Would There Still be Anglicanism if the Anglican Communion Suddenly Disappeared?

"In one particularly lively exchange with a group of Episcopal bishops....I posed the question: "Would there still be Anglicanism if the Anglican Communion suddenly disappeared?"

"They answered, "of course." "

"Then, we began to talk about how Anglicanism existed before the Anglican Communion (1874), before the Episcopal Church (1786), before the Church of England (1534), and even before Catholic Christianity came to England (606). As the bishops delved into their own history, they insisted that a form of Christianity recognizably Anglican had existed since the 400s, mostly in [the] Celtic tribes [of the British Isles]."

"Anglicanism was not an organization, it was a lived tradition and a commitment to particular spiritual practices, nimbly adjusting to innumerable cultures while remaining connected to its original spiritual impulses through history."
Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us, p. 10

Amen!

To which I add (reading more of Bass' book, and borrowing from it):

• Nor is Anglicanism an inflexible, change-resisting, walled-in village filled with people who do not want to see the "signs of the times".
• Nor is Anglicanism about allowing the exclusivist domination of one vision of its history over all other visions, including "new-old" ones.
• Nor is Anglicanism a form of faith allowing witch-hunts, moral certainties, prohibitions, and narrow purist theology to dominate the broad sweep of its inclusive, love-filled vision.