A part of my daily e-mail traffic comes from people who have read my various pieces, in which I show the mess into which North American Anglicanism has got itself through (a) the initial infidelity of The Episcopal Church [for details of this see my Episcopal Innovations, 1960-2004, from www.anglicanmarketplace.com] and then (b) the indiscriminate creation of small groups bearing the name \u201cAnglican\u201d\u009d from 1977 through to 2008 [see further my Anglican Identity from the same site]. They ask simply: what are we to do? And some of them expect that there is a simple answer which applies in all the 48 contiguous states, not to mention Alaska and Hawaii.<\/p>\n
It seems to me that the extra-mural Anglican situation outside TEC has got so complex\u201d\u201dnot least through the intervention of at least five overseas Anglican provinces in recent years\u201d\u201dthat it is not possible to offer any simple answer, except the one that avoids the problem and is simply: \u201cPack your bags, leave this Anglican house, go to another with a different name [Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox etc.] and forget about the Anglican mess as far as you are able, for to clean it up will take a generation.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
If people have patience to consider principles and not be caught up in \u201cwinds of change\u201d\u009d and \u201cinstant solutions\u201d\u009d and \u201cimitating others,\u201d\u009d then I put to them\u201d\u201din brief\u201d\u201dsomething like the following (adapted of course to local and personal reality). I presume here that the starting point is a parish in TEC where there is a dissatisfied group of Episcopalians who wish to be faithful to Biblical religion….<\/p>\n