What these past few weeks have taught us about the Church in North America is interesting, if painful. First, our parishes are filled with friendly, welcoming, loving people\u201d\u201dpeople who really mean well, and want to do the right thing, the loving thing, as they believe God would have them do. Second, we are essentially Congregationalists, and then perhaps \u201cdiocesanists\u201d\u009d, and finally, maybe, members of our national church. There is no real sense of being one church with other Anglicans throughout the world, no sense that we are truly closer, more truly related, to an Anglican in Botswana or Beijing than to a Baptist down the street. Oh, we may have companion dioceses in Africa or South America, but we don\u2019t really think of them as part of us, nor do we feel responsible to them. There\u2019s no need to ask what they think about decisions we make as a church in the U.S., because it has nothing to do with them\u201d\u201dsure, we send them some money every year, but that doesn\u2019t make them \u201cus\u201d\u009d.<\/p>\n
But they are us. If the Anglican Communion is truly to be a single Communion, then we must recognize that the national, man-made boundaries which separate us mean nothing, for we are truly a single Church, a single Communion, whether we\u2019re in New York or Nairobi, Arlington or Addis Ababa. What we do in one part of the Communion directly effects every other part of the Communion, and we ignore that fact to the Church\u2019s, and our own, peril.<\/p>\n
Pray for the Church, that we may be One.<\/p>\n