BBC Interview on the General Synod Vote on the Anglican Communion Covenant
Transcript of BBC Radio 4 Sunday Programme interview
28 November 2010
with Graham Kings, Bishop of Sherborne
interviewed by William Crawley
The information on the programme is here.
An Anglican Mainstream transcript of the interview with Bishop Martyn Minns, earlier in the programme, is here.
Audio of the full interviews with Martyn Minns and Graham Kings is available on the new FulcrumAnglican channel on YouTube. Graham Kings can be heard from 5:12.
Interview with Graham Kings
Q. How significant will this week prove to be in the history of the Anglican Communion?
A. I think it is very significant because the General Synod gave an overwhelming vote in support of the Covenant. It was attacked from the left and it was attacked from the right, but following the lead of a strong Presidential Address from the Archbishop, it was an overwhelming support. So rather than being fatally flawed, it was given a life-giving boost.
Q. Are you at all sympathetic to the GAFCON primates who plainly believe that other member church members of the Communion cannot be trusted to honour any covenant?
a. No, I’m not. I’m sympathetic to the leadership of the Global South Anglican movement, which is different from GAFCON. GAFCON is a subset of that and the chair of the Global South Anglican movement is John Chew, the Bishop of Singapore and Archbishop of South East Asia and John emailed me and said the Singapore Diocese have passed the covenant. He was involved in the commission that brought it together and similarly Mouneer Anis, Bishop in Egypt and Presiding Bishop of the Middle East is still in favour of the Covenant - there are still some questions - and Ian Ernest who is the chair of CAPA, the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa.
These three moderate Global South Anglican leaders are still in favour of the covenant, and so it is just not a case that the whole of the Global South - GAFOCON is not the whole of the Anglican South.
Q. And it is fair to say that even without GAFCON’s rejections; this wasn’t a universally popular covenant was it?
A. No, as I say it was attacked from people on the left and there were adverts in the church press - some misinformation in that that was corrected - and it was attacked also from the right, but it was an overwhelming vote. That was utterly extraordinary.
Q. What do you think of Martyn Minns’s comment that this is not the end game for the communion but a revolution in how the communion organises itself and its conversations?
A. First of all Martyn, although he is part of the Anglican Church in North America, that is not the Anglican, The Episcopal Church in America. There is a long standing church there, The Episcopal Church in the USA. ANCA, the Anglican Church in North America, is a split off and Martyn and Robert Duncan, they formed their own church – just invented their own church. I am sympathetic to their views. I’m conservative on sexuality myself, but not the way they see the church. I don’t want the church and the Communion to be split off in the States and I don’t want that to become a model. I was worried when Martyn spoke about reducing the Communion to a network. Networks are very different from an organic Communion.
Q. Nevertheless you can’t force people to keep talking and discussing issues when they don’t want to. Isn’t it time to face facts and recognize that those who don’t want to be part of it are already leaving.
A. I think the key thing about the Anglican Communion Covenant is that it is an opt-in covenant, so nobody is forcing people to join it. If you join it, then you are part of the Anglican Communion and fully involved in the representative bodies. If you decide not to opt in, then you are still part of the Anglican Communion: you are not in the centre in terms of representation, so there is no force in this and it’s up to the choices of provinces. The interesting thing about the GAFCON Primates’ Council is that they can’t decide for their provinces. It has to go to their provinces and it hasn’t gone yet, just a recommendation from some key leaders, certainly in Africa.
I was in Kenya for seven years and loved it. I was there again in ‘07 and talked to key leaders. I was in Sudan last year at the Standing Committee of the Provincial Synod and Archbishop Daniel Deng is an extraordinary Archbishop. That Standing Committee passed the Covenant as it then was and there’s going to be a Provincial Synod next November. Now Daniel Deng himself is on the GAFCON Primates’ Council, so one of them passed it. He couldn’t be at the Oxford meeting, so that why he was never mentioned.
Q. So very briefly bishop, is there a plan B?
A. No. The covenant is the only way forward, which is an extraordinary middle way. Where there is will there is a way
Q. Bishop Graham Kings, many thanks to you.
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Dr Graham Kings is the Bishop of Sherborne and theological secretary of Fulcrum. His November 2010 Guardian article, 'The Anglican Covenant is the only Way Forward' may be read here; his February 2010 interview with the Church of England Newspaper about the Anglican Church in North America may be read here; his January 2008 Church of England Newspaper article, 'Substance and Shadow: Lambeth Conference and GAFCON' may be read here; and his November 2006 Church of England Newspaper article, 'Splitters United or Patient Pressure?' may be read here.
The Rt Revd Dr Graham Kings is Honorary Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Ely and Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide.