The question of an Anglican doctrinal covenant has been much discussed in recent months. Yesterday, a group of evangelical and charismatic members of the Church of England met with the Archbishop of Canterbury to propose a draft covenant for that church. One of the striking features of the draft is its assertion that a congregation must be free to ditch its bishop if the bishop fails to meet certain standards of doctrinal purity.
Substantively, this particular draft has the ring of a new Puritanism to it. Personally, I could never assent to many of the beliefs that the draft proclaims to be mandatory. Moreover, the draft leaves unaddressed some crucial questions, such as: Who will determine whether a congregation is justified in seeking to ditch its bishop?
But I do find myself having some sympathy with one the drafters’ implicit principles: In structuring and governing the church, form should follow function. The covenant exercise gives us a useful opportunity to ask ourselves some fundamental questions, such as:
• Question 1: What exactly is the church’s mission?
• Question 2: If we were starting with a clean sheet of paper, how would we design a church to carry out that mission?
It’s not intuitively obvious that the traditional, Anglican-style episcopal system would be the result.
We should keep that in mind in thinking about realignments, covenants, and the like.
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