Message from the Bishop of Newcastle
The Anglican Consultative Council has developed a proposed Covenant for the Provinces of the Anglican Communion that is designed to provide coherence and stability to and within the Anglican Communion. This need has arisen from the decisions and practices of some Provinces that have inflamed other member Provinces of the Anglican Communion and led to fractured relationships between some Provinces.
The 2008 Lambeth Conference of Bishops was depleted by a significant number of Bishops who declined to attend, given the tensions and issues that existed between their Dioceses and the Provinces of Canada and North America. The proposed Covenant has been developed to offer a way forward for all Provinces to maintain full communion with each other.
The General Synod last year requested Dioceses in Australia to study the proposed Covenant for the Anglican Communion as widely and as carefully as practicable. To this end, there will be a session in the 2011 Synod to reflect upon and then to debate the proposal that the Anglican Church of Australia agree to the adoption of the proposed Covenant.
So that the Synod reflection and debate can be as informed as possible I am requesting you to make the study of the proposed Covenant a matter for action before September. I do hope that the whole Diocese will be assiduous in this study and attend particularly to Section 4, the section that has aroused the most controversy. I look forward to the Synod reflection and debate.
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Files for Download
The Anglican Communion Covenant (final proposed version) is available here.
The study guide published by the Anglican Communion Office is available here.
The study guide published by the Church Times newspaper is available here.
The study guide published by the Church in Wales is available here.
The study guide published by the Chicago Consultation (a group in the Episcopal Church, USA) is available here.
The study guide developed by Fr Fergus King (Parish of Kotara South) is available here.
A Comparison between the final proposed version of section four of the Covenant and the previous draft is available here.
Further resources are available here.
A website campaigning against adoption of the Covenant has a helpful up to date list of responses from Provinces of the Communion, to see the list scroll down to the bottom of the page here. A collection of institutional documents relating to the development of the Covenant is available on the same site here.
