Anglican Mainstream’s response helpfully highlights five areas where they “respectfully seek to differ from the Archbishop”. The five short statements, however, offer some serious misreadings of the letter and its proposals for finding a way forward, misrepresent aspects of the Windsor process and ignore the wider context of the covenant. In addition, AM’s critique takes certain definite theological stances concerning life together in a divided church which need much more unpacking and defence and which many who are naturally sympathetic with AM’s aims currently find difficult to accept. Perhaps more disconcerting still is that AM’s critique may be saying – or at least be understood to be saying – that they are working from the assumptions the Archbishop strongly rejects at the end of his letter
A great deal of the language that is around in the Communion at present seems to presuppose that any change from our current deadlock is impossible, that division is unavoidable and that any such division represents so radical a difference in fundamental faith that no recognition and future co-operation can be imagined.I cannot accept these assumptions, and I do not believe that as Christians we should see them as beyond challenge, least of all as we think and pray our way through Advent.
The challenge in the months leading up to GAFCON and Lambeth is whether those who share AM’s concerns about the Advent letter will accept and act on the basis of these assumptions or whether there is room for serious discussion about the important issues AM raises and a common discernment together as to the way forward for the Communion as a whole.
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