Episcopal News Service January 26, 2007
Design group to give draft covenant to Primates
Grieb, Radner report covenant's goal was part of recent meeting's discussion
By Mary Frances Schjonberg
[ENS] The Anglican Communion's Covenant Design Group's report to the February meeting of the Communion's Primates will include a draft covenant, according to one of the two Episcopal Church members of the group.
Both the Rev. Dr. Katherine Grieb, associate professor of New Testament at Virginia Theological Seminary (http://www.vts.edu), and the Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, rector of Church of the Ascension (http://www.ascensionpueblo.org/sermons.html) in Pueblo, Colorado, adhered to the group's agreement to keep the details of its report confidential. Grieb said the report contains a draft of a proposed covenant.
However, both spoke to the Episcopal News Service about the covenant-design process and discussed their thoughts about the idea of a covenant for the Communion, which originated in the Windsor Report (paragraphs 113-120) (http://www.aco.org/windsor2004/section_c/p9.cfm). The Archbishop of Canterbury appointed (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_81046_ENG_HTM.htm) the group at the request of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates' Meeting (http://www.aco.org/primates/index.cfm) and of the Anglican Consultative Council (http://www.aco.org/acc/index.cfm).
"The covenant process is moving at a great speed," Grieb said. "It's a good time for all of us to become clear about what the covenant is."
Of the report, Radner, who is a "collegial theologian" of an organization called the Anglican Communion Institute (http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.org), said: "I think it will surprise people positively for the balance, for effectiveness of discussions and what we were able to produce. It's going to respond to a wide variety of concerns that have been expressed."
Radner said the group's discussions during its mid-January meeting in Nassau, Bahamas, and its resulting report took into account the anxieties some people have about a covenant and what this particular design group might produce. He included in those anxieties concerns that a covenant might create a curial system such as that which assists in governing the Roman Catholic Church, possible attempts to "railroad" one point of view through the process, and a covenant "being set up on the basis of trying exclude people from the start."
Full story: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3577_81748_ENG_HTM.htm
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