There you have it from the mouth of the world's First Anglican: the Episcopal Church has a theological authority that the rest of the Communion does not have, its acclaimed Baptismal Covenant (BCP'79 pp. 304-305). While the Baptismal Covenant (TBC) is probably familiar to most Episcopal rank and file as a theological shorthand, it desperately needs to be reviewed in detail, especially now when TEC's leaders are selling off the Church's inheritance invoking its name, and especially with the added incentive of Dr. Williams' endorsement. I shall begin such a review here in two short articles.

The text of TBC consists of the Apostles' Creed followed by a series of promises. Individuals will argue whether they prefer the new translation of the creed to the old, or whether the promises for the most part parallel those from earlier editions of the BCP. What is unarguable is the novelty of the final promise to "strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being." It is this final promise that distinguishes the 1979 baptismal liturgy from all previous ones, apart from incidentals of language. And it is this portion alone that is meant when bishops wag their fingers in support of a progressive social agenda.

Practically speaking everything that precedes this minute portion of the baptismal liturgy comprises a mythical prehistory of Christian baptism. Quaint, poignant, but irrelevant. It is the final promise that comprises the spirit of the Baptismal Covenant. Or rather, the final promise IS the Baptismal Covenant. It is that alone which elevates TEC and makes it indistinguishable from a chapel at the UN.

Well what's so bad about striving for justice and peace and respecting human dignity? I will respond to that in more detail in my second article. Let me summarize the main points very briefly: this final promise is simply a repetition of the one which precedes it, except in purely abstract language, and -- more to the point -- in the self-conscious idiom of the American counter-culture. It is no accident that the Episcopal Church in recent decades has become known as chaplain of the counter-culture.

His Grace learned this week that it is the progressive Baptismal Covenant that reveals the deep logic that makes the homosexual agenda fit as a legitimate form of Christian practice, even though, as "the rest of the world" has consistently observed, such a reading cannot be derived from recognized Christian sources. Those are, of course, Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. It may seem to make sense based upon Reason, but only with another variable added to the equation. That role has now been officially assigned to the Baptismal Covenant. Even though the language of TBC is purely abstract and non-specific, it typically finds application that is politically motivated and unabashedly partisan, and invariably to the left.

While His Grace did not explicitly identify the Baptismal Covenant as a theological authority, he did acknowledge it as that which legitimizes TEC's unique position within the spectrum of the Anglican churches. He would probably prefer to call TBC a hermeneutical principle that, when applied in TEC's unique context, yields the special pastoral emphases of that Church in recent years. His recognition of homosexual practice as arising naturally out of the Baptismal Covenant irreversibly elevates TBC to the level of a theological authority.

Dr. Williams has just returned from two days of "conversation" with the American House of Bishops in New Orleans. There he surprised the world with the announcement that the Dar es Salaam Communique had been misread all along, that the Primates had never intended the September 30 deadline to be interpreted as a deadline. That would sound too much like plain speech. The September 30 date, known to coincide with the HOB's fall meeting, was meant to be viewed metaphorically like the autumnal equinox, equally dividing a former season of "conversation" from a new one beginning henceforth. And yet if the "conversation card" had still been working coming out of Dar es Salaam, why was he invited to a special session of the House of Bishops in the first place? Why his special pleading in New Orleans that the "old" and the "new" churches needed each other now more than ever?

I recall the Global South Primates complaining for the past several years about the use of "conversation" as a delay tactic by the Western churches. At least a few had expressed their robust conviction as they departed Dar es Salaam that those days were thankfully over. Now Dr. Williams assures us those days are only beginning. Learning to read the signs of the times, not to mention the meaning of plain speech, is doubtless one of the cultivated skills the "new" churches must still learn at the feet of the "old".

There may be a simpler explanation, of course. His Grace may have finally decided it was safe to come out and say what he's really been thinking all along -- which of course is the same thing he was saying all along before he became Archbishop of Canterbury. That is likely to be the way "the rest of the world" will read it. He won't be able to hide any longer behind his persona of being too smart to utter a coherent sentence. This time what he said makes absolute sense.

The fact that the Anglican Communion's leading prelate has given public credence to TEC's Baptismal Covenant as a freestanding theological formula changes the theology of the Anglican Communion. TBC will not only be quoted by sloganeering activists seeking to market their pet social programs. It will be invoked in a quasi-magisterial fashion to redefine the meaning of Scripture and Tradition. To put it bluntly, TEC's Baptismal Covenant has now OFFICIALLY trumped Scripture and Tradition. I predict that that the systematic redefinition of historic Christian sources will proceed with evangelical zeal, and that surprising innovations will appear in the Episcopal Church's canon law. The day of maverick theologians is now over. We are moving into an era of a new orthodoxy, one which will be much more tightly controlled than the old.

In a follow-up article I will explore the spiritual psychology of the Baptismal Covenant and further elaborate its character as an extra-biblical authority. At present the Anglican world must take notice that something other than historic theological sources -- that is to say, the Bible and the church's disciplined reflection -- has made it possible to say, as Gene Robinson has undyingly repeated, that the Spirit is saying a new thing.

If the Baptismal Covenant expressed nothing more than the historic Christian faith, then it would not be necessary to invoke it in order to account for "conclusions that others cannot come to world-wide." Why can others not come to these same conclusions? Because the existing sources of historic Anglicanism invariably disallow them. They simply cannot be established by Scripture and Tradition. Reason alone can conjure them up, but only a Reason of stealth and obfuscation -- only Reason with something new added to the formula.

We've known it for some time, but in New Orleans Dr. Williams made it official. It is now possible for God to contradict Himself. As the Anglican "conversation" goes into its next prolonged phase that possibility will quickly become a mandate.

---The Rev. Canon J. Gary L'Hommedieu is Canon for Pastoral Care at the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Orlando, Florida, and a regular columnist for VirtueOnline.