Precedents, Not Presidents

In his interview with Benedict Brogan, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggests the need for a presidential figure to take charge of the day-to-day affairs of the so-called Anglican Communion.

Let us leave aside, for the moment, the question of what those day-to-day duties might be, and whether they need to be done. Let us leave aside the practical implausibility of getting so-called Anglicans to agree on the person, or the duties. Let us leave aside the dubious distinction Dr Williams makes between “executive” and “spiritual” authority: a distinction which suggests he is not very familiar with the office and work of a bishop.

The Anglican Covenant: Not Making it Worse

Bishop James Jones - Presidential Address - Diocesan Synod March 2012 from Diocese of Liverpool on Vimeo.

Half of all English dioceses have voted against the Anglican Covenant, and it will now be technically impossible, as it was probably already practically impossible, for the Church of England to be part of this experiment. Whether this will be fatal to the existence of the Covenant we cannot say, although there is a delicious irony to its rejection by what used to be the heart of the Communion.

The proposers of this scheme should have known, if only from their history books, that to be a Covenanter is by definition to be an opponent of the Church of England. Indeed, the victorious anti-Covenanters have been a curious alliance of those who see nothing wrong with the new liberal Anglicanism and those, more traditionally-minded on the whole, who could see that the whole idea was simply not very Church of England.