Tuesday 11 August 2009

The Blunt Knife

I don't disagree with anything on part 1 or part 2 of the full frontal attack on Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham on the Changing Attitude Blog. Personally, I'd prefer to humour him as something like Big Tom or Tom the Fist and perhaps working from the odd David Bowie inspired lyric. But it is interesting that with the Archbishop of Canterbury's latest Reflections and Tom Wright acting the tough guy again (and his showing some frustration with the still less clear bits of Rowan Williams's rather clearer anti GBLT parts, pinpointed at Changing Attitude) that finally people on the liberal side are waking up. The old muddle on and the old consensus can carry on seems to be over.

But still Giles Goddard wants to play with the Covenant. This idea is that TEC could sign up with its inclusive agenda. That's not the purpose of the Covenant. It might bugger it up, but it is better to be done with it rather than give ways in for the centre to decide what is central and local and to emphasise that partnered gay people cannot be representative in any ministry of any Anglican Church in the Covenant. Surely the point is arriving when this Covenant just has to be opposed by those interested in the future of a broader Anglicanism in how it has existed but not what it will be under a Covenant.

Strictly speaking, the Covenant and its text does not fully support the general line both Williams and Wright have taken, but there are sentences in it to facilitate their line to conform the Churches, and it shows how the Covenant will be used once it is in play. And that is why it should not come into play, because even if TEC was to sign up, the Primates and the rest would use it for their centralisation project. It is what they want, and they should be deprived of their baby, so that the other option, the really confederal one, is reinforced. And then perhaps Williams will resign, as he should.

1 comment:

Daniel Lee said...

Yes I agree, though I'm trying to keep an open mind as the revised section 4 and the global process go forward.

My oddest moment is still Rowan William's virtual reality dream that somehow the covenant with two Anglican tracks will lower or even eliminate competitive hostility - over the queer issues, over WO - especially the bishop bit, over all the other hot button Anglican differences. I just do not get how a man of his education could at all still live so much in a bubble world that he could entertain such an impossible vision of post-covenant global reality for Anglicanism.

I wonder if he thought the CoE flying bishops deal ameliorated the kerfluffle over women being called by God?

At minimum, I think we can expect track one covenanters to use track two as a sort of global house arrest by every means possible under the covenant - perhaps even somewhat outside the covenant, though drawing upon covenant langugage for partial justifications of extra-covenant policing? Galileo comes to mind.