Peter Robinson

Clipped from https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10230548041955331&id=1549448996&http_ref=eyJ0cyI6MTc3MzMzNjQ1MjAwMCwiciI6IiJ9
by Bishop Peter Robinson

CENTRAL v. BROAD

Both English and U.S. Anglicanism had a great body of both clergy and laity within them that did not identify with either the Anglo-Catholics (modern High Churchmen) or the Evangelicals. They were just 'CofE' or 'plain PE' depending on which country they lived in. They took their religion from the Prayer Book, and such uses as they were accustomed to seeing in their parish churches, and left the partisan stuff to others. At least, until some vicar tried to introduce radical change. In the UK they were usually referred to as central churchman, but not by themselves, and in the US as broad churchmen, though as a rule, the American version was a little more liberal in his theology and politics than the English type.

The habit has grown up in (perhaps not so) recent times of treating the CofEs and the Plain PEs as a problem, not an opportunity to build a solid Anglican identity which is neither ancient or modern Rome, or Presbyterians with a BCP. As someone who grew up 'CofE' I am not sure why so many, especially clerics, seem so determined to 'suicide' the Anglican tradition. It does not matter whether one looks to the G2 or ACNA or to the "Sydneygelicals" in Australia or in REACH, they all seem to have a strong conviction that [a] Anglicanism has failed, and [b] needs to be remade in their own image.

I think this is a misunderstanding because what has failed is not Anglicanism as a theological and liturgical artifact, but the cultural context which supported the old "established" Anglicanisms in England, the Commonwealth, and the USA. The swing of the academic and politic elites into a reflexive Leftist position destroyed the cultural consensus on which the old "establishments" relied. Much of the social, political, and cultural instability of, say, the USA and UK is deliberately engineered and is not the result of organic cultural change.

This has profoundly influenced the direction the mainline Anglican churches in the last seventy years with the result that what remains of the old churches are now but a shallow remnant of the Anglican tradition. If Anglicanism is going to survive we need to become much more serious about educating our own people from the cradle to the grave not just in the faith, but in the cultural tradition that supported it.