By Alyson Barnett-Cowan. While it is true that the Communion’s language of “Covenant” was first used in The Windsor Report of 2004, the idea of having a comprehensive, coherent, agreed-upon understanding of how the Anglican family works has been around for a long time.

Perhaps the Covenant is not perfect — no human invention ever will be. But it is more than good enough. It has the potential to work well, if we are committed to making it do so.

By R. Mwita Akiri. We do not live in a world that allows us to confine ourselves within our own geographical, cultural and social contexts. The world we live in is a global village, and more than that, it has become a dot-com age. We have to relate with and to one another, within and outside our contexts.

By George R. Sumner. Mission must balance both adaptation and a careful guarding of what is authentically Christian.

By Ian Ernest. There is an urgency for all the stakeholders of this Communion to deal with the stranger within ourselves.

By David Richardson. What the Covenant has to offer the churches of the Communion is an instrument of unity and mission which, in good Anglican fashion, steers a middle path between centralism and juridical structures on the one hand and unfettered license and mutual irresponsibility on the other. But it does more.

By Geoffrey Rowell. All ecclesiology is about our belonging together, and our belonging together in Christ.

By Paul Avis. The future of the Anglican Communion is in jeopardy. The Anglican Covenant is the only credible proposal that I am aware of to help hold this family of churches together.

By Matthew A. Gunter. Confessions serve as symbols of belonging which give particular communities a shared identity. As such, they are sources of cohesion and delineate communal boundaries.

We need the Anglican Covenant. It sets forth the most plausible and coherent picture of the Church that we have seen, carefully knitting together our founding documents and the developed consensus of the last century.