A good Kiwi saying goes, “Don’t fix what ain’t broke!” Sadly, the truth of it is, it is broke.

The Anglican Communion’s relationships need fixing - and badly. “There’s the rub!” To be sure, there was a time in the not so recent past when “the bonds of affection” (as they were initially termed, capturing our global history, describing our present relationships) was an idea sufficiently strong in itself. Yet today levels of trust have sunk to the point where we may no longer simply rely on such an idea as these “bonds of affection”.

Rather, some means have to be discovered and implemented that will, in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, “intensify existing relationships”. Such is the Covenant, which churches are being invited to sign on to.

The Covenant’s achievement is to present us all with the clear means of mutual recognition across the world-wide Anglican Communion. It portrays a suitable interdependence which then prompts an appropriate accountability. The key word here is “recognise”. Once more, I refer to the Archbishop of Canterbury - this time in his Advent Pastoral Letter of 2007:

"The Communion is a voluntary association of provinces and dioceses; and so its unity depends not on a canon law that can be enforced, but on the ability of each part of the family to recognise that other local churches have received the same faith from the apostles and are faithfully holding to it, in loyalty to the One Lord incarnate, who speaks in Scripture and bestows his grace in the sacraments. To put it in slightly different terms, local churches acknowledge the same ‘constitutive elements’ in one another. This means in turn that each local church receives from others and recognises in others the same good news and the same structure of ministry, and seeks to engage in mutual service for the sake of our common mission." (emphases added)

Eighteen times in all Rowan Williams uses words of recognition, recognisability, etc.

They run through this Advent Pastoral Letter like a mantra. And well they might be. For the question of “recognition” impacts not only upon ourselves as a Communion of world-wide Anglican Churches.

Without such a device now as the Covenant, other parts of the universal Church simply would not know who speaks for whom, and who acts for whom, and by what authority. Our last ten years or so of Anglican life have been closely watched by our fellow Christians across the ecumenical spectrum.

Key spokespersons from other churches have been invited quite deliberately in recent years to address key institutions of the Anglican Communion, like Lambeth or the Primates Meetings.

Devising the Covenant keeps faith with them as much as among ourselves. Yet there is another side to all this: some churches of the existing Anglican Communion will elect not to sign any Covenant. As Archbishop Williams says, “It is possible that some will not choose this way of intensifying relationships”.

Some even favour a view of things less rich theologically and certainly less dense ecclesiologically. This view is commonly known as “federalism”.

But this would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose conglomeration of local bodies with only a cultural history once held in common. A federal association would be less than an expression of Church based on solid ‘communion theology’ and practice, one of the real fruits of ecumenical endeavour these past decades.

It fails fundamentally to embody a form of Church that reflects the triune God, whose mission the Church serves and whose Being is Communion. Consequently, it avoids the necessary interdependence of communion which seeks the real denial of individual self-determination that slides so easily into mere autonomy.

To be sure; a federal view may be trying to preserve an element of our present Anglican identity, with each national church continuing as a self-governing body. Yet something is askew in this understanding of what is proposed in the Covenant anyway. For there is in the Ridley Cambridge Draft “explicit provision ... not ... to alter the Constitution or internal polity of any province” - quoting once more Rowan Williams.

By contrast with any federalism, our own Church’s Constitution in its Preamble (18) already speaks of our being “part of and belong[ing] to the Anglican Communion, which is a fellowship ... in communion with the See of Canterbury, sharing with one another ... life and mission in a spirit of mutual responsibility and interdependence.”

Indeed, we in Aotearoa New Zealand have already “covenanted with each other ... to implement and enrich the principles of partnership” (Preamble 13) among us, given the unique history of our Islands.

The Anglican Communion Covenant has become the necessary tool for establishing an authoritative identity among Anglicans. It grants us the means to continue as a global Church, as a catholic community of churches. Without it, we shall simply fragment into groups of associated bodies, held together by allegiances derived from things less than and even other than the Gospel of Jesus Christ himself.

The question is ours: to sign, or not to sign ... May we say clearly, “Sign!” - and that “right soon”.

The Rev Dr Bryden Black is a priest living in Christchurch.