See Williams' Statement: Communion, Covenant and our Anglican Future,
      N. T. Wright's Statement: Rowan's Reflections: Unpacking the Archbishop's Statement,
      Anglican Covenant: Ridley draft.
      My comments are in [bracketted dark green] below.

[Initial statement: You should read Wright's entire statement, Williams' statement, and the Anglican Covenant, using the links above.

Wright's statement is astonishing, using the following rhetorical strategies, among others:

• "Us" versus "them" orientation.
• Full of anger and hostility.
• Promotes Machiavellian and "ends justify means" strategies to achieve goals.
• "Time is running out" to get on the "bandwagon" mentality.
• Full of the certainty and rectitude of his own position, with no reservations expressed, and no humility.
• Praises, patronizes, and misrepresents Rowan Williams.
• Sets up false "strawman" arguments which he then shoots down.
• Misrepresents the position of The Episcopal Church.
• Misrepresents the motivation, actions and statements of the majority of Bishops in The Episcopal Church.

I recognize that Wright is not speaking in any official capacity, but he is a powerful and influential English Anglican Bishop, as well as a well-known theologian, so his views have special weight. ]

6. An aside at this point: some in TEC insist that their theological position has in fact been argued, and that the rest of the Communion is ignoring these arguments. As far as I can discern, there are two main arguments routinely used.

• ... a personal 'identity' characterised by sexual preference, ...
• ... the appeal to baptism....

I find it incomprehensible that a theologian of Wright's stature would ignore the true argument (which has been available online for years), and would instead set up two "strawman" arguments that he can shoot down.]

6(i) First, the supposed modern and scientific discovery of a personal 'identity' characterised by sexual preference, which then generates a set of 'rights'. The Archbishop has commented on 'rights' in this connection. Without entering into discussion of the scientific evidence, it must be said that the Christian notion of personal identity has never before been supposed to be rooted in desires of whatever sort. Indeed, desires are routinely brought under the constraints of 'being in Christ'. This quite new notion of an 'identity' found not only within oneself but within one's emotional and physical desires needs to be articulated on the basis of scripture and tradition, and this to my mind has not been done.
[Here Wright doesn't just miss the point, but gets it precisely backwards: The argument is made by The Episcopal Church and others that the source of same-sex affection is not based on "desire" or "sexual preference" (Wright's words), but on the innate essence of the persons, their God-given nature. And this is not used as the main argument to support such unions, but is used only to counter the arguments that homosexuality is just a "choice" or "lifestyle" or a "dysfunction", and that it can be "cured".

The Episcopal Church, in the document mentioned above, has indeed articulated their argument justifying the blessedness of same-sex affection through scripture and tradition and reason. ]

6 (ii) This leads to the second point, the appeal to baptism. It is now routinely said in TEC that all the baptised should have access to all the sacraments, on the apparent grounds that baptism indicates God's acceptance of people as they are. This appears to ignore the New Testament teaching about baptism, that it constitutes a dying to self and sin and a rising to new life with Christ, specifically characterised by a holiness and renewed humanity in which certain habits and styles of life are left behind. From the first century until very recently it was universally understood that this included sexual immorality, and that that included homosexual behaviour. To try to use a supposedly 'baptismal' theology to overturn the universal Christian tradition of the meaning of baptism, and with it the universal and biblically-rooted appeal for sexual holiness, is a bold move. Most theologians will think that the first argument above (the proposal of an 'identity') is not strong enough to justify it. God's welcome is always a transforming welcome, as the ABC has elsewhere stressed.
[I don't know where this argument came from -- I can't find a trace of it in the main document cited above. Of course baptism doesn't immediately allow someone to do whatever they want.]

9. Within the same section, the ABC makes the vital point that in our ongoing ecumenical work is it vital that our partners know 'who speaks for the body they are relating to'. If many Anglicans don't see why these presenting issues should matter, the same is not true for our ecumenical partners, particularly among the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. [The Catholic church is homogeneous, headed by the Pope. I believe that a great strength of the Anglican Communion has been its diversity.]

16. No Delay. ... Now that GenCon 09 has happened, even if the Covenant is completed within a few months TEC will assuredly say that it can't consider it until 2012, and that such consideration could only be preliminary, looking to a more definite decision in 2015. This delaying tactic -- twelve years from 2003, when the crisis really began! -- must be seen for what it is, and headed off. The obvious way to do this is to declare that 'Track One' is open, right away, to Covenant signatories, and only Covenant signatories. How precisely that could be done (granted that the Joint Standing Committee, for instance, includes some from TEC and other sympathetic provinces) remains a question. But it needs to be done, and done quickly. I offer some suggestions on all this in the conclusion below. [Here Wright is openly revealing his plans when he mentions that the Joint Standing Committee "includes some from TEC and other sympathetic provinces".]

17. Section 4 of the Covenant. Picking up the point just made: Section 4 of the Covenant needs to proceed swiftly to its final form. This process is far too important to be left to a small group advising the Archbishop. When the Archbishop receives the group's work, he should consult with key Communion representatives to ensure that there are no remaining hidden problems. In this process, any reduction or limiting of Section 4 (clearly the hope of the majority in TEC, not least those who pushed the ACC to postpone a decision) will be a large step away from the mind of the Communion as the ABC has himself expressed it ... [I have commented elsewhere about parts of Sections 3 and 4 of the Anglican Covenant: Commentary on the Covenant.]

Conclusion

19. ... Yet at the heart of this document are two things which the Communion has badly needed to hear: ... a strong reaffirmation of the Anglican position on sexual behaviour, and a strong insistence on the Windsor point that global issues cannot be decided locally -- and that the decision as to what is global and what is local cannot itself be decided locally. The 'so what' of all this needs now to be drawn out, and in my view this needs to happen more or less at once, not postponed until Section 4 of the Covenant is redrafted and ratified. [If you want diversity, as I do, you can't have absolute top-down control.]

20. How then can this 'so what' become a reality? ... It is thus up to the Archbishop himself to move swiftly to implement what he himself has said, counting on support from bishops around his own Province and the whole Communion. The Covenant (which the ABC has repeatedly affirmed as the new instrument of our unity and common life) needs to be completed and offered to all Anglicans for signature. Those within TEC who sign it need appropriate Communion recognition and relatedness -- if bishops, a Primatial relationship, if parishes or individuals, an episcopal relationship. Ways by which this can be done have been worked out by the Communion Partner bishops, and it is with them, first and foremost, that the Archbishop must work towards the necessary and urgent solutions. [See my commentary on the Anglican Covenant "loyalty oaths".]

21. A Way Forward?

(ii) The Anaheim Statement: ... The document they have produced ('the Anaheim Statement') could now form something of a bridge between the present confusion and the not-too-distant future when the full Covenant will be available for signature. ... Some reports indicate that bishops who voted with the majority in Gen Con are now realising the predicament they've put themselves in and are starting to sign up to Anaheim instead. [My emphasis added]
[It almost sounds like one of them -- not "conservative Anglican", but an evil person. This view is too melodramatic, but still, almost everyone at the General Convention, liberals and conservatives alike, realized that the Bishops voting in favor of the controversial resolutions had thought the matter over for three years, and weren't going to quickly change their minds when they saw the Anaheim Statement. Charitably, one can say that Wright was receiving flawed reports, and not deliberately spreading lies and dissension.

However, his statement remains a nasty and gratuitous swipe at "bishops who voted with the majority". His statement could be interpreted as saying that all such Bishops are "starting to sign up to Anaheim instead", as if they didn't know their own mind when they voted. I find particularly offensive the idea that bishops realize they are in a "predicament" because of the way they voted. A predicament is a spouse with cancer, a child addicted to drugs.]

(iv) Getting from Here to There: Covenant Sections 1-3. The Covenant, when completed, will provide a line in the sand. However, we do not need to wait until Section 4 is redrafted. The first three sections are already completed and agreed, and they (especially Section Three) already prohibit the kinds of things which General Convention has done, and which many TEC bishops are doing. These three sections could be signed and adopted right away by CP bishops and dioceses as a signal of their intent. [This is a classic self-fulfilling prophesy. Any action his group doesn't like will naturally "provoke controversy" in the words of the Covenant. Actions such as those by the Nigerian Anglican Church to openly create laws to persecute and jail (and promote violence against) homosexuals apparently are not controversial, though Rowan Williams condemned this strongly.]

(v) Getting from Here to There: Anaheim. The Anaheim Statement itself could also function as a preliminary rallying point around which more may gather than had initially been supposed. Perhaps, indeed, signing this statement, along with Sections 1-3 of the Covenant, could function, ahead of the availability of the final version of the Covenant, as a prerequisite for participation, from this moment on, in representative Anglican functions and bodies and, not least, in bodies that deal with the Covenant itself and the future of the Instruments.

(vi) Interim Structures? We need some interim structures to get us from where we are to where we need to be -- and not only in TEC, but also in Canada and perhaps elsewhere. But we need these now ...The now largely discredited 'DEPO' system ('Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight') may have been a signpost, albeit one that didn't seem to be capable of working well at the time, towards some kind of a solution.

(vii) Urgent meetings? Ideally, the CP bishops, and perhaps some of the Rectors, should meet with the Archbishop to discuss some kind of a revived DEPO. The ABC could then invite others, including both representatives of TEC leadership on the one hand and ACNA on the other, to further meetings to work out agreements that would avoid future confusions or accusations. ...

(viii) What about ACNA? All this raises, then, the question of ACNA itself (and, indeed, other would-be Anglican bodies). Without some kind of clear steer on the issues just raised, we can expect that ACNA will continue to attract individuals, congregations and perhaps even dioceses. This is, indeed, already happening. However, though the situation on the ground is often confused, ACNA has expressed a clear willingness to work with the Communion Partner bishops towards whatever greater good may come. And ACNA itself has shown itself eager to sign the Covenant when it is complete.... [The last four sections talk about a great deal of meddling in affairs within the United States.]