Hong Kong Anglican Church adopts the Anglican Covenant

Episcopal News Service reports that Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui, the Hong Kong Anglican Church, has adopted the Covenant. You can read the story here.

Canadian Resolution Revealed

There has been little news about the Anglican Covenant of late, in part, no doubt, because the Anglican Communion has been occupied with installing a new Archbishop of Canterbury and trying to figure out what that means for the Communion. Of course, some have interpreted the lack of news as lack of interest, but that is a thesis that is hard to prove. In any case, the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) is about to take action on the Covenant. Well, sort of.

The ACC will hold its General Synod in July. As expected, a resolution will be put forward that delays action on the Covenant until at least 2016. Resolution A120, from the Council of General Synod, declares that the General Synod “direct[s] the Council of General Synod to bring a recommendation regarding the adoption of the Covenant to General Synod 2016.”

Of course, a similar 2010 resolution required that the Council of General Synod bring a resolution regarding adoption of the Covenant to the 2013 General Synod. If A120 is passed, the ACC may find itself voting on Covenant adoption in 2016. Or not.

The text of Resolution A120 can be found here.
 

Week of Prayer for Christian Diversity

Bosco Peters, the Anglican New Zealand priest who writes the Liturgy blog, has declared January 27, 2013 – February 3, 2013, the Week of Prayer for Christian Diversity. The octave of prayer for diversity is analogous to the established Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Unity in the Anglican Communion is taken by some to require uniformity, and Peters’ newly declared week is intended to promote the acceptability of the notion of unity in diversity. His blog post on his declaration is here, and the logo he has designed to celebrate Christian diversity is shown below.

Status Update on the Covenant

“South Park” Malcolm
from Simple Massing Priest blog

News of the Anglican Covenant has been scarce for quite some time. The Anglican world has instead largely been focused on various goings on in the Church of England. The English church now has a new Archbishop of Canterbury, has the potential to consecrate gay (but celibate) bishops but not women bishops (of any sort), and has shown itself to be out-of-touch with the larger society on the matter of marriage equality. No one seems to be talking about the Anglican Covenant.

The Rev. Malcolm French, the No Anglican Covenant Coalition moderator, noting that he has not written anything about the Covenant since he blogged from the General Convention of The Episcopal Church last summer, has now published a post on his blog titled “Time for the new broom to sweep clean.” In it, Malcolm offers an evaluation of where the Covenant stands in January 2013. He stops short of asking Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, to sign the death certificate (or, perhaps, death warrant) of the Covenant, but he observes that the Covenant “staggers on like some dessicated zombie or reflection-free nosferatu.”

You can read Malcolm’s post here.
 

Moderator French an Episcopal Candidate

We are pleased to announce that the moderator of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition (and convenor for the Anglican Church of Canada), the Rev. Malcolm French, is a candidate to become the next bishop of the Diocese of Qu’Appelle in the Anglican Church of Canada. The list of candidates is here. Malcolm’s profile is here.

Please pray for the selection process in the Diocese of Qu’Appelle.

The Rev. Malcolm French

Blog Comments

Recently, this blog has experienced some odd posts. While I share this blog with my colleagues and do not post my "three rules" here regularly, they are worthy of your consideration.

1. Stay within musket range of the topic. Items that are off subject are deleted.
2. Ad hominem attacks will be deleted period.
3. Avoid obscure unintelligible writing. While this is often in the eye of the beholder, Lionel and I while tolerant, do mean it.

So, if you are wondering why you are not finding some brilliant comment you think really showed the Coalition how wrong it is, consider it it light of those three. We do not claim infallibility, we know we can be wrong. But we do expect guests here to be reasonably polite.

Jim B

General Convention Brochure

The No Anglican Covenant Coalition distributed both buttons and brochures at the recent General Convention. For the benefit of those who did not attend, you can see one of our buttons in a previous post.

Our brochure was a tri-fold affair on glossy white paper:

 

Click here to see the content of the brochure, which was designed specifically for distribution at the 2012 General Convention.

You can find pictures of Malcolm French and me at our General Convention display on my own blog.