In the constitutional arrangements of England, the Church and the State have the same cultural norms and expectations for their nominal heads, the Sovereign and the Archbishop of Canterbury. To put it analogically, the Queen is to the State as the ABC is the Church. Walter Bagehot, in The English Constitution, (second edition, London, 1872), wrote trenchantly that “...the sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, and the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others” (p. 67).

The same three rights, and only these three, belong to the Archbishop of Canterbury: to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn. If one pays careful attention to the writings and speeches of Rowan Williams over the past several years, one will note that he consistently denies the sort of executive or juridical authority accorded to other prelates such as the pope. In the English system, the ABC is not the Prime Minister, but the Sovereign. Williams does not believe it would be legitimate for him to arrogate to himself any authority beyond those three monarchical rights of consultation, encouragement, and warning. Nor does he want them, for any rights beyond these three would confer on him coercive power, and he is averse to violence of any kind. The constitutional monarchy in England is peculiar in that its Sovereign has only nonviolent rights while at the same time being the head of the Armed Forces. Coercive and war-making powers, while exercised in the name of the monarch, are actually wielded by the Government—the Prime Minister and Parliament.

The Archbishop of Canterbury does not currently have the equivalent of a Prime Minister, though he does have a Parliament in General Synod. Nor does it appear that the ABC would want a PM-style executive. What the ABC does want is something that England itself currently lacks: a written constitution, or Covenant, that would serve to regulate the relationships amongst the Anglican Communion’s constituent parts in ways that are consonant with the Gospel, which is noncoercive at heart. The Covenant, if successful, will need no war-making powers, because it will embody the Gospel of Peace, which has Communion with the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit as its origin and goal.

Thus, conservative members of The Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion who want Rowan Williams to act not as a constitutional monarch but as a prime minister will always be disappointed. The Archbishop has made it very clear that his role is limited to consultation, encouragement, and warning. He has exercised his rights to their fullest. We cannot expect more from him and his office than his office has, in fact, conferred upon him. It does not matter how many crises the Anglican Communion faces: the ABC will not presume to exercise powers he does not have, and in any event, does not—and according to Bagehot, if he is “of great sense and sagacity,” should not—want.
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My only addition would be to say that in the Province of Canterbury, the Archbishop enjoys metropolitical authority, including visitational and appellate jurisdiction in the dioceses.

This is wonderfully provocative, because elegantly simple, based on Bagehot’s pungent analogy.  Allow me to respond in kind (if not particularly elegantly):  given the political character of ecclesial existence, because it is so simple, it is also false.  The analogy actually obscures the profound and multi-faceted authority the Archbishop of Canterbury actually enjoys.

The Archbishop has several other powers besides those listed, important as they are.  He “gathers”, mainly through invitation (a power he exercised at the last Lambeth by not inviting Gene Robinson, and choosing to invite those who consecrated him);  he presides at councils and thereby makes a range of parliamentary and enormously influential procedural decisions (he did so at the 2009 ACC debacle);  he acts as a member of many councils, voting yea or nay in some fashion or another;  he thereby has the power and the duty to “explain” his own views, and establish publicly his own mind;  he appoints people to a range of offices and responsibilities;  he thereby also supervises their work—this has been true with respect to a range of communion positions and commissions; related to the last, he can also block certain appointments, officially or through articulated obstruction;  he can travel and meet people face to face in the midst of conflict—that is, he has freedom of movement to go out (at least now). He has the power to accept or refuse the views, actions, offerings of others. One could go on—my own list is decidedly unfinished.

People can, should, and do assess the Archbishop’s ministry to and for the Communion on the basis of many of these powers and their actual exercise. Hopefully, he exercises self-criticism on this basis hiself.  Consulting, encouraging, and warning—important though they are, and perhaps key though they may be—are neither all his powers, nor are they sufficient to the fulfilling of his vocation.

I too think that this is a wonderfully provocative piece, on both ecclesiological and historical levels.  I would like to tease out the latter before addressing the former.

What is most interesting here is the implicit thesis that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s role within the Anglican Communion developed within the political framework of constitutional monarchy, particularly in the late-nineteenth century.  Thus we are dealing with the “internationalization” of an episcopal see after the periods of both classical medieval sovereignty and classical Anglican sovereignty.  Particularly within England, we do well to recall that the sovereign (that is, monarch) had the right to both suspend the laws when seen necessary and to work miracles - namely, the Royal Touch and its associated rites (cramp rings, angels, relics, etc.).  The king’s political sovereignty thus mirrored his spiritual sovereignty, the latter of which was bestowed sacramentally through the consecration that he (or she!) received upon accession to the throne.  The king could suspend the laws of the realm by his sovereign command, but he could also suspend the laws of nature through the working of miracles.  This twofold suspension of the norm was a product of divine grace, but also a matter of metaphysics: the earthly sovereign is an icon of the heavenly sovereign.  And whereas the exercise of God’s sovereignty is determined by his wisdom and love, the earthly sovereign is bound by the laws of nature and Scripture, both of which can never be abrogated (for which, see James I’s Eikon Basilike).  We do well to recall that “absolute monarchy” and “divine right monarchy” occurred within the context of these Christian norms.  Constitutional monarchy, however, undercut this, and vested the king’s sovereignty within the context of Parliament.  From out of this context emerged the Prime Minister (a sort of political demiurge, if I may be so bold and follow my Jacobite tendencies).

It is this latter political context that served as the backdrop for Canterbury’s development into the administrative center of Anglicanism in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century (culminating in Lambeth 1930’s definition of the Anglican Communion as, in part, a communion with the See of Canterbury.  Why, then, assume that Canterbury would look to older models of either Anglican or pre-Anglican (.i.e., medieval English Catholic) sovereignty?  Rather, it makes sense to turn to, e.g., Bagehot for understanding the limited sovereignty that Canterbury has exercised within the international context over the last century and some.  At the very least, this makes considerable intuitive sense, and explains why pre-constitutional expressions of sovereignty are so foreign to the present Archbishop of Canterbury.  I am reading Jean Elshtain’s Sovereignty: God, State, and Self right now, and one of the helpful points that she makes concerns the medieval distinction between auctoritas and potestas, the latter being the secular sword of the sovereign, the former being the sword of the Gospel.  The former is a matter of moral persuasion exclusively; the latter is a matter of coercion.  Canterbury, we might say, has auctoritas, but not potestas.  Borrowing from Carl Schmitt’s opening line in Political Theology, “sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”  Canterbury does not decide on the exception.  Thus, classically conceived, Canterbury lacks sovereignty.  That auctoritas should be seen in constitutional and conciliar terms along the lines laid out in Bagehot makes much sense to me.  It is indeed a topic worthy of historical investigation.  From there, we might learn much ecclesiologically.

While the movement from divine right to constitutionally constrained authority, as Benjamin describes it, may make sense up to a point as a matter of describing the history of political theory, it does not makes sense in terms of the history of political practice, most certainly in terms of the Church.  Stephen Sykes has been pointed on this score:  not only does the Archbishop have “powers”, in addition to certain vaguely defined “authority”, but so do the rest of us as members and actors within the church, and to forget or deny this is to create havoc in terms of responsible life and witness. The choice to abrogate action is, obviously, itself the enactment of a power or “virtue”.  It is not strictly speaking “coercive” to exercise these powers either, unless one wishes to define all action in society as a form of coercion, an unhelpful totalizing of the concept. Not only do our actions have consequences upon others, they are, in God’s creative purpose, designed to have such consequences.  Thta is the nature of our life under judgment and mercy together.

And so we wait!  The non action seems at this stage an excuse for lack of will to act more than anything else.  How about the authority to invite to Lambeth?  That was ducked.  How about the action to set aside Dar es Salaam? A masterful form of inaction thru interpretation.  How about scuttling Jamaica? A masterful exercise in confusion on the part of the ABC.  His non-appointment of GS leaders in favor of the old guard from the “west” is a mockery of where the life and future of the AC lies.  They told him so at Singapore.
Perhaps we just move on instead of waiting for Canterbury - many have and more will.  Maybe a new Anglican centre based in Alexandria rather than Canterbury will occur.  Then New York can fully consume Canterbury.  Horrors!

First, and simply as a point of clarification, I was thinking “coercion” in the medieval sense of actually being able to take legal and/or physical force against someone, particularly by legally constituted authority (the king, emperor, or prince).  I was not trying to say that all action is coercive - by no means!

Second, while I agree that there are powers which the See of Canterbury has, it does not seem to me that these add up to anything like sovereignty.  At the very least, one would think that any healthy “politique societie” (and we do well to remember that this phrase applies, in Hooker’s writings, to a church no less than the political community) would have sovereignty vested somewhere.  The Anglican Communion does not.  No one and no group has the ability to decide the existence of, or the course of action during, a state of exception.  I think that Hooker’s willingness to say that both church and kingdom are a single sort of society is tremendously helpful, as it claims that the same sorts of organizational patterns and laws apply to both.  For Hooker, of course, this meant that defying canon law was a sin no less egregious than defying civil law.  For Hooker, however, the king also had the office of priest - thus sovereignty in the church was vested and locatable (in this case, in the English sovereign).

One of the first things to do once the Covenant is in place will be to expand it, no doubt, to clarify the roles of the Instruments of Unity.

One of the first things to do once the Covenant is in place will be to expand it, no doubt, to clarify the roles of the Instruments of Unity.

I think that to be realistic, one needs to accept that it is highly unlikely that the Covenant will ever be in place.  Actions have consequences, and I think that Rowan Williams’ actions over the last two years have now all but assured the failure of the Covenant.  Some thoughts on that:

1. The TEC-led liberal block of the Communion doesn’t want any Covenant that implies any limit to their autonomy.  They would much rather stick to the Machiavellian politics of manipulating the existing IU’s.  Accordingly, this block will work to undermine the Covenant at every turn, and will not sign on unless it appears that their place in the Communion is seriously threatened by not doing so.

2. The Global South block of the Communion has, I think, lost faith in the Communion’s official processes, and is increasingly of the view that the Covenant will be ineffectual (just as they believe is the Archbishop of Canterbury who is pushing it).  A growing sector within the GS believes that an ineffectual Covenant that serves as “All is Well” window dressing is worse than no Covenant at all, and so they will oppose it.  The moderate GS primates are at best lukewarm towards the Covenant now and will sign on if everyone else does, but won’t be the vanguard anymore.

3. Rowan Williams seems to have completely lost any ability to influence the Communion in any positive way at all.  Nobody trusts him anymore.  He has steadily lost his influence with the Communion’s moderates over the last year, and now I doubt that Rowan Williams can accomplish anything by his inherent (but wasted) moral suasion.  Thus, I doubt that Rowan will be able to push the Covenant through based on his own influence.

Based on the above, I just don’t see any realistic path that sees the Covenant get adopted.  I am not saying that this is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, but rather that this is the most likely course of events.

Personally, I think that the most promising way of rebuilding a coherent global Anglican Communion will be to encourage a more organic union amongst the more Communion-minded Provinces and then work at folding others in.  I think that the Global South coalition might be the best place to start, where you have some good Communion-minded Provinces that can temper in the more go-it-alone GAFCON Provinces.  Let a true “from the ground up” union begin there, let the Archbishop of Canterbury set aside his imperialistic Machiavellian political games (at which he has so badly failed) and work to join with this group, and begin the long, hard journey back to a global Anglican Communion.

Thank you James

I heartily agree and believe you had hit the nail on the head.  The Covenant is now dead in the water.  The AC as we knew it is past.  After Singapore I think it is just a game of chicken.  Who will move first?  It is interesting that such as Episcopal Cafe (http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/anglican_communion/what_if_we_are_asked_to_disini.html) are suggesting that TEC withdraw and do its own thing.  The institutional maneuvering has now met with lack of trust and this kills all else. We shall see what emerges.  My forecast - FWIW - is a different AC, based not on Canterbury, more confessional and more likely to adopt something like the Jerusalem Declaration.  It may not attract many from the colonial west.  Meanwhile TEC will set up its own NYC based “Communion.”  Countries like England will have huge difficulties because they are the “state” Church and as such torn in different ways than simply doctrinal ones. 
Not a cause for jubilation!  However God does use New Wineskins when the old ones burst asunder.

However, if the Africans move to separate themselves from ECUSA, and RW then in essence signs his office up to that exclusion, then there will be no need to go to Plano, uh, Lagos, er, Alexandria. Things that he has said at times suggest to me the possibility that he might so act. I think, however, that his biggest problem in this is at home, and indeed, at the moment I think he has more to worry about from rebellions in his own church than a more or less symbolic consecration thousands of miles away.

James, I thoroughly disagree with your statement that no one trusts +Rowan.  +Rowan is a holy man.  He is not a politician or a head of state. It seems impossible for us, and therefore we are judged, to separate our secular political consciousnesses from our ecclesial consciousness. 

Even if +Rowan were a politician, and given to some of the strategies we see exercised by some of our Primates, he would have to bring a significant number of them along with him before he acted. Indeed the development of “conciliar” instruments during the past 60 years has constrained rather than expanded archiepiscopal authority. 

A bit of history.  There is a small evangelical Anglican group in the South Africa named “The Church of England in South Africa”. Ironically it has its roots in the Colenso schism.  When the Church of the Province of South Africa was formed in the 1860s, it was almost totally an Anglo-Catholic body. However in the Cape and Natal there were parishes which dated back to the original British Colonial era, pre-Tractarian, of the same ilk as the formational parishes in Sydney, Australia. These parishes did not wish to enter the CPSA and gained from the English Privy Council the right to describe themselves as “Church of England.” The Colenso affair was the “human sexuality” controversy of the mid 19th Century. Colenso wrote a book in which he doubted the Mosaic authorship of the first few books of the OT. (Nowadays his book would look very tame!)  Gray, the South African primate deposed Colenso who appealed to the Privy Council and was confirmed in his see of Natal.

Gradually the parishes which supported Colenso morphed into the CofEinSA,  For nearly a century the CESA was a thorn in the side of the CPSA.  English and Australian clergy served its parishes and Canterbury turned a blind eye.  Clergy who took CESA parishes were not disciplined or deposed and many later served in the CofE and Sydney.  Australian bishops provided Confirmation for these parishes and occasionally ordained clergy for the CESA. In effect there were two Anglican entities in South Africa, one “official” and the other tolerated.

At the end of the 1950s the Evangelical Anglican Bishop of North Africa was elected the CESA’s first bishop.  The Archbishop of Cape Town appealed to Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury, who, on his own authority, deposed Bishop Morris. ( Subsequent Archbishops of Sydney and suffragans consecrated Morris’ successor, Bishop Bradley, who was not recognized by Canterbury. Sydney supports the CESA to this day. The CESA was an African ACNA.)

Some questioned Archbishop Fisher’s authority to depose Bishop Morris. Arguments were offered suggesting that Canterbury had to act with York in such matters. Others argued that the forerunner of the ACC should have been involved, or the primates collectively.  The problem was that although the original purpose of the Lambeth Conference was to provide some form of Provincial discipline for erring bishops or Provinces, no clear authority emerged.  (It is ironic that those who argued for some form of Patriarchal authority for Canterbury at the first two Lambeth Conferences, or for some form of pan-Anglican synod, were Canadian and American bishops.)

The Anglican Covenant is, in part, an attempt to resolve this matter.  Until the matter is resolved there is no clear authority for Canterbury to act, except the right to refuse to invite bishops to the Lambeth Conference, a right +Rowan exercised.  The development of the present Instruments of Communion during the past forty years has rather clouded the matter of Canterbury’s authority rather than clarified it.  Whether Canterbury may disallow North American bishops to participate in the councils of the Communion is moot, except the Lambeth Conference, invitations to which remain on the basis of the relationship between individual bishops and Canterbury, rather than Provinces and Canterbury.

One may only guess that +Rowan has been in consultation with the Primates about the Glasspool matter, and indeed there have been reports that this process is in motion.  One may only guess what advice +Rowan is receiving.  However only a Covenant of some form or another can create a generally accepted authority.  Provincial autonomy is not merely a TEC principle. No doubt some Provinces resist some form of limitation on their autonomy, even if they are uncomfortable with the North American policy of unilateralism. 

I think that there will be some form of reaction from Canterbury when the consultation process ends, but I am of the opinion that any reaction will necessarily be tentative and that we must await the adoption of the Covenant for a final disposal.  The tragedy is that the positive aspects of the Covenant as a gift to the entire Church, creating equal participation and an end of the Colonial past in a model of non papal concilar polity, is obscured by the controversies of the moment.

Dear Tony,

I appreciate your lengthy post and comparison with the Colenso and SA affairs.  However I tend to agree with James.  +Rowan may be a holy man but as a leader of the AC he is not trusted by any GS folk that I know.  Just listen to the folk at Singapore.  +Rowan crocked himself over Dar es Salaam, in New Orleans, concerning Lambeth invitations to consecrators of VGR, and then the debacle at Jamaica was the end of the line.  However holy he blew it as a leader.

I really believe the Covenant is dead in the water.

Blessings from Peru - Ian

Tony:  Thanks for your response.  Some thoughts in reply.

I thoroughly disagree with your statement that no one trusts +Rowan.

I would suggest to you that the news and statements from the Global South meeting in Singapore and the public letters from Mouneer Anis and Ian Earnest suggest otherwise.  In the discussion of Orombi’s and Earnest’s pre-Singapore letters, Neil Michel commented

I am amazed, stunned, actually, that a group of the primates have not publicly complained about being sidelined on this issue before now. It is an indication of the deference they give to +Rowan as Archbishop of Canterbury—I say that positively—and it is an indication of what they expected from him and how disappointed they are in him now—or at least we know that +Orombi and +Anis are. This letter may, in fact, be a call to arms to the other Global South primates.

From my own vantage point in a bishop’s office I recognize that there are a heck of a lot more telephone calls and emails that take place among them that are ever reported publicly. I suspect that this is just the tip of the iceberg of the communications that occurred even between +Orombi and +Williams. That is to say, I doubt seriously that +Rowan was blindsided by either +Orombi’s letter or +Mouneer’s.

I think that Neil is right.  Earlier in this thread, Dr. Radner commented about Rowan Williams that

He “gathers”, mainly through invitation (a power he exercised at the last Lambeth by not inviting Gene Robinson, and choosing to invite those who consecrated him);  he presides at councils and thereby makes a range of parliamentary and enormously influential procedural decisions (he did so at the 2009 ACC debacle);  he acts as a member of many councils, voting yea or nay in some fashion or another;  he thereby has the power and the duty to “explain” his own views, and establish publicly his own mind;  he appoints people to a range of offices and responsibilities;  he thereby also supervises their work—this has been true with respect to a range of communion positions and commissions; related to the last, he can also block certain appointments, officially or through articulated obstruction;  he can travel and meet people face to face in the midst of conflict—that is, he has freedom of movement to go out (at least now). He has the power to accept or refuse the views, actions, offerings of others. One could go on—my own list is decidedly unfinished.

People can, should, and do assess the Archbishop’s ministry to and for the Communion on the basis of many of these powers and their actual exercise.

I think that Radner is right on the money here, and I think that the Global South primates have done what Radner suggests - they have assessed Rowan Williams’ ministry to and for the Communion on the basis of the powers he has and how he has chosen to exercise them.  Do you really think that the moderate primates such as Anis and Earnest would have publicly released their letters if they had full confidence and trust in Rowan Williams???

+Rowan is a holy man.

He may be, but I am not sure what point that this is supposed to prove?  My sense is that what has happened over the past year has been a movement from the perception of “Rowan is a holy man, he may be a weak leader, but he at least he is holy” towards “We thought Rowan was a holy man, but some of his actions, for example, at Jamaica, have made us think he might be a lot more political then we had originally thought.” 

He is not a politician or a head of state.

He may not be a head of state, but I think that it is extremely naive to suggest that he is not a politician (and that would be true also for almost any bishop or leader of a church movement).  He may not be a secular politician, but he most certainly is an ecclesiastical one.  As Radner points out, Williams has considerable powers that he can choose to exercise to achieve desired results.  I would suggest that it is fanciful thinking in the extreme to think that Rowan has not been using these powers to achieve results he desired.  I understand that folks respect Rowan Williams, both for the position he holds and because he is a man worthy of respect, but I don’t think that some of the almost hagiographic interpretations of his actions are useful.  Rowan has made it clear that he will exercise power when it suits him.  Based on all the powers that he has implicitly claimed to possess, he could certainly have led the Communion to a different and much more Communion-minded result.  But he chose not to, and his choices need to be analyzed honestly.

The background on the South African situation is interesting but doesn’t actually speak to my point.  Whatever you may think of the benefits of a Covenant (and I agree that there would be many), my point is that the one group Rowan Williams needed to win over in order to make the Covenant a reality (e.g. the Global South), has now become very lukewarm to his leadership based on their assessment of his ministry to and for the Communion on the basis of the powers he has and how he has chosen to exercise them.  Perhaps Rowan Williams will yet pull the rabbit out of the hat in his response to Glasspool, but I (and I think most of the GS primates) doubt it.  And unless he does something significant, the Covenant is dead in the water.

I suppose my question to you Tony would be this - what scenario do YOU see which could possibly see the Covenant be adopted by even a bare majority of the Communion’s Provinces?

Father Humphrey,
Sorry for coming in so late.

In the constitutional arrangements of England, the Church and the State have the same cultural norms and expectations for their nominal heads, the Sovereign and the Archbishop of Canterbury. To put it analogically, the Queen is to the State as the ABC is the Church.

Is this first part your comment or is it also a part of what Walter Bagehot has said? If it is your comment, what makes you think the ABC is limited in the same way as the monarchy?

James, i think the Covenant will be adopted by a remarkable majority of the Provinces.  I hope that +Rowan acts fairly quickly with a temporary fix but am not too alarmed if it takes longer. Impatience has been one of the factors which has brought us to this pass: Impatience to effect changes without gaining consensus or rejection: impatience to create reactive solutions which further rend the Communion.  Apart from making some feel better, I am not sure what some form of action taken swiftly would actually achieve. TEC is already no longer in communion with most of the AC.

i think the Covenant will be adopted by a remarkable majority of the Provinces

In light of the Singapore statement, and TEC’s, Canada’s and New Zealand’s stand-offish responses, what objective basis do you have for this belief?  Six months ago, I would have agreed with you.  Not any more.  I am curious why you think the Covenant will be adopted by a majority of Provinces.

Apart from making some feel better, I am not sure what some form of action taken swiftly would actually achieve.

Well, for starters, it might give the Global South Provinces some confidence that when TEC, Canada or some other Province completely ignores the Covenant after they have signed it, that something just might actually be done about it.  In other words, there is a massive crisis of confidence in Rowan Williams and the IU’s right now.  Let me give an analogy.  We are standing around looking at a car.  We need to get to the other side of town for an appointment.  We are told the car is in fine working order, but we just must be patient.  Initially we are patient, but as the time ticks away, we notice that the tires look flat, the engine isn’t turning over, the key doesn’t seem to work.  Soon, someone expresses some doubts that the car will actually drive anywhere, but others shout him down and tell him not to be so impatient.  Others call a taxi, but they are told that they too are being very impatient.  We should all wait - the car will be be started and we will get there on time.  Finally, some more suggest that maybe it might be useful if the car is started and driven around the block just to give people confidence.  No, that request is also a sign of impatience.  Finally, the appointment is only ten minutes away.  The car needs to be started NOW, or a taxi will have to be called, or the appointment will be missed.  If you can’t prove that the car actually works, the people will take the taxi.  Rowan Williams has the keys.  The Covenant is the car.  Survival of the Communion is the appointment.  Either Rowan needs to demonstrate that the Covenant will work, or the Primates will figure out some other means for the survival of the Communion.  We saw the beginnings of this in Singapore.  It is not impatience - it is simply refusing to let the Communion devolve into a weak federation because of inaction.

What would swift but significant action by Rowan achieve?  Confidence that the Covenant is something worth pursuing.  Without that confidence, I don’t see any chance for the Covenant.  Nobody is expecting Rowan Williams to right all wrongs, but there are things he could do - such as make a formal request that TEC’s and ACoCanada’s representatives stand down from all IU’s (especially from the Primates’ Meeting and the JSC) in light of their persistent refusal to abide by the common discernment of the Communion.

TEC is already no longer in communion with most of the AC.

And yet, with the blessing of Rowan Williams and the direct manipulation of Rowan’s appointees, TEC and its allies have disproportionate political control over the implementation and policing of the Covenant via the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.  And yet you still seem to think that the Covenant will be accepted by the majority of Provinces and that Rowan Williams is trusted by most of the Communion.  Something here just doesn’t add up.  It doesn’t pass the “smell test” and that is why I doubt that the Covenant will pass unless Rowan takes some significant action.