The following are some links to various responses to ++Rowan’s Reflection statement offered to the Communion only yesterday:
Thinking Anglicans
– good comprehensive list

The Anglican Communion Institute – I must say, I do agree that the need is to move away from political wrangling and back to the mission of the Gospel!
Preludium: Mark Harris+
Anglican Communion Network: Bishop Duncan
MadPriest (of course I could be wrong) – for an English perspective
– I really like this statement from the MadPriest commenting on the Bishop of Rochester,Michael Nazir-Ali: “In other words, we should be very suspicious of anybody calling for division who might benefit from division.”
A consideration: When the Archbishop calls us to reflect upon local parishes or diocese or provinces or even individual members needing to make sacrifices for the unity of the entire Communion, upon whom does that burden most fall? Does the burden of sacrifice fall evenly on all provinces, diocese, parishes, or individuals?
I agree with the Archbishop. However, my impression is that the burden of sacrifice is expected of those who favor the full inclusion of people oriented towards the same gender and not the other side. Will some sort of burden of sacrifice be expected of Archbishop Akinola and the Province of Nigeria, along with many others who oppose homosexuality? What might that sacrifice look like? Then again, Akinola will not compromise and doesn’t need to sacrifice because he and his compatriots of course are right and don’t have to, right?

Archbishop Rowan Williams has issued a Reflection concerning the Episcopal Church’s recent response to the Windsor Report. The entire press release and reflection are available on his website. Here it is:
The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today: A Reflection for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion
The Anglican Communion: a Church in Crisis?
What is the current tension in the Anglican Communion actually about? Plenty of people are confident that they know the answer. It’s about gay bishops, or possibly women bishops. The American Church is in favour and others are against – and the Church of England is not sure (as usual).
It’s true that the election of a practising gay person as a bishop in the US in 2003 was the trigger for much of the present conflict. It is doubtless also true that a lot of extra heat is generated in the conflict by ingrained and ignorant prejudice in some quarters; and that for many others, in and out of the Church, the issue seems to be a clear one about human rights and dignity. But the debate in the Anglican Communion is not essentially a debate about the human rights of homosexual people. It is possible – indeed, it is imperative – to give the strongest support to the defence of homosexual people against violence, bigotry and legal disadvantage, to appreciate the role played in the life of the church by people of homosexual orientation, and still to believe that this doesn’t settle the question of whether the Christian Church has the freedom, on the basis of the Bible, and its historic teachings, to bless homosexual partnerships as a clear expression of God’s will. That is disputed among Christians, and, as a bare matter of fact, only a small minority would answer yes to the question.

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With all the acrimony that runs through this Church these days, and considering the knee-jerk reactions from various sides coming out of the General Convention, we must begin to revive the traditional Anglican way of seeking a common or middle way that carries the Church though rough times and the strong pull of the polarizing extremes. Heck, we need a revival of Hooker’s ideals of what the Church of England and now Anglicanism can truly be. We could call ourselves “revivers” or “rekindlers” or “reawakeners” after the “conservative’s” term for themselves as “reasserters” or the “liberal’s” term for themselves as “reappraisers.”
Now is the day to begin rebuilding Anglicanism in the United States.
The polarization resulting from the American Culture Wars (from both the conservative and liberals sides) has infiltrated The Episcopal Church. The two extremes in this Church have polarized the membership, perhaps intentionally, in order to achieve their goals that result in the imposition of particular perspectives and practices over and above the middle or opposite-extreme positions. There are good and faithful Episcopalians from all sides that do wish to remain together and to forge an honest way forward so that the balance and richness that results from different sides staying in conversation, debate, and inquiry can be maintained. The result is a solidly balanced way to understand our faith in the 21st century and God’s call to us to influence the world.
Dean Alan Jones from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in his new book entitled, Common Prayer on Common Ground: A Vision of Anglican Orthodoxy, attempts to articulate an Anglicanism based squarely on Via Media – the middle way which encompasses the vast majority of the common folk in the Episcopal Church. He writes about the “Conservative and Liberal Perspectives” in one small section of the book. I want to quote from it because I think he does a similar thing that The Very Rev. George Back did with his essay written in 1991 detailing the positive aspects of conservatism and liberalism in the Church and our need for both. I read Back’s essay for the first time in The Anglican Digest July, 2003.
Jones writes:
“This highlights the weakness of liberalism. It is an effort – sometimes noble and heroic – to dispense with tradition and ancient ways of believing. [Houston] Smith writes, ‘Liberals are at their worst in not recognizing how much an absolute can contribute to life, and in assuming that absolutes can be held only dogmatically, which is not the case. Absolutism and dogmatism lie on different axes. The first relates to belief, whereas the second is a charter disorder. The opposite of absolutism is not open-mindedness but relativism, and the opposite of dogmatism is not relativism but open-mindedness. There can be, and are dogmatic relativists and open-minded absolutists.’
“But he goes on, ‘liberals [are] better than conservatives at recognizing the dangers of fanaticism and the virtues of tolerance, and conservatives [are] better as perceiving the dangers of nihilism and the virtues of a sense of certainty… Both the strengths and dangers of liberalism pertain to life’s horizontal dimension, which encompass[es] human relationships – whereas those of conservatives pertains to the vertical, asymmetrical God-person relationships.’ [Houston Smith, The Soul of Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco: 2005, p.211]
“Liberals need to learn that the vertical relation is more important. It seems to me that the conservative diagnosis is often right but its remedy (charging back into an idealized and imagined past) is both unworkable and disastrous. The liberal is often a poor diagnostician but, at least, has an inkling of freedom in God…
“…Of course, as an Anglican, I’d say that both statements are true! It’s a matter of emphasis. Polarization is a form of indulgence and is both unnecessary and harmful. The world is in both a state of sin and a state of grace. Human beings are both fallen and free.”
Alan Jones, Common Prayer on Common Ground, Morehouse Publishing, 2006, pp31-32.