Anglicans and Orthodoxy: A reality check

Orthodox will never beat Rome at Rome's game, and we need to get any hint of such a notion out of our heads. We can talk all we want about past ties and chumminess between Orthodox and Anglicans, but it makes more sense for the vast majority of faithful Anglicans to go to Rome than it does for them to go to Orthodoxy. Rome has an ecclesial apparatus that can efficiently and coherently make a place for them, and it can market those efforts in a manner that Orthodox cannot come close to competing with. And the theology of most conservative Anglicans reflects the influence of Augustine and Aquinas in a manner that Orthodoxy outside of David Bentley Hart and a few of his friends does not...

...Then comes along the OCA with its wooing words. True, and thank God, +Jonah spoke about the incompatibility of WO with Orthodoxy, and the problem of the filioque, and the heresy of Calvinism. Rhetorically speaking +Jonah at least placed some serious restraints on the table. I think what is going on is that the ACNA, and perhaps other conservative Anglican groups (the ACNA is not in any real sense a traditionalist Anglican body), is in such a state of excitement and euphoria over gaining size and momentum that when Orthodox or RCs show up and speak nice and talk about their commitment to dialogue and the duty to pursue unity, etc., these euphoric Anglicans only hear that they are being courted and think themselves to have been somehow recognized to be "within" the Church and they do not hear the "fine print"-speak. What I find crass about these ecumenical gatherings (and yes, no matter how much tea and lace and crumpets, it is crass) is that, at least with what is presented of these meetings for public consumption, the hard facts that get in the way of the euphoric, urgent, union-is-just-around-the-corner metanarrative rarely seem to make it beyond "fine-print"-speak or the occasional tangent. It would seem to me that in an honest dialogue would involve as much public and forthright discussion of what divides us as it does those things we supposedly have in common. That said, I have to say that I appreciate that +Jonah at very least says some "hard" things that one rarely publicly hears coming out of the mouths of hierarchs involved in these sorts of meetings.

I have another worry about the ACNA. Many of the groups within the ACNA are made up of a lot of folks who stayed in ECUSA through WO, Spong, and outright heresy and left only after an openly homosexual bishop was ordained. The ethos of the ACNA is not traditional. It is not catholic. It is white, middle class Republican - Dobson in vestments. It is moralist. Heck, these folks promote on their own website the fact that they are "conservative" and "biblical" on the issue of homosexuality. Their ecclesial identity is tied up in the fact that they reject the Church blessing homosexual unions. Friends, that may be correct but it does not have staying power, and it does not necessarily make a person or group somehow a more significant candidate for communion with Rome or Orthodoxy than another person or group. To pursue them on the basis of their manner of conservatism is the sort of demographic association seeking that political parties make use of, but going after particular religious groups because of their cultural conservatism strikes me as a rather repugnant form of evangelism. It reeks of that peculiar pathetic display of religious forms that feel increasingly isolated culturally and so desperately want a few more friends on the playground of culture.

-Owen the Ochlophobist throwing a little cold water on the current enthusiasm for ecumenical talks with conservative Anglicans. I encourage everyone to read his post carefully. It has more than a few solid points.