Phillip Jensen on the Anglican family

http://acl.asn.au/phillip-jensen-anglican-family/#more-894

[Anglican Church League] 21 Jun 2008--You can’t split a marshmallow. You can melt it. You can even cut it. But, marshmallows are too malleable to be split. Something has to be brittle to split.
So there will be no split in Anglicanism. It is just not the kind of thing that is open to splitting.

The heat of the society in which we operate may melt us. Outside forces can even cut into us. But we have no mechanism to split even if we had the desire to do so.

Here is the strange strength and weakness of Anglicanism. Having resisted the tyranny of Roman rule, Anglicanism could not replace it with Lambeth rule. Thus each national church is free to follow the Lord Jesus in their own culture.

Anglicanism has expanded and developed in much the same way as a family. Over generations we have gradually changed and drifted away from each other. Cousins know that they are related but have never met. Second, third and fourth cousins do not share the same culture or even speak the same language. They do not even recognise each other as relatives. It is not that families split – they just grow apart.