Summary: The language of walking together to describe the current state and structures of the Anglican Communion needs more nuance and more detailed and theological analysis. This article attempts to begin developing the theme by setting walking together in a wider context than its recent use by the primates, including The Windsor Report’s language of walking apart, and by recognizing that the primates have also acknowledged impairment and significant distance even as they speak of walking together.
It then argues that the language is best approached from a wider, ecumenical perspective as a goal to be sought not just among Communion provinces. As such, within the reality of a fractured Church, we have to acknowledge degrees of communion and different ways of seeking to walk together that also recognize the reality of walking at a distance. By paying attention to this distance within Anglicanism we may be better able to find ways to maintain and even deepen the levels of communion we currently have.