It won't be news to most readers that, following decisions made at GenCon, Archbishop Rowan Williams has proposed a covenant, which Andrew Brown summarises neatly:

The mechanism that Rowan proposes to solve these problems in the future is a "covenant": a legally binding agreement that the individual churches who sign up to it will do nothing important against the wishes of the rest of the covenanted churches.

Malcolm at Simple Massing Priest takes the proposed covenant apart in more detail here.

Like many others who belong to the Church of England, I've oscillated between  making a thoughtful response and throwing in the towel altogether over the impossibility of finding a solution to this mess. I'm dismayed at the number of excellent, hardworking, moderate-thinking ordained people who have called me this week and spoken about the possibility of resigning over this. People are utterly weary at the way this one issue seems to stick our feet to the ground when day to day mission and ministry is about the whole of life.

Jane Shaw has written with clarity about the inner workings of the Episcopal Church, and rightly points out that the issue of inclusion is vital to Mission. The Episcopal Church, she points out,

"…is not going grey in the pews. It is a Church that has young people engaged and involved at all levels. It is, therefore, a Church that will thrive and grow into the future — and that cannot necessarily be said of other Churches in the West. And those young people have an enormous passion for mission…

And, for the vast majority of that younger generation, the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people is a no-brainer, a non-issue. To go against full inclusion would be to offend their sense of the gospel — God’s good news to all people — and affect their Church’s capacity for mission.

Me? I don't think the covenant is a good idea, yet I hesitate to criticize Rowan's proposal when I can't come up with anything better myself. Andrew Brown doesn't think the Covenant will stick. He says:

I cannot see any General Synod actually signing up to it, when this would constrain its own freedom. Had the covenant existed 20 years ago, there would be no women priests here.

But MadPriest has asked around and he concludes that General Synod is quite likely to sign up to it, partly out of loyalty to Rowan, and partly because there are an awful lot of people like me who hesitate to disagree when we can't come up with a better idea:

I rang some members of Synod who would be regarded as being of a liberal temperament. I asked what would happen at Synod if it was asked to vote on the covenant. I was told that most of the synod would vote to sign up to the covenant because, even the liberals, would not want to undermine the Grand Tufti. They would not want him to look weak and foolish.

So I contacted some of the organisations within the Church of England that ought to be campaigning against the covenant. I discovered that there is no cohesive plan to mobilise Synod members to vote against it. There isn't even any real discussion going on in these organisations concerning what will happen if the covenant is adopted by the Church of England.

Basically, my church is sleepwalking into disaster. We are going to die because we are so damn polite and we don't like offending people.

I expect MadPriest is right: if English politeness leads to doing nothing, then it's time to stop being polite. Whether you agree with the covenant or not, ++Rowan is to be applauded for making a sincere attempt to move forward in an impossible situation. But we shouldn't just leave it to "the people in charge" - ordinary people who are concerned about the future of the Church should not assume they can do nothing. We all need to think and pray and speak up in an attempt to help create a solution that works.