From the Church Times-
BASING full membership of the Anglican Communion on compliance with the text of a covenant may send unintended messages about exclusion, Dr Peter Selby, the former Bishop of Worcester, said this week.
Speaking at the Inclusive Church conference, Dr Selby offered a detailed critique of Communion, Covenant, and our Anglican Future, the statement issued by Dr Rowan Williams after the recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States. (News, 31 July,)
Dr Selby said that both of the main arguments made in the Archbishop’s paper had a two-edged character. The requirement that, in order to be recognisable, Anglicans needed patterns and convictions such as those proposed in the Anglican Covenant, raised the fundamental biblical question “recognisable to whom?” Being recognisable to “the least of the brothers and sisters” (Matthew 25) mattered at least as much as being recognisable to other provinces, Dr Selby contended.
“The bullying, the threats, the withdrawal of communion, the unilateral invasions of others’ territories, have made Anglicanism quite unrecognisable to a significant number of people,” he said. Moreover, the history of Anglicanism did not support the way of sanctioning developments proposed in the Covenant draft.
“When the C of E changed its practice [on divorce and remarriage], we did not wait to decide the principle until we had consulted with other provinces; we did not await ecumenical consensus.”
The same two-edged character applies, he went on, to the making of appointments. “If the Church must avoid incongruity, what is to be said about representative rejections? There is no doubt that the decision not to allow the appointment of a gay person as a bishop is seen also as a representative action, giving a message far wider than one about the admissibility of a particular individual.”
The rest-
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=83184
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