Andrew Gerns has some helpful thoughts on the Covenant process that is spluttering along in the Communion right now:

“What was floated in Dar es Salaam, a highly structured Covenant that is more constitutional and dogmatic in format is, if not dead, certainly on life-support. The Archbishop of Canterbury came back from sabbatical not only with a new book, but it seems with a more realistic assessment of where the Episcopal Church is and with some determination to undo some of the damage that has been wrought by an effort to re-write and re-structure the Communion.

We forget that was envisioned four years ago has become something else entirely. The Lambeth Commission on Communion was not meant to deal with sexuality, nor the specifics of the action of the Episcopal Church but to deal with issues of Communion that actions in the US and Canada pointed towards.

The fabric of the Communion was torn because there were two different implications from the same Gospel are at work at the same time and there was (and still is) no way for the several provinces to work out how implementing differing perspectives would mean for each other.”

Andrew ends his essay with a call for the Communion to scrap the present proposed convenant and go back to square one, and have the conversations with each other that we were supposed to have; and to stop using the covenant process as a tool to toss people out.

I’m find myself in pretty substantial agreement with him.

Read the rest: Andrew Plus: The Covenant is dead, but can we get back to square one?