Giles Fraser in the Church Times on how we are to recognize who is Anglican and who is not:
This may be a dated caricature, but the genius of the Church of England has been to allow different theological temperaments to worship alongside one other, united by common prayer and community spirit. This was how we recognised each other as members of the same Church. This was our particular charism, and we were widely valued for it.
In Anglicanism, however, the joys of common prayer and community spirit are replaced by ideology. This Anglican Church is a new invention, a global piece of post-colonial hubris, driven by those who feel that a Church that is genuinely Catholic must have outposts throughout the world.Bishops get on planes and fly to other parts of the world to sit in committees with other bishops, hammering out policy — although no one in the secular world cares two hoots about what they decide. Over time, these meetings have created a new Church with a single-issue magisterium based on an unhealthy fascination with what gay people do in their bedrooms. This, apparently, is how we are to recognise each other as Anglicans.
Since Giles is well aware of the proper usage I believe he is intentionally using Anglican Church rather Anglican Communion to make his point.
Read it all.
Fraser is a leader of the coalition of 13 liberal Church of England groups who yesterday in Ruth Gledhill’s words are ‘[c]ondemning as “flawed” Dr Williams’s recent declaration that the way forward lay in a “twin-track” Anglican Communion [and] revealed plans to bring in same-sex blessings and gay ordination in England, as has happened in the Episcopal Church in the US.’