Anglican Covenant - History of Drafts

The first verson of an Anglican Covenant appeared as an appendix in the 2004 Windsor Report which recommended a covenant. Canon lawyer Professor Norman Doe, and member of the Lambeth Commission played a leading part in producing a draft which was adopted by the Commission as a guide to what a covenant might look like. As this draft is quite different from the versions that followed, it is not considered the first draft of the final covenant.

A further discussion of the covenant (but with no proposals about the text) was presented in Towards an Anglican Covenant, published in March 2006

The first draft - The Nassau Draft - appeared from the Covenant Design Group (CDG) in February 2007 (with a report). It had an introduction and 7 sections - an opening Preamble and closing declaration and 5 substantive sections of affirmations (sections 2 and 5) and commitments (sections 3 and 6) with a central section 4 that combined affirmations and commitments.

The second draft - The St Andrew's Draft - appeared from the CDG a year later in February 2008 (also with a report and a commentary and introduction). It also included a draft appendix relating to the resolution of disagreements (which became Section Four in subsequent drafts). It set the structure of 3 sections comprising both affirmations and commitments: Nassau's 2 and 3 combined into Section One on our inheritance of faith, Nassau 4 becoming Section Two on our mission (The Life We Share with Others: Our Anglican Vocation) and Nassau 5 and 6 combined into Section Three on our unity and common life.

Following responses to this at the Lambeth Conference in summer 2008, a lengthy Lambeth Commentary was produced in September 2008.

The third draft - The Ridley (Cambridge) Draft - appeared in March 2009 with a report and commentary and revised introduction. This was presented to ACC-14 in May 2009 where the Introduction and Sections One to Three were approved but Section Four sent back for further work.

The final text was published in December 2009, with Sections One to Three as in Ridley but with a revised Section Four and a commentary on the changes.

Throughout the process there were various responses to the drafts from across the Communion.

The ACO has the key documents available as PDFs

This site contains all the texts and some additional materials in entries that can be accessed through their 'tags' either by section (Introduction, Preamble, Section One, Section Two, Section Three, Section Four, Declaration) or by draft (Nassau, St Andrew's, Ridley and Final).

It also has the text of all the CDG reports and CDG commentaries on the texts and links to provincial responses for each draft.