by Bishop John Hepworth

Perhaps those who would gladly crush the Continuing Movement want to avoid a discussion of theology, perhaps we really are hopelessly fractured So often the only discussion we achieve is the one that begins with the accusation that "the Continuing church is hopelessly divided!" For people whose most profound experiences of faith and trust have been in one of the Continuing churches, it has a hollow ring. For people who have been once driven from the church of their birth, and then forced by conscience to a further pilgrimage, accusations of disunity have a ring of cheap and nasty politics.

I must confess to being a little divided myself on this. On the one hand it is a manifestly unfair accusation. It is unfair because the Anglican Continuum (as it has come to be called) is composed of the very individuals driven from their churches by those now most happily accusing them of disunity. On the other hand I wish that we could be transformed into a far more effective force for the global restoration of orthodox Anglicanism.
        This is a natural dilemma for a movement with two arms. We exist to provide a refuge for the dispossessed. If we were caring for political refugees, we would be significant internationally. We also exist to win back Anglicanism for the Faith. And refugees seldom make good commandos.

First the true picture. After the now historic meeting of "Concerned Churchmen" at St. Louis, when the United States and Canadian Anglican churches were on the brink of actions that many Anglicans could not accept because they changed the heart of Anglican practice - the sacraments, the Eucharist, the Sacred Ministry - four bishops were consecrated for a "continuing church".
         That church was ill defined at St. Louis. Subsequent attempts to bind the four bishops into a single church failed. There was an honesty among the first continuers about doctrine that was new to twentieth century Anglicanism. There has never been a movement devoted to the fudge. There were also serious differences about the way to restore orthodoxy to Anglicanism. In fact, some doubted that such a thing was possible, and began designing boutique churches on the basis that no existing church properly encapsulated the teachings of Scripture and Councils. And there were some powerful passions unleashed. Few who have been mocked and ridiculed at the losing end of a General Synod care to repeat the experience.
          All of this debate was a natural reaction to unprecedented events. It also reflected the often-ignored fact that the reaction to heretical and schismatic acts by national synods and their presiding bishops was essentially individual. There simply never was a continuing church waiting with its lifeboats lowered to pick up survivors. There were deeply hurt and angry individuals being threatened and bullied into submission, unsure of what to do, let alone what choice of companion with whom to do it. The extent of breakdown - marital, mental, physical and spiritual - among those on the losing end of these debates has not been documented. But it is the private agony of any bishop in the Continuum. In such an environment, care has to come first. As soon as the Continuum has come to church building s, it has been confronted with identifying those elements of Anglicanism that heave allowed its decline.
           As each part of the Anglican Communion either succumbed to schism or held the faith, reaction of orthodox Anglicans was informed by previous encounters. Some solutions had already been found wanting. The Continuum has been an evolving concept. After twenty years, there are in fact a number of solutions, and they tend to reflect the Anglican for difficult acts of balance.
          In the first week of May, at the Benedictine Abbey at Bartonville (just south of Chicago, in the United States), the most representative gathering of bishops of the Continuum ever assembled will discuss unity. The Abbot has called for a time of penitence, honesty, reflection and prayer.
          Christianity has always struggled to hold in balance the life of "all the churches" with the life of the vine of which they are the branches. Cardinal Cassidy has reminded the Anglican Communion that it sometimes makes nonsense of unity when it allows the local churches unfettered and undisciplined freedom in defining standards of faith and morality. Since the first Lambeth Conference last century, Anglican history has been a sad evasion of anything that might create a true unity.