Apparently substance is too much to expect

Since the launch of the No Anglican Covenant Coalition in November of 2010, we have kept asking for someone - anyone - to put forward a coherent and sensible argument in favour of the Anglican Covenant that was not rooted in namecalling, fearmongering or emotional blackmail.

Seriously.

As discussed in the last post, the first response of the Covenant apologists was to claim that critics of the Covenant were fascists.  Bishop Gregory Cameron has yet to apologize for that filthy accusation, his weasly clarification in the Church of Ireland Gazette notwithstanding.

Apart from that bit of Godwinesque idiocy, the pro-Covenant argument has essentially been:

1. The Communion is in crisis.
2. Something must be done.
3. The Covenant is something.
4. Therefore the Covenant must be done.
5. There is no alternative.
6. If it fails, it would hurt poor Rowan's feelings.

The first five points are, shall we say, highly contentious.  The last is pure and simple emotional blackmail.

Today saw the launch of the Yes to the Covenant page.

At least they didn't claim we were fascists.

Perhaps someday they'll get around to posting something coherent.

I don't think I'll hold my breath.

We happy few

When we first launched the No Anglican Covenant Coalition just shy of 16 months ago, the odds of actually stopping the proposed Anglican Covenant seemed none too good.  And it became clear within a matter of hours that the ecclesiastical one percent responsible for the document were not going to take even our quixotic challenge lightly. 

Covenant critics were compared to the British National Party, the UK's current fascist party.  Then (once the Communion apparatchiks realized how stupid that made them look) we were repeatedly accused of having not read the document we were criticizing.  The Archbishop of Canterbury himself used the bully pulpit of his formal address to General Synod to condemn us for "campaigning" on an issue - as though no one had ever done that before in the entire history of Anglicanism.  We may have been mere mosquitoes buzzing around the heads of our betters, but we were clearly to be smashed with whatever sledgehammers were available.

Yet despite the contempt of those who thought they ought to be obeyed, we persevered.

It became clear that those in charge were not committed to a full and frank discussion.  Every effort was made to silence and marginalize critical voices.  Background materials from the Anglican Communion Office and the Church of England were so decidedly one-sided they made Faux News look fair and balanced.  Attempts to have dioceses include any material critical of the Covenant were rebuffed - and at least one Coalition member received a fairly nasty telling off for having tried to "interfere."

Then came January 2011, when the Coalition found itself with an odd bedfellow.  David Phillips of the very conservative and evangelical Church Society published an essay in which he endorsed the Coalition's concerns about the centralization of authority inherent in the proposed Anglican Covenant. 

The second major area of concern with the Covenant is the assignment of authority to some body or bodies within the Communion to exercise a disciplinary function. Here we share with the liberals a justifiable concern. Put in bogey-man terms, we do not want an Anglican Papacy or Inquisition. Although the Church of England has had clear disciplinary structures, part of the break with Rome involved the rejection of a universal structure within the Church.

And in March, we saw the Coalition's first clear victory as the Diocese of Wakefield, the first English diocese to consider the matter, voted down the Anglican Covenant.  As I recall, we were all a bit surprised.  We didn't even have a contact in the Diocese of Wakefield.

Then came Lichfield's kangaroo synod.  Only official pro-Covenant propaganda was distrbuted to synod members.  Prominent Covenant apologist Bishop Graham Kings was handed the first 30 minutes of a 90 minute debate to present a completely unbalanced pro-Covenant propaganda piece.  Yes, he did refer to some of our criticisms, but only to explain them away.  After Bishop Kings was done, another pro-Covenant apologist was given ten minutes to introduce the already introduced Covenant.  In other words, in a 90 minute debate, synod was subjected to a 40 minute sell job before any Covenant critic was permitted to say a word.  The remaining 50 minutes were evenly split between pro and anti speakers - meaning that pro-Covenant speakers were allocated 65 minutes and Covenantsceptics only 25 minutes.  To the surprise of no one, Lichfield gave a very strong yes.

So as we went into the summer of 2011, the situation was mixed.  A few provinces had hurriedly approved the Covenant, but most provinces seemed to be nowhere near considering it.  Canada had produced some balanced background materials.  The Coalition announced the appointment of retired bishops Peter Selby and John Saxbee as Episcopal Patrons.  The focus of the struggle was the dioceses of the Church of England, where the score was tied and the prospects for further success seemed very limited.

In the fall, things started to move.  Durham and Europe approved the Covenant, leaving the CofE score at three for and one against.  At the same time, the Australian Diocese of Sydney came out against the Covenant.  While conservative and evangelical Sydney's opposition was different than most Coalition members, the one shared concern was the Covenant's unprecedented centralization of authority and power.

November was when things started to move even faster.  One weekend, St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich voted no, follwed a week later by Birmingham and Truro.  Again, the Coalition had little organization on the ground in any of these dioceses.  With Bristol's yes in December, we ended the year with the CofE score tied at four.

February, though, has begun to show a shift of momentum.  The Coalition announced the appointment of two new patrons, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch kt and Professor Marilyn McCord Adams.  And of the seven English dioceses that voted this month (so far), six have voted against the Covenant (Derby, Gloucester, Salisbury, Leicester, Portsmouth, Rochester) with only Canterbury voting in favour. 

 

 

Of fifteen English dioceses that have voted to date, ten have voted against the Covenant.  This gives the Coalition a significant tactical advantage.  To have the Covenant return to General Synod for a final vote, it has to be approved by 23 of the Church of England's 44 dioceses.  However, defeat in 22 dioceses in enough to derail it.  Thus the Covenanters need to win 18 of the 29 dioceses remaining, while the Covenant's opponents only need another 12.

In November 2010, this seemed like tilting at windmills.  It seemed inevitable that the Church of England would endorse the Covenant and that, eventually, the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada would be isolated and relegated to an ill-defined second-tier limbo.  A small band of bloggers hardly seemed the vehicle to change the narrative.

But, if I might borrow from the Bard (with some amendment):

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Richard Hooker shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of bloggers.

The Cullen Plan - and why it won't work

For those following the federal NDP leadership race, here is an analysis of the Cullen plan for electoral cooperation, extrapolated to the 2011 general election.

There were 53 constituencies in 2011 where the combined New Democrat, Liberal and Green vote exceeded the vote of the Conservative victor.  With 166 seats, it would take the loss of 12 seats for the Conservatives to lose their majority.  It would take a gain of 13 seats for the three national opposition parties to form a majority coalition with the support of the Bloc Quebecois.  It would require a gain of 17 seats for a Liberal – Conservative – Green coalition to have a majority.  It should be noted that 27 of those seats were Conservative gains from the Liberals (25) or New Democrats (2) and therefore would not have been a part of the electoral arrangement under the Cullen proposal.  Those seats are shaded grey.

Column 2 sets out the margin between the Conservative victor and the nearest notional coalition party.

Column 3 sets out the number of votes gained by the other two notional coalition parties.

Column 4 sets out the net retention percentage the leading coalition party would need to retain from the other two parties’ votes.  This is a net retention.  Since an unknown percentage of the other coalition parties’ supporters would certainly choose to vote Conservative absent a candidate of their own party, the required number of votes would be the net retention figure plus the number of votes which went to the Conservatives.

Example:

In London West, the Conservative candidate defeated the Liberal candidate by a margin of 11,023 votes.  The New Democrat and Green candidates combined received 17,812 votes.  In order to make up the margin, the Liberal would have had to hold 61.9% of New Democrat and Green votes to make up the 11,023 deficit. 

However, for each New Democrat or Green voter who voted Conservative, the Liberal would have to retain an additional vote.  If 20% of New Democrat and Green voters (3,562) chose to vote Conservative instead of Liberal, the Liberal would now need to retain 14,585 votes, or 83.4% of the combined New Democrat and Green vote. 

That some New Democrats and Greens would choose to vote Conservative in this scenario is inevitable.  The prospect of 20% of New Democrats and Greens choosing to vote Conservative rather than Liberal is entirely credible based on both pre-election polling on second preferences and previous Canada Election Studies.

In addition, some number of New Democrat and Green voters would also choose to stay home, to spoil their ballot or to vote for a fringe party candidate.  In this case, assuming a 20% leakage to the Conservatives, a mere 17% of New Democrat and Green voters choosing one of these options would render it impossible for the Liberal candidate to have taken the seat.

In the chart I also note the constituencies with high profile “other” candidates who would likely be able to take some significant share of the Liberal/Green, New Democrat/Green vote.  I also highlight those Conservative gains which would not have been part of the arrangement under the Cullen proposal.  And I note one example of a seat where the social views of the Liberal candidate would be anathema to the vast majority of New Democrats.

While noting the many artificialities of this calculation, it is worth noting that the Cullen Plan as proposed, extrapolated to the results of the last election, does not produce a stable New Democrat – Liberal – Green coalition until a net voter retention of 77.6%, a percentage so high is is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

	CONSTITUENCY	MARGIN	OTHERS	NET %	COMMENTS
1	Nippissing – Temiskaming	18	11299	0.2%
2	Etobicoke Centre	26	9112	0.3%
3	Yukon	132	5345	2.5%
4	Bramalea – Gore Malton	539	18150	3.2%
5	Labrador	79	2359	3.4%
6	Mississauga East – Cooksville	676	9868	6.9%
7	Don Valley West	611	7983	7.7%
8	London North Centre	1665	15173	7.7%
9	Winnipeg South Centre	722	9328	7.8%
10	Don Valley East	870	10992	8.0%
11	Willowdale	932	9777	9.6%
12	Elmwood – Transcona	300	2677	11.3%
13	Pickering – Scarborough East	1207	10683	11.3%	antiChoice antiGay Lib
14	Scarborough Centre	1470	12441	11.9%
Coalition Minority with Bloc Quebecois support if Cullen Plan implemented in all constituencies
15	Moncton – Riverview – Dieppe	2161	16069	13.5%
16	Kitchener – Waterloo	2144	13764	15.6%
17	Sault Ste Marie	1861	9288	20.1%
18	Lobitiniere – Chute de la Chaudiere	777	3802	20.5%	BQ Candidate
Coalition Majority if Cullen Plan implemented in all constituencies
19	Etobicoke Lakeshore	2869	13205	21.8%
20	Madawaska – Restigouche	1915	7852	24.4%
21	Palliser	766	2792	27.5%
22	Vancouver Island North	1827	6057	30.2%
23	Ajax – Pickering	3228	9831	32.9%
24	South Shore – St. Margaret	2915	8616	33.9%
25	Mississauga Streetsville	3453	9636	35.9%
26	Ottawa Orleans	3935	10925	36.1%
27	Vancouver South	3900	9703	40.1%
28	Saskatoon – Rosetown – Biggar	538	1323	40.7%
29	Richmond Hill	4407	10265	43.0%
30	Kitchener Centre	5527	12714	43.5%
31	Denesthené – Missinnippi – Churchill River	794	1704	46.6%
32	Mississauga Brampton	5053	10509	48.1%
33	Brampton West	6192	12449	49.8%
34	Ottawa West Nepean	7436	12407	56.0%
35	Nanaimo – Alberni	5304	9466	56.1%
36	Eglington Lawrence	4062	7147	56.9%
37	Mississauga South	4598	7886	58.4%
38	London West	11023	17812	61.9%
Coalition Minority with Bloc support if Cullen Plan implemented as proposed
39	West Nova	4572	7118	64.3%
40	Mississauga – Erindale	8252	12621	65.4%
41	West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country	13786	18559	74.3%
42	Essex	6789	8755	77.6%
Coalition Majority if Cullen Plan implemented as proposed
43	Fleetwood – Port Kells	7417	9517	80.0%
44	Kenora	4712	6017	78.4%
45	York Centre	6377	7635	83.6%
46	Brampton – Springdale	10397	11948	87.1%
47	North Vancouver	11331	12621	89.8%
48	Glengarry – Prescott – Russell	10469	11657	89.9%
49	Fredericton	10947	12126	90.3%
50	Brant	11694	12638	92.6%
51	Nunavut	1670	1785	93.6%
52	Edmonton Centre	11145	11713	95.2%
53	Peterborough	14670	14769	99.4%