Covenant, constitution and contract: control and accountability in the cat's cradle (part 1 of 2)

Abstract

The contribution of theology to control and accounting has been traced through the
\nmonastic tradition demonstrating how the Cistercians used decentralized control of their
\nextensive farms in contrast to the centralized control of the Benedictines (Knowles,1948).
\nThe contribution of theology to political economy was traced by Weber and Tawney in
\ntheir analysis of the Calvinist roots of liberal market capitalism and more subtly by Adam
\nSmith in his ironic use of a phrase from Isaiah Ch 60 as the title for his seminal work on
\nmarkets.
\nThis paper reports upon a case of the interplay of theology and control and accountability
\nwhich occurred as the Church of England set out to respond to a financial crisis.
\nAccountability was theorized as stemming from the three elements of covenant, constitution
\nand contract all of which were contested in the ground metaphor of autonomy. It
\ndemonstrates how a group of financiers from within the evangelical tradition (which places
\nstress on headship and control) led an attempt to create a new church governance body (a
\nnational council) with strongly integrated central control and diminished democratic and
\nconciliar participation. They had described the church as 'a cats cradle of autonomous and
\nsemi autonomous organizations'. The case then demonstrates how the other theological
\ntraditions (anglo-catholic and liberal) were mobilized , over a period of several years, to
\npermit the new body to come into life but to unravel the proposed centralised control and
\nto maintain the existing nature of governance and to enrich the complexity of the 'cat's
\ncradle'.
\nThe case analysis is based upon the theory of eco-systems (as a more formal view of the
\ncat's cradle) to show how the loosely coupled nature of eco systems with their multiple
\ntheological stances and their multi layered processes of relationships and accountabilities
\nwere almost impervious to the attempt to shift them into an ordered and controlled
\nhierarchy.