Perhaps other observers can clarify something for me about the differences that have led not only to an Anglican Covenant, and but also to one that takes this particular form. Most of the arguments that I see about the proposal here and elsewhere concern idealized power relations-- say, "autonomy" or "accountability." But the Church is not infrequently thought to be based in love, which involves mutual accommodation and recognition. So I see the one side which wants "love" without accommodation to the deeply held convictions of the others, and the other which wants enforceable norms without the recognition of situational being that is implicit in "love." The debate over the Covenant seems to be a fracturing of the idea of love itself rather than a movement toward a deeper communion.

This legalism seems to bury real issues in a proceduralism that has already failed. The truth is that the American church has a thin but subversive strand of tradition that honors disobedient bishops. The majority of the American church disagrees with this fringe, but protects it nonetheless. Hence the situation noted already here-- majorities of American bishops make promises to the Communion, and then minorities of them break these promises, and then the majority forgives the minority in its midst. Consequently, new rules will only give the antinomians new opportunities for disobedience, and after the last 40 years there is really no reason to doubt that they will take them. They are terribly proud of themselves for what they have done.

So fracturing over rival dreams of power relations seems to evade some central questions. On one hand, was/is promise-keeping a higher duty than the duty to respond to a perceived local need, and if so why, and why don't these partners in communion see a broken word as a serious matter? It is hard to imagine a Covenant without trust, and it is hard to trust those who act as they have acted. How do they-- the promise-breakers-- envisage a deeply trusting Communion from this point forward?

On the other hand, if there are occasions when local matters engage the wider Communion, what do those nearby and those from far away really owe to each other as they negotiate this, and why? If we dismiss the extremes of an autonomy so complete that indifference to the values of others is a right, and of universal busybodying in which no local church is sure it can act, there are any possibilities. Which ones are we talking about? At this stage, a language that is more relational and less legalistic might be more meaningful. How did it happen that the local ones and the distant ones feel as though they are on teams competing for control?

In short, the ethos and the ethic of the existing Communion has come undone. Because rules can only articulate a preexisting order achieved informally, one would think that working at reconciliation might reasonably precede new ones.

Why is our response to the occupiers first of all, and for many of us last of all, to question their right to occupy? One can imagine us in an alternate mood in which, not having direct responsibility for that space, we leave that question to others who do have that responsibility, and ponder instead what the spectacle means to us as human beings who watch it. They ask-- are we attached to this world's way of distributing property, given its results, or not? And what is our answer?

Given that we really do have direct responsibility for a relationship to Jesus Christ, one might expect that our answers will have mostly to do with Him. Please forgive me if I misunderstand, but citations of the Scriptures that disable attention to the only question we really face and implicitly return us to the question that none of us likely faces seems like an evasion of the work that the occasion actually demands. Let us pray for the grace to face what the Lord has actually placed before us in every waking moment.

Jesus spoke eloquently in prophetic signs, a language illegible to those who have no faith. This is a proffered sign-- is it ultimately from Him, and legible to faith in Him, or not? Jesus's mission revealed some ontological unity of humanity-- is the fraction announced an affront to that unity, as implied, or not? What follows for us from yeses and noes? Our fathers in the faith leave a wealth of reflections for pondering these questions, and sites like this one can be helpful in testing tentative views, but, in our relation with the Lord, we answer for ourselves from the situation He has given us, and not by giving Him a sort of machine for producing depersonalized answers.

Once upon a time, Christians read the scriptures as containing many spirited prohibitions against usury, without which there can be no high finance as we know it. Such prohibitions were reflected in the canons, although not severely enforced. This prohibition, which stood for more than a millennium, was relaxed at the close of the Middle Ages, with what results we know. Occasionally, we are reminded of a long tradition of Christian condemnation of social divisions based on wealth.

Today, one would be surprised to hear usury denounced as a sin. I wonder-- perhaps someone here has studied this?-- how far the more permissive understanding of the scriptures permits the financial activity being discussed on this lively thread? It is surely imaginable that, just as modern war has far overrun the bounds of the just war doctrine that relaxed the pacifism of the fathers, so late modern banking has far overrun the bounds of early modern toleration of usury. Or-- is there any financial activity that is legal under the present civil and canon laws but prohibited by God? Or-- best of all-- what is the present meaning of the anti-usury tradition in the scriptures?

Kindly note that this is not a query about the consequences of usury. Rather, I ask-- to what extent is the practice itself acceptable to God, whatever the anticipated consequences, good or ill?

Vicki's relational question in this braid of strands-- some trading of texts, some metaethical reflection, and the field observations that follow Vicki's-- seem urgent because it offers a bridge over the chasm between two sides that we have been missing. To see why, consider the disconnected debates between those who favor the committed and blessed practice of homosexuality in the Church and those who oppose it.

Over the years, the debates that I have heard viva voce have seemed to go like this--

Pro: In the context of the Church, sexuality is a new creation in Christ. There is no homosexual exception, and there cannot be one without undermining the whole Christian vision of new creation, since there is only one human nature, which Christ fully assumed.

Contra: In the context of pre-Christian antiquity, God condemned a particular sexual procedure. (Texts.)

Pro: We could quibble, but even if true, we are talking about a new creation-- homosexuality as practiced in the Church today, not as practiced by pagan sailors in ancient Corinth. Do you believe that sexuality is a new creation in Christ or not?

Contra: In the context of pre-Christian antiquity, God condemned a particular sexual procedure. (More texts.)

Pro: If all of human nature is recreated in Christ, and sexuality is a part of that nature, what else is the Church to do when 10% of confessing Christians have same-sex orientations that naturally incline to a particular sexual procedure? How is the Church to minister for them?

Contra: In the context of pre-Christian antiquity, God condemned a particular sexual procedure. (Even more texts. Frustration that text-piling is not working.)

Pro: However else one sees the Church, they are surely the people who will take responsibility to act in God's kingdom for the gospel. You are warmly welcome to join us when you are able to do that. (Back to the hors d'oeuvres table, and frustrated that those Contra seem unable to grapple with the dilemma itself, to understand what is at stake in it, or to stand up and be the Church when it really counts.)

Doubtless, better dialogues are possible. And, emphases on different loci of Christian dogma drive different problems into prominence. It can take time on all sides to catch up to insights that come more readily to those who have different emphases. That is why Anglican comprehensiveness requires patience.

When cornered between two such friends, I often point out that their disconnected discussion is disconnected because those Contra lack the personal confidence of the Pro that the experience of Church is anything at all like being in a new creation. It sounds good, but the Contra don't feel it. They rather focus on their personal path of right regulation of the old creation and value the objectivity of the scriptures as an aid to doing so. And when they see that those Pro seem to embrace a very dysregulated society so uncritically, the idea that there is a new creation in Christ seems implausible. Objectivity is simply being traded for credulity. But surely this is a bit too individualistic?

Conversely, those Pro are persuaded by their own theological resources that the institutional life of the Church is the very kingdom itself. They do not worry so much about individual regulation of any kind, but they worry a lot about failure of a different kind-- the possibility that the Church, by remaining stuck in a regime of pain that most of their society now sees through, will again fail to be a plausible witness of the Kingdom to the society at large. But surely this makes the Christian heart captive to the frailty of every organization and the perceptions of an antagonistic culture?

So, I say to my puzzled friends that what divides them is not sexual ethics, but their personal experiences of being the Church and the vision of Christ's work that gives those experiences meaning. They could probably have analogous quarrels about things altogether heterosexual, if some troublemaker could find a way to relate them to ordination. For shared orders, more than a shared configuration of doctrines and experiences, is what has brought them to the party. God gave us holy orders to teach us patience.

What so interests me about the Vicki-following strand among these friends is that it seems to take the very responsibility for being the Church here and now that those on the Pro side of this debate so seldom see in the Contra side. In a group where many have read Tom Wright, that is an exciting development, since they are surely equipped to talk, as Vicki did, about how being redeemed in Christ should renew the mind and could make the inside of a church very different from the street outside. Those in the relational strand seem to be saying that, say, being married in the Church or being unmarried in the Church should feel different from marriage or singleness outside it, and that if there is to be a new creation that is it. Or perhaps I misread. Naturally, I wonder whether more about that might be said here.

The Covenant itself seems to be a fait accompli. Where two or more Anglican churches gather there the inner Communion will be, and they will advance together in ecumenical conversations with other communions. That is good for ecumenism, which will benefit from having a stable Anglican partner for dialogue and progress. 

Other Anglican churches will belong, by choice, to an Anglican Fringe that have preserved their freedom to ignore other Anglicans, but will themselves be ignored by the other great communions. And that is also good for ecumenism.

It is not a failure if it takes some Anglican churches a while to find the center. The Covenant sets a reasonable open gate between the two.

In short, it allows churches to be as close or as distant as they want to be. Rogelio grasps this. Other comments seem to see coercion in the possibility that a church might lose the chance to hear and influence other Anglicans, and other Christians beyond, if it demonstrates that it prefers to ignore them. What can one say to those see expectations of good faith and reciprocity as coercion?

"As I see it our consciences must be submitted to the Word of God and not the other way round."

It would appear that Vicki has indeed submitted her conscience to the Word of God.

Vicki, again, thank you for your gracious kindness in engaging in this discussion. While all the contributions have been worthwhile, your own articulate candor has pushed it forward. If you do not mind a further, rather speculative query-- how do you see life in Christ informing relationships like your own? Presuming that you are an evangelical, I am sure that the Lord helps you to make sense of life's unfolding eventualities, including the love for a woman that you yourself once found surprising. If there are scriptures that have helped you to make sense of that along the way, I wonder what those have been, and what they have shown you.

Knowing how you relate Christ to this relationship would help me to make sense of what seems to be a new intentionality bundling together and informing many behaviours, ancient, medieval, and modern. Clearly, we cannot make sense of our behaviours in isolation from the meaning we find in them. And for Christians, God's self-revelation is prior to these meanings, so that the more we think of Him and in Him, the more we manifest His will in what we do. So, quite apart from the low question of whether those now "accepted" in society should be accepted on the same basis in the Church as well, there is the high question of how any sort of Christian life belongs to the Church as a sign of the presence of the Kingdom. We know how St Paul answered the high question with respect to husbands and wives; how do you answer the high question for relationships like your own?

My curiosity is not idle. Attention to the low question has often kept the high question from even being asked, let alone answered. The result is an unfortunate polarization in this and many other churches between those who are so accepting of changing mores that they never thought to ask it, and those so distrustful of changing mores that they assume that it cannot be answered. A strong answer to the high question, if it exists, challenges the evident defects in both positions. 

Therefore, please do not confuse the high question with the demand for explicit scriptural permission for women to have sex with other women. The real concern behind that seems to be that, if relationships without such permits are generally approved, then the scriptures will no longer be effective for some as an objective standard of morality, and that those who cannot exercise self-control without that standard will therefore do wrong (e.g. will steal Porsches). That concern is also timely and deserves its own serious consideration, but I myself am hoping that you can describe, not an ancient scriptural permit for what you do, but rather an understanding of your practice that is, not wholly dependent on our distrusted social milieu, but instead informed, more and more, by what God has revealed to us in Christ. In fact, Vicki, that is what I hope that our Lord finds in us all.

Greater charity in the posts of this thread might not only be desirable in itself, but an aid to its primary purpose of understanding. While under the sway of anger and suspicion, minds are apt to perceive only what confirms their prior views. This, of course, defeats the purpose of any forum, and preempts the delight of discovery.

Personal attacks are sin. Duels seem uncivil in this context. Repetition is wasteful.

It is less enjoyable (and unhealthy for the thread) to focus overmuch attention on those with entrenched positions and closed minds so that they are overmuch encouraged to hold forth. This is also seen at holiday parties and wherever alcohol is free.

It is more enjoyable (and healthier for the thread) to focus on those posts that advance the whole discussion in an amicable tone.

What you reward with your responses, you will see more often.

In 2011 and thereafter, it will be a blessed thing for those Anglicans who agree amongst themselves to enjoy the closer ties that the Anglican Covenant facilitates. Likewise, it will be a good thing for them to have a more justly proportioned closeness to those who have freely decided never to agree with them. Anglicanism has never intentionally stood for communion without substance, and as time, reflection, and dialogue have closed many of the once-bitter fights of the past. That is why parties of opinion who disagreed in the 20th century now find that they have the mutual respect to want closer ties. It is time to mark this progress with an appropriate deepening of ties that corresponds to the increase of theological trust. A deeper relationship in which churches say what they believe and believe what they say would do the world some good.

It is regrettable that the discovery of consensus was occasioned by a sharp disagreement over TEC's treatment of the rest of the Communion. But then, the Lord's will for Anglicans has emerged in ironic ways from the beginning. Naturally, there are controversies in the future of the covenanted Anglicans as well. But, by definition, those will be controversies among Christians who agree on the eccesial way of handling them. Those are disagreements worth having.

Even on merely secular grounds of free association, it is hard to see why one would object to the closer association of those who are in fact closer. Do pluralists in fact believe in freedom of conscience as they say they do? We shall see.

Stephen's wise initiative has inspired an enjoyable and helpful thread. Humanly speaking, it is easier to credit the views of those we somewhat know. This is a busy week, but my own profile will be posted in due course. Blessings on us all :-)

Delighted to have Fulcrum poetry for Christmas :-D

And all the music links that one could want :-D

One feels greedy asking for anything more, but... perhaps next year...  one or more readers' guides to Fulcrum 2003-2011?

His blessings on all the truceful!

Findings in the St. Paul’s Institute report on attitudes in the City--

• Financial Service Professionals say that they are primarily motivated by financial reward, but also believe that they are paid excessively.

• They say that their companies maintain high ethical standards, but also that the deregulation of the last 25 years has led to a decline in ethics.

• They say that maximizing shareholder value is not inconsistent with high ethical standards, but that the deregulation to enable that maximum also enables ethical decline.