Posted Wednesday 4 April 2012
In June, the General Synod will vote on whether the SEC should adopt the Anglican Covenant. This is an ‘in principle’ vote. If passed, the next stage would be to develop the changes to the Canons to allow the Covenant to be formally adopted by the Church.
As part of this process, our Diocesan Synod discussed the Covenant at its recent meeting in Galloway. There was no requirement to take a formal vote, rather to inform the delegates to General Synod on how the synod regarded the proposed covenant. The discussion took place in small groups answering a number of questions:
What questions remain unanswered for you regarding the Anglican Covenant?
Would your table accept the Anglican Covenant now?
What would you like the Scottish Episcopal Church to say to the Anglican Communion now?
As well as the groups sharing their views, there was an opportunity for feedback to the meeting as a whole and the points made were recorded for later collation.
The compilation of the written comments has now been published. The full report can be found under “Documents and Forms” tab on the website homepage, then under “General”.
As can be seen from the comments, the Synod’s attitude to the proposed Covenant was overwhelmingly negative. In answer to the second question (‘Would your table accept the Anglican Covenant now?’) there was only one table who said yes (‘It couldn’t do any harm’) - 19 said no and 2 were undecided.
If the ‘in principle’ vote falls at the June synod, then the process finishes there, although there was a feeling within the hall that the Synod valued the Anglican Communion highly but felt that the Covenant was not the vehicle to repair the relationships and tensions within the Communion.
Category: Diocesan Synod
