A New Via Media?

In the Lambeth Diary entry posted below, it is suggested that a new Anglicanism can emerge from the moderates of the communion. Speaking of North American liberals and African conservatives, the writer opines,

"Until now, both sides have seemed to have a veto, a final say - condemning the communion to an unsustainable status quo, and what Dr Williams referred to as "further disintegration".

But that's where Dr Williams' Lambeth Conference coup might emerge.

Call the bluff of both sides - traditionalist and liberal - and allow a revamped "centre" to sign up to a covenant whether or not the Americans or their conservative critics in Africa and elsewhere choose to join in.

Remove their veto, and create a new communion able to move forward without them.

If this is the strategy - and it looks highly likely - it could explain the increasingly frank acceptance of senior figures that some will choose not to commit to the covenant.

It has come to look like a declaration of independence by the moderate middle of the communion, and Dr Williams himself."



This is only workable if the moderate middle is willing to let go of millions of Anglicans. I'm not talking about the few million in North America. The less than two million pecusa and the Anglican Church of Canada are small provinces. The largest provinces are in Africa with Nigeria and Uganda alone eclipsing the Church of England, pecusa, the ACC, and any number of non-African provinces added together. Will the moderate middle and for that matter, the Queen of England, accept an Anglican Communion that is 25% the numbers and with less global reach than the present communion? I think that this is a stretch.