ARCHBISHOP GOMEZ: Need For Covenant Grows More Urgent

Leader Sees Good Chance That Final Covenant Will Go To Provinces Next Year; Expresses Openness To Possibility Of New North American Province
By Robert England
Special To The Christian Challenge and VIRTUEONLINE
September 15, 2008

The process of finalizing an Anglican covenant needs to move forward more quickly if the Anglican Communion is to be preserved.

That was the message delivered Saturday (September 13) by West Indies Archbishop Drexel Gomez, the chairman of the group charged with formulating the pact intended to help ensure unity in basic beliefs, settle disputes, and administer discipline among historically autonomous Anglican provinces.

"I believe Anglicanism has much to offer the world and has made a tremendous contribution to Christianity. But we are at a dangerous point in our history," Gomez told more than 100 people attending the Festival of Faith at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Bladensburg, Maryland.

"There is nothing on the immediate horizon that offers any kind of hope to holding the Communion together other than the covenant," Gomez contended. "Nothing else is on the table. If that fails, we will see only further fragmentation and disintegration. That is not theory but reality," he said. the rest at Virtueonline