St. Thomas More, Pray for Us

There is increasing talk in the Anglican Communion, even from the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, of the establishment of "two-track" Anglicanism; one track consisting of western liberal organizations like the Episcopal Church and the other of those from the global south and east that lean closer to orthodoxy. Further, there is even the suggestion that the Episcopal Church set up shop in England to minister to those in the C of E who find the Christo-centric nature of traditional Anglican worship far too narrow a gate for their theological purposes.

The purpose, I assume, of this self-imposed bifurcation is to quarantine the toxic innovations of western liberals from the rest of the Anglican Communion, in order to buy peace between the two sides, while concomitantly maintaining amicable relations with the liberals so that they might continue to spread their considerable largess around rest of the Communion. I have my doubts.

The intentional division of Anglicanism brings to mind an utterance by Thomas More to William Roper, his son-in-law and biographer, that is as salient now as it was then.

I pray God that some of us, as high as we seem to sit upon the mountains, treading heretics under our feet like ants, live not the day, that we gladly would wish to be at league and composition with them, to let them have their churches quietly to themselves; so that they would be content to let us have ours quietly to ourselves.