Over at Fulcrum, Stephen Kuhrt is once again widely missing the mark by trying to portray the failed (in England) Anglican Covenant as if it had been brought down to defeat by a combination of liberal protestant ecclesiology and gay Anglo-Catholic fear. The latter is an assertion undignified enough to relegate to the rubbish heap on which it belongs.
But what about the former? Kuhrt decries too little attention paid to Ephesians and Colossians by liberals; as if the Anglican Covenant truly expressed the theology of radical community these letters describe. The problem is that the Anglican Covenant, particularly in section four, does nothing of the sort. instead it offers a "conservative protestant" model of excision and "relational consequences" — what some of these sects call "shunning" — for the dissenter or the irregular, rather than the closer organic embrace called for in the Pauline vision of one part of the body not saying to another, I have no need of you.
The Anglican Covenant is not a "Catholic" document, but by virtue of its emphasis on doctrinal purity and conformity, a Calvinist document, though a half-baked one. That "liberal protestants" and Anglo-Catholics would oppose it is, to some extent, a fair assessment — but not at all for the reasons Kuhrt proffers.
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
Why can't people just accept it's crap? I couldn't give stuff about the ecclesiology, its' simple determinant of unity = uniformity is the principal failing and Khurt's article only serves to indicate that he is so wrapped up in that culture that he doesn't get it.
ReplyDeleteThank you, theme, for cutting to the chase. What is odd to me is that some of those who moar favor the Covenant seem to be unable to look at it objectively, and figure the problem must be with those who oppose it. Thus their whole argument turns into a kind of ad hominem; in particular "liberal protestant" becomes an almost meaningless canard, and certainly an inaccurate one.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand having opposite extremes bitterly opposed to what you are seeking to promote and preserve can also bring with it a strange degree of reassurance.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, the old argument that if you're being attacked from the left and from the right, then you must be on target. On the other hand you could be just plain wrong.
And coming with this sort of nonsensical recommendation from the The Windsor Report, we all should have been wary from the start.
This [Lambeth] 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. (Windsor Report, 118)
Thanks, Mimi. Being told you are wrong from different perspectives, and for different reasons, does not make you right! It just might mean there are lots of problems with your thesis... or Covenant. ;-)
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