Editor's Note: Ephraim Radner is a member of the Covenant Design Group and on the faculty of Wycliffe College, Toronto

I have great respect for Prof. Katherine Grieb, and have not only enjoyed working with her on the Covenant Design Group that finally produced the Ridley Cambridge Draft, but admired her wisdom and commitment in the many days we spent on this work. I do need however to disagree publicly with her advice to delegates of General Convention regarding action on the Covenant Draft. Dr. Grieb, in an article published on July 11 in Episcopal Life, urged delegates to sit tight on the matter of the Covenant, and to wait for further responses to the draft and the final “revision” anticipated for Section Four of the draft before moving ahead. This would model helpful “restraint” by a church others do not always trust as having such prudent modesty: let the Covenant working group do its work without GC’s preemptive opinions, and then get down to the hard work of discernment regarding the finished text.

I am afraid that the time for such moderated advice has passed, if ever it was pertinent in TEC’s case anyway. General Convention, through both of its Houses, has now moved beyond the clear commitments of “moratoria” informally pressed by the Lambeth Conference a year ago, and specifically upheld by the recent meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, following very clear and concrete recommendations by the Windsor Continuation Group. In particular, D025 has affirmed permission for the ordination of partnered homosexual episcopal candidates in a way that specifically bypasses the moratoria.

General Convention has no credible character of “restraint” from which to approach the Covenant at this point. Indeed, this particular action raises the question of whether TEC can have any helpful role in the “discerning” of Section Four of the Covenant at all, since the Convention has now preempted in action the possibility of approaching the question of Communion discipline on a common basis with other churches. One may even wonder how North America’s prominent representation on the “working group” can garner the larger Communion’s trust, whatever the personal integrities of those persons entrusted with this task: how does one speak to the formulation of protocols of common discipline when one’s own church has rejected such commitments a priori?

In any case, how TEC and Canada can formally engage in the Covenant process is now deeply confused. The first three Sections of the Ridley Cambridge Draft were already accepted by the ACC, and will not be changed. But what TEC’s and the Anglican Church of Canada’s views are about these three sections, now or later under present actions, are undoubtedly under a cloud in terms of trust, precisely around the matter of “restraint” and therefore a willingness to work with others according to common expectations. What do these churches mean when they “agree” to something? And Section Four, as a whole, has now been taken out of TEC’s purview of credible engagement in discernment and revision. Unless the delegates and bishops renege on what they have just voted for, what then is there left for General Convention to do?

Consistency would demand, it seems to me, a resolution not simply on the Covenant, but on the TEC’s disengagement from the Covenant process that would permit a “minority” stance, identifiable by diocese and bishop – an open vote by orders and by roll -- such that the Communion might better determine how to proceed with its own wider discernment, precisely on such matters as diocesan adoption that have proven objectionable to some, but now seem more pressing to clarify and uphold than before. TEC members, as Dr. Grieb notes, took a prominent role at the recent ACC meeting in requiring a period of further discernment regarding the final portion of the Covenant, thereby delaying the Covenant’s dissemination for adoption. General Convention, however, has now taken TEC out of this discernment and delay they demanded. Let the Convention as well, then, have the grace and forthrightness to step aside altogether. Its dioceses and bishops who do not share the Convention’s majority verdicts on this matter will then state their own commitments with equal forthrightness before the Communion.