A letter to the London Guardian-
Dr Rowan Williams's characteristically long and ruminative piece on the Anglican schism, or, as he would have it, the futures of Anglicanism, leaves one quite obvious question unanswered: what difference will any of this make?
If the Anglican communion reinvents itself around a new set of committees, why should anyone care who just wants to go to church? Even without the issue of openly gay clergy, Anglicans already disagree about whether women can be priests; whether in fact priests are needed at all; whether union with Rome is desirable, or possible; which translations of the Bible to use; whether to baptise infants; whether God can be said to exist; whether the resurrection could have been filmed with a video camera … and many other questions, all of which on their own could split churches, and have done. You could probably find all these disagreements within any single congregation, too. The people in the pews are notorious for not believing what they officially believe. But the question isn't "Why split over gay clergy, rather than anything else?" The question is whether the split, all formal as it soon will be, will actually make any difference at all to churches in their parishes, and, if so, what.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/31/religion-anglicanism
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