Fr. Jones has an interesting piece on the Federation of Anglican Chruches over on his blog. It seems that Abp. Haverland of the ACC has declared the people and churches associated with FACA to be "neo-Anglicans". His beef is primarily with the REC and the supposed "invalidity" of their orders (an issue that has been discussed many times on many blogs, and that I will not go into now), and the AMiA, which has female clergy "grandmothered" in (his words). I am not going to offer my own reflections on those remarks, as I believe Fr. Jones has done an excellent job addressing them.
What amazes me is that men like Haverland seem to want to snap their fingers and instantly have laity and clergy have uniform beliefs on every single issue, and have a unified province. He says, "We desire the highest possible level of cooperation and communion." But you don't get there overnight. Now, if he had a little bottle with "I Dream of Jeanie" inside of it, he could uncork the bottle, let her out, and have her fold her arms and move her head, and instantly bring a unified province about. But I don't think he has an "I Dream of Jeanie" bottle on his desk. So it's going to take a little longer to bring about unity. It takes little steps like this. It is easy to tear something down and destroy it; it is easy to divide (as the history of the ACC has shown over and over again). But it takes a long time to build something new. The great cathedrals of Europe took years to build - sometimes hundreds, but they could be destroyed in an hour or less. Let me put it another way: there will never be unity if we do not get together in a safe forum of goodwill and charity. The "North Korea"/isolationist approach to ecumenism - which certain jurisdictions have used over the years - really doesn't produce results. This is just plain old common sense. The Federation is a step in the right direction. It is not the "new united province" in its final form. The Federation allows us to work together in ways that we can work together now. Again, this is just common sense.
