My friend Tim Chesterton, an Anglican priest in Canada, has written an excellent (but rather long) post Good News: Inclusion, New Creation, and the Limits to Transformation. This is in part his reaction to the position taken by The Episcopal Church (TEC), which is rapidly leading to a parting of ways from the majority of the Anglican Communion. Tim’s post has already received an episcopal “imprimatur”, in the first comment.

Tim is not afraid to take on the issue of homosexuality, despite it being so controversial. Personally I would want to state more clearly than Tim does that same-sex attraction, at least when not carefully controlled, is not “part of God’s will for his creation”, but “part of the brokenness that evil has caused in the world” – but then perhaps Tim doesn’t want to invite the kind of reaction the Team Rector of my own parish received for what he said about this issue in a sermon, which made it to the front page of our local newspaper.

The implication of what Tim writes is that he cannot go along with the “progressives” in TEC, and in his own Anglican Church of Canada, for whom the gospel is only about unconditional inclusion without a call for transformation. But it also implies that he cannot go along with those who reject the inclusiveness of the gospel, the apparent stance of some of the more conservative Anglicans who have been forced out of the official churches. I would agree with Tim on both these points.

This suggests to me that there is a strong central strand within global Anglicanism which does not want to go along with either of the extremes but is feeling torn apart as the apparently inevitable schism proceeds. It will be interesting to see what happens to this central strand. I would hope and pray that it is able to survive and grow through these difficult times, and perhaps emerge as the surviving core of the Anglican Communion as the extremes on either side go their own ways. But for that to happen this central strand will need some strong leadership. Perhaps the highly respected Bishop N.T. Wright, whose article I quoted a few days ago, can provide this leadership and some kind of focus of unity.