“[T]he Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a reflective essay calling on Anglicans all over the world to think and pray about the nature of Anglicanism and how Anglicanism may exercise mission in contemporary societies across the world. He muses that our divisions may be so deep that at some stage forms of creative disassociation may emerge, maintaining some level of relationship or communion while permitting those Provinces which feel unable to accept the restraints of communal life, to exercise independence.

The contrast is striking. American dioceses instinctively seek an immediate and structural political solution and, oddly enough, Nigerian Anglicans follow suit, while Archbishop Rowan proposes a way forward based on prayerful study, conversation, leading eventually to some form of structural reform based on the evangelical imperatives of the Gospel. The Archbishop seems to be living in the age of Chesterton or Ramsey, where reflection and reasonable discussion had its honored place. The American dioceses live in the here and now, in the push and shove of political activism and instant action and reaction.”

Father Clavier has pointed out a key reason to be reluctant to just walk away from deep relationship with other parts of the Anglican Communion and go it on our own. Americans have a well deserved reputation for impatience and for lacking the long view. Our desire to challenge the conventional wisdom needs to be tempered with the understanding that the conventional wisdom might have something important to say.

Read the rest here: THE ELEPHANT’S SPORE

(Via Fr. Tony Clavier.)