An Anglican Covenant: Theological and Legal Considerations for a Global Debate
Norman Doe
Canterbury Press (2008)
xii + 259 pp.
isbn: 9781853119040

On the front cover of the present volume is a large red circle that declares, in bold white typeface, “The Definitive Explanation & Guide.” This statement could not be more accurate. Norman Doe is, perhaps, the Anglican Communion’s leading legal scholar. A member of the Lambeth Commission, which produced the Windsor Report, and the author of Canon Law in the Anglican Communion: A Worldwide Perspective, as well as several volumes on Anglican canon law in the British Isles, Doe is well positioned for writing a book such as this. An Anglican Covenant is not, however, an apologia. Rather, as Doe writes in the Preface, this volume has been put forth because of the facts that are already on the ground and in play: “The proposal has been made; draft covenants are in circulation; the Communion has embarked on discussion of them; this volume offers a framework for that discussion; and the Communion will make up its own mind” (viii). In fact, Doe offers neither an endorsement of the Covenant nor an argument against it, effectively allowing not just the Communion to decide for itself what it will do, but allowing readers of all stripes to consider the various issues associated with what is, potentially, “a major historical development for worldwide Anglicanism” (213).

The book consists of nine chapters, an introduction and a conclusion; it is, furthermore, divided into three sections: The Foundational Idea of a Covenant, The Structure and Substance of a Covenant, and The Implementation of a Covenant. These three sections are identical to three categories that, Doe argues, collectively contain nine core issues that are central to the debate; these nine core issues make up the nine chapters that compose the body of the book. The first section of the book deals with the nature, employment and purposes of a covenant; the second section delineates the form, subjects and content of a covenant; the third and final section comprises discussions of the process, adoption and effects of a covenant. Each of these respective topics is tested against Scripture, tradition, and reason, and set within an ecumenical framework that gives a central but not exclusive place to Anglican ecumenical agreements with other churches. Doe also sifts through the responses given to the covenant proposal by Anglican provinces, individuals, and political lobbies, noting both majority and minority positions. Lastly, as a scholar of law, Doe uses legal theory both to explain and to comment on various items under discussion. It is difficult to imagine how the present volume could be any more thorough than it is.

Borrowing from contemporary biblical scholarship, Doe writes that the word covenant “has a range of meanings: relationship, obligation, oath, solemn promise, pact, compact, treaty, alliance, league, constitution, ordinance, agreement and pledge” (14). The central question for Anglicans, then, is whether or not the composition of a formal covenant is new or antithetical to the Anglican tradition. Doe argues that it is neither, but that at a Communion-wide level Anglicans already operate according to a “tacit covenant” (37) because “communion is the basis of any covenant” (32). Covenant and its related concepts are ubiquitous for Anglicans, being central to the canon law of Anglican provinces (38), and present in the Constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council (40). Covenant is a necessary concept for sacramental existence, particularly with regard to marriage and baptism; Doe cites Richard Hooker’s statement that “Baptism implieth a covenant or league between God and man” to underscore the point (44). Covenants are, furthermore, frequently used in ecumenical relationships, such as those between Episcopalians and Lutherans in the United States of America. Above all, covenant is undeniably central to the biblical worldview and imagination. Doe’s concluding words are therefore worth repeating: “While an Anglican covenant would appear novel to the churches of the Communion, in point of fact, spiritual, sacramental, and structural covenanting is a well-trodden Christian path” (221).

There is no indication in the present volume that the creation of an Anglican covenant will lead to anything like a Communion-wide system of canon law. There are those who will rejoice at this fact, others who will lament it, and some who will accept a covenant as a happy medium between provincialism or congregationalism on the one hand and, on the other hand, some sort of quasi-papal centralization of Anglican existence. Doe, in fact, does not spend any time speculating on the relationship between the proposed (and likely inevitable) covenant and longer-standing debates about the need to develop Communion-wide canon law. If there is any criticism to be made of the book, it is here; although speculations about hypothetical situations usually contribute little to discussions such as this one, some sort of inquiry into the relationship between canon law and the relational realities that are signified by a covenant would have been more than welcome.

Related to this caveat is an important question about law itself. Doe notes that a minority within the Communion have expressed a concern about the relationship of law and grace, arguing that relationships within the Anglican Communion defy both legal boundaries and their attendant articulations; these critics set “the bonds of affection” against what they fear is “the bondage of law” (66). One may, of course, argue that Anglicans have never accepted this sort of Lutheran view, as reflected in Richard Hooker’s glowing praise of law in the late-16th century; one may also argue that biblical scholarship in the last fifty years has thoroughly undermined the belief that the Lutheran dichotomy between law and grace either originated with or was implicit in the writings of the apostle Paul. However, this concern about law points to an important and as-yet unresolved issue. Coming from the opposite side of these critics, I myself had once hoped that an Anglican covenant might lead to a formal body of canon law for the entire Anglican Communion. After reading Doe’s An Anglican Covenant, however, I am less clear about how covenant and canon law might relate to one another, and I am no longer of the opinion that a covenant will lead to anything other than what we already have – namely, discernible patterns of canon law, which are developed at the provincial level. Anglicans once spent considerable time reflecting upon the content and purpose of law – one may recall Archbishop Cranmer’s failed attempt at completing a reform of canon law during the reign of Edward VI, or Richard Hooker’s aforementioned reflections on the nature of law in the first book of his classic Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. I suspect that similar reforms and considerations remain to be done in the present time, and that debates about an Anglican covenant will remain, at best, tangential to such legal discussions. If Doe is correct – and I believe that he is – then the covenant is more of a relational reality, and less of a legal one. This balance of emphasis should be underscored.

Norman Doe has done Anglicans worldwide an invaluable service with An Anglican Covenant: Theological and Legal Considerations for a Global Debate. Theoretically and historically informed, he shows the ways in which a covenant, although a definite development in and of itself, is nonetheless consonant with Anglicanism’s major historical and theological trends. Sacramental theology, biblical theology, and ecclesiology all come to bear upon Doe’s considerations, and are set within an ecumenical framework. One of the few people in the Anglican Communion to have sorted through every single response to the covenant proposal and its first two drafts, he is the only person to have organized these responses by their shared concerns, and categorized them as reflecting either majority or minority stances. Heavily footnoted and equipped with an eighteen-page bibliography, An Anglican Covenant may very well become the sine qua non of commentaries upon the broad sweep of contemporary Anglican ecclesiological debates. Those who wish to have an informed conversation on the Anglican covenant do well to peruse Doe’s most recent volume. In its considerable depth and thoroughness, it has set a high bar, according to which all future discussions of the Anglican covenant will likely be judged.