On Sunday evening…[Foley Beach] asked me to organize a time for him to meet with some clergy and so I organized a dinner that we might have an opportunity to talk to him about our concerns about how things are in England, and hear about how things are developing in the Anglican Church in North America.
Since that time, I have been reflecting on the difference between what is appening in ACNA, and what we are experiencing in our Diocese, and in the Church of England nationally. And what has come to me is this:
what is happening in ACNA is centripetal;
what the CofE is doing is centrifugal.
Let me explain what I mean.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats
TEC was, and is, centrifugal, with the latest set of beliefs being accepted and the others pushed out. The Anglican movement was at its beginnings in the late 1970s also centrifugal, with more and more little denominations being created over less-than-earthshaking differences (in my opinion). ACNA has so far been intentionally centripetal, and I hope it will maintain that stance.