Editorial: the 500-yr-old 'Covenant'

The freshly announced “Anglican Covenant” is the buzz of the Communion.  It is a hopeful three-steps-forward in the seemingly endless pattern of contemporary Anglicanism’s two-steps-back.  As Ephraim Radner has recently argued, “the Anglican Covenant, in its final form, points to the likelihood of a growing core of covenanting Anglican churches – the Covenant becomes ‘active’ as soon as any church adopts it – whose critical mass will soon shift the character of decision-making as a whole among the Instruments [of Communion].”  It is good news, and we sincerely hope and pray that the Anglican Church of Canada, at its General Synod this year in Halifax, will adopt the Covenant (and its implications) enthusiastically.

  But in the midst of the optimism surrounding the Covenant, we can’t forget that in truth Anglicanism has possessed a “Covenant” since our reformation in the sixteenth century, one that goes much deeper than simply dealing with “how things work” within the earthly Communion. Our real and fundamental “Covenant” has always been the Book of Common Prayer, the traditional Ordinal*, and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. 

  The Anglican Covenant will hopefully go a long way in helping hold the Communion together, and also move us forward in our mission around the globe.  But Anglicanism will not be held together as a vital part of Christ’s Church Militant simply through the construction and maintenance of political structures and ecclesiological agreements. The Anglican Covenant does provide a helpful way forward, and a critical forum within which to deal with disputes in areas of doctrine and discipline among our member provinces -- but it is by no means a complete solution.

  The reformers understood that the Church on earth was bound together not primarily by political structures but by the coherent doctrines of the Faith revealed in Holy Scripture.  The Book of Common Prayer was nothing less than the saving doctrines of Scripture woven together into a living spiritual system of prayer, discipline and festival.  It is this very rootedness in Scripture that so much of contemporary Anglican liturgy has lost.  The Ordinal expressed the specific vocation of the Ordained Ministers within the Church to teach the faith (the diaconate), administer the Sacraments of Christ (the presbyterate) and protect the Faith from the ever-threatening temptations of each generation (the episcopate).  The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion simply clarified various points of doctrine which were already implicitly (usually even explicitly) present in the worship life of the BCP itself.

  It was (and is) the saving doctrine revealed in Holy Scripture that is the real “Anglican Covenant.”  The renewal of Anglicanism worldwide is fundamentally tied to the recovery of the place of the Book of Common Prayer in our life together.  No political or ecclesiastical structures, no matter how effective and efficient, are a substitute for a firm foundation in the very principles of our life in Christ together.

*The Ordinal: the book containing the order of service for ordinations.