Ellis Brust, spokesman for the American Anglican Council claimed that the action had effectively taken the American and Canadian churches "to the woodshed." He further characterized the action as "a repudiation of the revisionist trends in North America and the upholding of biblical teaching and historical teaching of Anglicanism." One unnamed observer simply quipped: "The Primates have handed the North Americans a pearl-handled revolver."
The Reverend Dr. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian for the diocese of South Carolina and a well regarded Anglican figure, described the current controversy as "Anglicanism's greatest crisis since the Reformation." As he explained, "While the clash over sexuality makes the headlines, it is only the tip of the iceberg; underneath the debate about non-celibate same-sex relationships works the deeper issues of the authority and interpretation of scripture and the way authority is dispersed in the Church." North American liberals, he laments, "have embraced a new theology creating a third category of human existence other than single or married, and remain defiant in response to the calls of the Windsor Report." Looking toward the future, Reverend Harmon warns that a split in the Anglican Communion is "a risk that ought not to be minimized."
Liberals in the Anglican Communion were outraged by the Primates' action. Writing in The Observer, Will Hutton argued that the "genius of the Anglican Church has been the depth of its embedded tolerance." Expressing the most latitudinarian and broad-church concepts, Hutton argued that the Church of England and the Anglican Communion should "include and tolerate us all."
Hutton points to the growing influence of evangelicals in the Anglican Communion, blaming conservatives in Great Britain and North America, and Anglican bishops throughout Africa, for bringing the church to this point of crisis. Hutton sides with the liberals, and dismisses evangelical concerns as simply outmoded and oppressive. As Hutton sees it, Archbishop Rowan Williams should confront the conservatives and support the American and Canadian churches.
Dr. George Carey, Williams' immediate predecessor as Archbishop of Canterbury, told an American newspaper that he would prefer that the Anglican Communion would take a more "pragmatic" approach. Carey, identified as an evangelical upon election, disappointed conservatives during his tenure as head of the Anglican Communion, and his weak leadership largely opened the door for the chaos that his church now confronts.
That said, Carey's comments are particularly instructive--in all the wrong ways: "A more pragmatic approach would say at the moment it is clear [that] to ordain practicing homosexuals would divide the church greatly, so let's wait and see. In a way I take the pragmatic approach on this . . . we simply have to wait and see how the Holy Spirit is going to lead the Church in this . . . we must keep in step . . . otherwise we'll become just a small sect."
