Professor becomes fourth patron of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition
London – The Revd Dr Lesley Crawley, Moderator of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition, and Dr Lionel Deimel, the Coalition’s Episcopal Church Convenor, have announced the appointment of Professor Marilyn McCord Adams as a Patron of the Coalition. Professor McCord Adams joins Bishops John Saxbee and Peter Selby, and Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch whose appointments were announced previously.
“Professor McCord Adams’s experience in both the Episcopal Church and the Church of England gives her a much broader understanding of the workings of the Anglican Communion,” said Deimel. “Coming on the heels of the decisive synod votes in Derby and Gloucester, it is an exciting time for the No Anglican Covenant Coalition.”
“The proposed Anglican Covenant was conceived in moral indignation and pursued with disciplinary intent,” according to Professor McCord Adams. “Its global gate-keeping mechanisms would put a damper on the gospel agenda, which conscientious Anglicans should find intolerable. The Covenant is based on an alien ecclesiology, which thoughtful Anglicans have every reason to reject.”
McCord Adams is Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. From 2004 to 2009, she was Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University and Residentiary Canon at Christ Church, Oxford. She also served as a member of the Church of England General Synod at the time when the Anglican Covenant was being developed. She has written two books on the religious understanding of evil, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, and Christ and Horrors: the Coherence of Christology. Her most recent book, Some Later Medieval Theories of the Eucharist: Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, Duns Scotus, and William Ockham, was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. -30-
The No Anglican Covenant Coalition is an international group of Anglicans concerned about how the proposed Anglican Covenant will radically change the nature of the Anglican Communion.
The Revd Dr Lesley Crawley (England) +44 1252 820537
Dr Lionel Deimel (USA) +1-412-512-9087
The Revd Malcolm French (Canada) +1-306-550-2277
The Revd Lawrence Kimberley (New Zealand) +64 3 981 7384
The Revd Canon Hugh Magee (Scotland) +44 1334 470446
See also:
Modern Church – The proposed Anglican Covenant is an attempt by some leaders of the Anglican Communion to subordinate national churches to a centralised international authority, with power to forbid developments when another province objects. We have opposed the Covenant since its inception. Here we explain why. In the first instance it would establish a clear separation between the Anglican provinces which accept same-sex partnerships and the provinces which forbid them. In the long term it would create a centralised, authoritarian system with power to forbid any contentious new developments. In effect this is a power struggle, using opposition to same-sex partnerships as a rallying-cry to gather support. The underlying aim is to change the nature of Anglicanism and turn it from an consensual church, where people are generally free to work out their own beliefs and standards, to a confessional church where members are expected to accept the teachings of church leaders.
Who wants it? – Those who have been campaigning against same-sex partnerships. It was first proposed in the Windsor Report of 2004, after the consecration of an openly gay bishop in the USA and the approval of a same-sex blessing service in Canada. Some church leaders were threatening to split the Anglican Communion unless these actions were revoked, and the Primates’ Meeting and the Archbishop of Canterbury were persuaded to support them. Since then plans for a Covenant have been developed, there has been a succession of draft texts and the final text was published at the end of 2009.
Is it just about gay bishops? – Not any more. This is indeed the presenting issue, and the current basis for condemning the North American churches. (More on the relevance of sexual issues). However the wording of the Covenant does not mention the issue. Instead it proposes giving powers to a new international body of just 15 people, the ‘Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion’, to judge any development in one province whenever another province disapproves.
This makes it a major, wide-ranging change to the Anglican Communion, in some ways the biggest since the Reformation. We cannot foresee what changes will be needed in the next ten years, let alone the long term future, but we can be sure that new issues will indeed arise and require new responses, and that someone somewhere will disapprove. Would it really be wise to hand, in effect, a right of veto to opponents of any innovation?
Read more – http://www.modernchurch.org.uk/resources/mc/cp/