The Anglican Church is on the verge of being fragmented. What might this mean, in the lines here.

Inside some of the Churches there is a long debate about the acceptance of homosexuals in the clergy. Some cases exist in all confessions, but when it comes to the persons that had declared their sexual option, the story becomes more complicated.

In Europe, there are different ways of looking at this issue. The Orthodox Churches have a single block perspective: they reject homosexuality as a capital sin, sometimes without reconsidering the formula of their arguments. This excludes altogether the problem of incorporating homosexuals into clergy. Grosso modo, this is also the case of Roman Catholic Church.

The protestant churches are more open to a dialogue between society and its ideas of integration, and theology, seen in this case as a system funding biblically and logically a certain idea or a trend inside the church. Protestant Churches are among the first to accept women as clerics and declared homosexuals as priests. Even though this might sometimes have been accepted with some reluctance or some debates inside the church, there is a common opinion that Protestant Churches are more open for this kind of approaches related to homosexuality.

But this is almost a half-truth, if we consider the situation developed in the Anglican Church. Although, as we said earlier, there are declared homosexuals inside the clergy, the Anglican Church is on the verge of fracture its body after the acceptance by US Anglican Churches of gay bishops and gay marriages.

In a statement called ‘The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today, A Reflection for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion’ (see the entire source here), followed by a letter sent also to media, Archbishop of Canterbury tries to hold on the unity of the Anglican Church after the Windsor Report and the Anglican Communion at the 75th General Convention of The Episcopal Church (USA) fired up a great debate on the future of the Anglican Church.

In his letter to the primates, Archbishop of Canterbury does not simply address the arguments supported by the above documents, but tries to warn against the problems that might arise from this in the absence of a more considered thinking. First of all, he appeals to the Anglican way of decision-making. Starting from this, the entire process of dealing with a concern of general interest was by-passed inside the Anglican Church in US. This ecclesiological argument sends us to the theological level, where the Church responds with a social debate and consultation over one issue, not simply avoiding this basic process by appointing a practicing gay bishop.

This history has two or three years more to its age, because in 2003 the same Archbishop of Canterbury stated that American Anglicans will be refused communion with the others if they accept the ordination of gay Bishops. The 'scandal' at the time was that American Anglicans accused the English of bigotry and of denying rights for a sexual minority. These are cultural, secular argument, denounced now by Archbishop Williams as 'costly acts'.

The directions to be taken can be described as two forms of split between the conservative part and the liberal part of the Anglican Church. Thus, those churches that follow the conservative style, regardless of what shore of the Atlantic they are situated on, will limit their own freedom, so as to give the possibility of other Anglican communities to express themselves. But of course, this would mean inside the Anglican Community of Churches there will be 'constituent' Churches and 'associated' Churches, the situation resembling very much the relation between the Church of England and the Methodist Church. The letter ends with a phrase worth quoting in full: "There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment".

This last phrase is seen as a major step towards schism. As New York Times reports, there are already 22 out of 38 provinces declared their ties with the American Anglicans "broken" .

Great problems are doomed to occur. Already there are legal debates over the Church properties and finances, the Anglican Church having over 77 million members. Also, accusations towards the American Anglican Church are already manifested, because the conservative party in US contacted dioceses in Africa and Asia to strengthen its position.

The conclusion is simple, now there are two Churches under the same roof and name. Time will tell how much will differ those two in time.

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