We appreciate the effort and sincere concern of this group and we recognize how their work has brought about important reflections on our nature as communion.

However, although acknowledging that commendable effort, we believe that our Communion does not need new instruments of consensus beyond those that historically have been our benchmarks in terms of identity…

Read it all here

A second iteration of a draft covenant for the Anglican Communion (the St. Andrew’s Draft) is now circulating; and it is likely that some version thereof will be presented to the Bishops of the Communion when they meet in Canterbury this summer. At some point after this gathering, a covenant proposal will be circulated among the provinces of the Communion for ratification. There is no doubt that most (though perhaps not all) of the member provinces of the Communion will ratify a covenant within the next few years. The question is really not so much ratification of the Covenant, but (1) the sort of covenant that will be ratified; (2) the way in which the provinces of the Communion comport themselves during the period leading up to ratification; and (3) how the Communion might best respond to a situation in which a province rejects the covenant but there are dioceses and parishes within that province that do not.

Read it all here

Christopher Wells offers his notes on the second draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant. Read it here

The Archbishop of Dublin John Neill wrote an article Drafting an Anglican Covenant in the Church of Ireland Gazette.

The Bishop of Dudley (UK), David Walker also wrote an article entitled Why the new Covenant creates hope

The draft is “tentative” – the Covenant Design Group underlines – in particular with regard to the “procedural appendix” that has (rightly) been the centre of animated discussion.  The draft is meant “for discussion”, “offered for reflection in the Communion at large, and in particular by the Lambeth Conference” to be convened this summer.

In this spirit I offer the following observations to further the discussion. 

The Covenant Design Group (CDG) held its second meeting at the Anglican Communion Offices, St. Andrew’s House, London, UK, between Monday, 28th January, and Saturday, 2nd February, 2008, under the chairmanship of the Most Revd Drexel Gomez, Archbishop of the West Indies.

The St. Andrew’s Draft of the Covenant: Full text , PDF Copy

The Church of England’s response can be read here.

The Church of Scotland’s response can be read here

The Church of Ireland’s proposes their own version of the draft covenant. Read here

Anglican Church of Aoterea and New Zealand’s response can be read here

(The Anglican Covenant Draft can be read here)

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, as Presidents of the General Synod, have submitted a Church of England Response to the draft Anglican Covenant published last year for discussion around the Anglican Communion.

Prof Stephen Noll provides a evangelical perspective of the Draft Covenant. 

Archbishop Drexel Gomez, who chairs the Covenant Drafting team, speaks to the Church of England General Synod.

Bp. Michael Nazir-Ali’s speech to the CoE General Synod on the Anglican Covenant

More reports here

There are various responses to and comments on the Covenant Draft in England as the Covenant is being considered and debated at COE General Synod:

‘The Anglican Covenant: Background and Resources’, a resource complied by Andrew Goddard is an excellent starting point for those who want to follow the process or to comment/debate the issues. It contain many links to the important papers and various responses around the Communion.

On one level, the current crisis in the Anglican Communion seems to demand an Anglican Covenant if the Communion, as it currently is ordered, is to hold. On the other hand, the order of the Communion is in
many ways only “apparent” and is, in any event, already ruptured.

Read it all here

A presentation by Ephraim Radner to the House of Bishops on the Proposed Anglican Covenant. 

A weekend of prayer, reflection, and study of environmental sustainability and God’s mission has engaged the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops as its members have prepared to respond to the Primates’ Communique and the proposed Anglican Covenant.

1. Making Promises: the Proposed Anglican Covenant in the life of Communion - Ephraim Radner evaluates the Proposed Covenant
Ed: this started the discussion and debate.

2. A Very Godly Order: A Response to Ephraim’s evaluation by Michael Poon

3. Uncovering the light: the Proposed Covenant our Anglican Heritage. A response to Dr. Poon

4. The trivial round, the common task: Sober Notes to Dr Radner

5. 3 questions to your clarification - Ephraim responds to Poon

On a practical level, as you point out, this Common Prayer tradition has become undone.  So, I ask you if you have a suggestion as to how it might be renewed and strengthened through the Covenant?  Simply listing the 1662 Prayer Book tradition as “guiding” does not seem to be sufficient, and I would agree. But how it shapes the entire section to make clearer the foundational aspects of the tradition we both seem to believe needs to be renewed here.  Concrete suggestions of this kind are precisely what are needed. 

Here is where the conciliar character of the Proposed Covenant is perhaps more prominent than Dr. Poon would like:  the form of “Doxology-orthodoxy, right interpretation of the Word, and right and proper praise [that] underpin Christian ecclesial life” is not up for grabs, is not some human invention, but it must nonetheless be recognized and embraced by the human followers of Christ within the church.  Conciliar life undergirds covenant not because councils and their members do not “err”; just the opposite.  Conciliar life undergirds covenant because it is the formal agency of the erring Church’s act of constant re-conversion to the truth.  It does not supersede the truth; it apprehends it within the historical life of the Church, which includes her many failures. 

It is the faith expressed in a common order that binds us all in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic ecclesial community. Decisions on the ecclesiastical order are best left to Primates and bishops.  Their provisions are necessary; but they are at best like the gracious provision of fig leaves that hide our shame for those who live in the East of Eden. Deeper and wider than we imagine are God’s love for the whole People of God.  To deeper wrestling with our souls and wider fellowship with all his saints he has called us, that we may together enter his rest.  The surprisingly unpolemical draft from the Global South is a concrete gesture for restoring trust.

Based on a talk to the clergy of the Diocese of the Rio Grande, February, 2007

The draft copy of the Covenant is further down the page.

PDF download of report
PDF download of draft covenant text only

Has not the Primates agreed to Lambeth 2008 as the target date?...Canterbury needs to discern the Communion agenda with the Primates. This is his duty and task in this changed time.

Such a covenant would be costly: “We do not underestimate the cost that being in covenant may exact on the Churches of the Communion,” the group warns.

A Consultation Paper on the Covenant Proposal of the Windsor Report - March 2006

Living Church: “The formulation and adoption of a covenant will not resolve the current division in the Anglican Communion, but could assist the process of reconciliation in the “post-Windsor” period, according to a report which has been adopted for discussion and reflection in the Communion.”

Additional info to an earlier article by Jonathan Petre from Telegraph