Stretching and the Spirit: The Anglican Covenant

by Graham Kings, vicar of St Mary Islington

and Jonathan Clark, rector of St Mary Stoke Newington

The stretching which the Holy Spirit evokes in the life of the Church may well be the vocation to an Anglican Covenant. Stretching and the Spirit may seem to be strange at first - perhaps the Spirit is more usually associated with flexibility and unpredictability - but considering the phrase in terms of both framework and energy may be helpful as the debate in General Synod approaches on the process of the Anglican Covenant.

We write as friends, colleagues, and incumbents of London parishes and also from the varied perspectives of Fulcrum and Affirming Catholicism. As we explored together the idea of stretching and being stretched, we discovered analogies which we hope will provoke new ways of thinking about the Church's life.

Stretching for Creativity and Hospitality

Skins stretched on frames become drums, which sound notes and generate rhythms. Canvases stretched on frames create space for art. Strings stretched on frames may be played and plucked. Canvases can also be stretched on frames to form tents for accommodation and hospitality. We also note that overstretching can ruin drums, art and stringed instruments; and tent frames are designed for particular tents.

Creativity and hospitality need helpful and effective structures. Anglican ecclesiology needs to develop authentically in adapting to global and contextual concerns.

Stretching for Energy and Inspiration

Stretching muscles is important in warming up for sport. General stretching, for the more sedentary, is productive for increased oxygen intake and inspiration. Again, overstretching can be damaging to muscles, as can vigorous exercise without the warming up process.

As we are made taut by the Spirit, a Covenant should enthuse and infuse our Communion in effective mission.

The Anglican Covenant - Stretching a Point

We believe that we are being called beyond the comfort of our own convictions - that the Spirit is stretching us into embracing 'interdependence' as the principle of our life together. This need not undermine the 'autonomy' of provinces, but it places the focus clearly on 'interdependence', rather than 'independence', as the starting point for the life of our Communion.

To make this commitment will be demanding and sacrificial and there may well be parts of the Communion for whom this sacrifice is too great. Opting out may lead to 'associate status' at Communion meetings rather than 'constitutive status'.

We believe that we need a Covenant which is evangelical, reasonable and catholic. Such a Covenant will sustain our communion with one another, will encourage our shared study of the Bible, and will promote our Anglican pattern of synodical governance and episcopal leadership. It will enhance our co-operation with ecumenical partners and our participation in God's mission to his world.

Rowan Williams, who will be on study leave during the General Synod debate, has written perceptively of Augustine of Hippo:

Augustine is unmistakeably working with the real questions of an earlier period, but implying that their fully theological resolution will need some new disturbing turns in the argument; and in that sense he is doing something very like the prelates at the Council of Nicaea who reluctantly adopted a fresh terminology in order to hold on intelligibly to a threatened belief.' (Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church, London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005, p50)

Sometimes indeed 'some new disturbing turns in the argument' and 'fresh terminology' are needed.

Robert Runcie, in his opening sermon at the Lambeth Conference of 1988 asked prophetically:

Are we being called through events and their theological interpretation to move from independence to interdependence? If we answer yes, then we cannot dodge the question of how this is to be given 'flesh': how is our interdependence articulated and made effective; how is it to be structured? Without losing a proper - but perhaps modified - provincial autonomy, this will probably mean a critical examination of the notion of 'dispersed authority'. We need to have confidence that authority is not dispersed to the point of dissolution and ineffectiveness... Let me put it in starkly simple terms: do we really want unity within the Anglican Communion? Is our worldwide family of Christians worth bonding together? Or is our paramount concern the preservation or promotion of that particular expression of Anglicanism which has developed within the culture of our own province?... I believe we still need the Anglican Communion. (Adrian Hastings, Robert Runcie, London: Mowbray, 1991, pp154-5)

So do we. In the midst of this current crisis, the pattern of our friendship and collaboration in London has been encouraging and we are committed to worshipping, learning and proclaiming the gospel together. As our Communion is being stretched by the Spirit, a similar commitment to an Anglican Covenant, realistically and theologically, is the constructive way forward.