters of our polity. Personally, I think it is only a matter of time before we would be placed on probation anyway. Archbishop Eames had suggested that the Episcopal Church had already responded adequately to the Windsor Report even before General Convention 2006, but apparently the head of the Windsor Report Commission himself cannot interpret the Windsor Report. The Primates do the interpreting for the Anglican Communion and the Primates are very angry at the Episcopal Church.

Theologically, biblically, I think we are at Antioch with Paul, in Jerusalem with Jeremiah, and walking the way of the Cross with that mysterious Son of Man. With Paul in Antioch, we have - perhaps without adequate consultation with Jerusalem - been having table fellowship (koinonia) with Gentiles, until the men from James came to tell us that we have to stop doing it. They want a moratorium on eating with Gentiles. This presents the community with a difficult decision. Peter and Barnabas pull away from the table physically and ritually separate themselves from the Gentiles. Paul says, ''I can't do it.'' If he had not, most of us would not be here today, being Gentiles ourselves.

Jeremiah in Jerusalem before the exile told the frightened people to wake up and appreciate their situation. Their naïve belief that God would never allow the city of Jerusalem and its Temple to be taken by the Babylonians was not going to save them. They were going into exile, one way or another. They could do it the hard way or the easier way, but they were going into exile. I think the metaphor of ''exile'' captures something of the pain we can expect from being in less than full communion with the Primates, who will certainly distance themselves from us, if not in September, then later on down the line. But we might remember that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters have long lived in exile and it will be a great privilege to go into exile in their company.

Finally, I think we are in the place of all potential disciples of Jesus when some Pharisees come to warn him about Herod. He will go his way today, and the next day, and the day after that, healing and teaching and casting out demons, but eventually he will end up in Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who lose their lives for now on the way to Jerusalem, when things are hard and scary and it feels like death is all around, then we shouldn't be surprised later when the Son of Man says he doesn't want to be seen with us.

Where is that mysterious Son of Man hidden today? What is the cross that we are to take up? This message is especially directed to those of us who are called to ''stand with'' a rejected category of persons. Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognized the hidden Son of Man in the persecuted Jews. Abraham Heschel, who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., had eyes to see the Son of Man hidden in the rejected separate and unequal ones. Perhaps Mahatma Gandhi caught a glimpse of him in the Dalit, the ''untouchables'' of India. Since we shall have to answer for these things we do on the day of judgment, it may not hurt to ask ourselves ahead of time the question Jesus asks us: What good will it do any of us, even if we gain the whole world, if we forfeit our soul, our life, our self?