A New Year's Resolution

The Church Year begins this Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, and it's as good a time as any to make resolutions. Although there are more that I could - and even should - make, I am making at least this one: I am not going to worry about the future of the Anglican Communion and simply tend to being a member of the Episcopal Church, the Associate Priest at Saint Peter's Church in Salem, Massachusetts, a Trustee of Episcopal Divinity School, and a member of my wonderful family.

What brought this on were two events that happened on the same day and the flurry of responses to them on various blogs. 

1. The General Synod of the Church of England voted to send the final draft of the Anglican Covenant to the dioceses for consideration. If a majority of dioceses recommend its adoption, the General Synod can then decide whether or not to adopt. This process will take two years and is aimed at insuring that the Covenant is given serious consideration.
2. A group of Primates (senior Bishops of member churches of the Communion)  from the Global South released a statement that the Covenant was unacceptable to them and that they would not be attending the next meeting of the Communion's Primates early next year.

It does not seem to be a coincidence that these two events happened on the same day, especially as the statement from the Primates was from a meeting in October. There are some of us who saw the Covenant as a very imperfect attempt to keep the Communion together in the wake of strong objections by leaders from the Global South to the attempts at full inclusion of lesbian and gay people in the Communion's member churches in North America.  The Primates' statement makes it clear, to me at least, that nothing that do, short of accepting their convictions about same-sexuality, will keep the Communion together. These men have decided to walk apart, not only from the member churches in North America, but from all the other member churches. 

The Anglican Communion is broken and I'm not going to waste any more time or energy worrying about it.