It has been a while since I commented on the Anglican Communion, but those who closely watch the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issues know that there is a very close and parallel situation in The Episcopal Church (TEC) at the moment.  Close enough that we write amicus briefs on each others court cases and we have churches realigning in the same places that Episcopal dioceses are realigning, such as the San Joaquin valley of California.

There are two different, but related, tracks of controversy developing in the Anglican world at the moment.  The first involves the Episcopal Church and an effort by conservatives to demonstrate that it is not a “hierarchical church.”  This is of course important because one of the legal theories for a national church retaining control of the local church property, the “principle of government,” is the trust clause for a hierarchical church.  If the church is not hierarchical the trust clause is harder to argue.

This news was broken earlier this week by the Rev. Mark Harris in his blog Preludium.  He said:

In
the next few days a position paper signed by a number of bishops
connected to the “Communion Partners” bishops group will be published,
in all likelihood by the Anglican Communion Institute. It will
challenge the notion that dioceses of TEC are part of TEC
in any other way except by voluntary association, and that therefore
they are free to independently subscribe to the Anglican Covenant and
maintain pastoral visitation and oversight independent of any agreement
with TEC or its leadership. At least that is the conclusion to be reached from a thread of emails send to Preludium today (April 21).

And the Rev. Harris says later

The
second point of reference is the belief that Episcopal Church polity
legitimately arises out of the autonomy of dioceses who gather in
voluntary association at The Episcopal Church in General Convention. In
this view it is the diocese and not The Episcopal Church that is the
“basic unit” of The Episcopal Church. In this argument TEC is not a metropolitical entity, but rather a free association of dioceses.

Note here the parallel to the PC(USA) principle that the presbytery is the “central governmental unit.”  (I wrote a bit about that earlier in the week.)

Well, there was a bit of an uproar on both sides about the information leakage.  The Rev. Harris mentions it yesterday as does the Rev. Susan Russell.  But the Anglican Communion Institute has released the statement signed by fifteen bishops.  At the present time there does not appear to be an official statement from the national office, but there is a press release with unofficial critical quotes.  I should also point out that Mr. Haley, the Anglican Curmudgeon, has a two part post (Part 1, Part 2) about why the Episcopal Church is not hierarchical.

But looking at this debate there is more than one implication if the Episcopal Church is not hierarchical.  The property is one thing but realigning a diocese with the Worldwide Anglican Communion is another part of it.  And related to that the Worldwide Anglican Communion is now writing a new Anglican Covenant that is conservative in its tone.  I won’t go into all the nuances of this, but for the purposes of the preceding news, if a diocese is the core unit of the church than it would be free to associate by itself with the covenant without being associated through the national church.

This is important because based on the current draft of the Covenant the leadership of the Episcopal Church has indicated that it might not sign on.  An article from Episcopal Life, the official Episcopal News Service, says

Should the ACC [Anglican Consultative Council] accept the draft during the Jamaica meeting, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has said
that she would “strongly discourage” any effort to bring such a request
to the 76th General Convention in July 2009. The Episcopal Church’s
Executive Council agreed in
January, saying that such a decision would need the full three years
between meetings of General Convention to “prayerfully engage the
faithful of all the dioceses of the Episcopal Church as to their
discernment in respect to the covenant” and listen to other provinces
“as they discuss and wrestle with the generalities and particularities
of an Anglican covenant.”

Ruth Gledhill of The Times points out that the Church of England may not be able to legally sign the covenant either because it “might subvert the authority of the Queen as Supreme Governor.”

So, if you think you have now reached the complexity of this polity think again.  Ms. Gledhill also reports on the likely implementation of this covenant:

The covenant, by virtue of a quasi disciplinary process, is likely
create a multi-layered communion, with the ‘conservative’ provinces in
the inner circle, with full voting rights at all the communion bodies,
and the pro-gay liberals on the outer circle and presumably some rights
removed, if they insist on consecrating more gay bishops or sanctioning
gay marriage and refuse to sign up to the covenant in all its biblical
orthodoxy.

And for a more elaborate exposition (and I gather he is being a bit tongue-in-cheek) there is Damian Thomas over at the Telegraph picking up where Ruth left off:

What I didn’t know is that the proposals are tied to an intricate scale
of “degrees of communion” – full, impaired, partial and broken – that
will ascribed to different provinces by a Lambeth Communion Review
Commission, which will itself be multi-layered, supervising Review
Sub-Committees based on the Indaba model that will ascribe State of
Communion Assessments to individual dioceses, non-territorial episcopal
oversight areas and parishes. It would, of course, be inappropriate for
the same Review Sub-Committees to cross the boundary between inner and
outer circles of the Anglican Communion, and so – in a radical proposal
drafted by Dr Rowan Williams himself – the Lambeth Communion Review
Commission will divide into inner and outer circle Areas of Special
Responsibility that will shadow each other’s assessments.

Got that?  He keeps going so if you want the whole thing check it out.  It sort of reminds me of my favorite Monty Python game show parody where the rules are so complicated there is not time for the contest itself.  An earlier version is available on line.

So is this an Anglican version of the PUP report?  Is this modeled on Dante’s circles of Hell?  What will the Anglican Communion look like in a few years?  The PC(USA) and the Episcopal situations are so close and somewhat linked so it will be interesting to see where they go from here.