I found your post in the trackback from Fr. Stephen's site.
I was raised in the Episcopal Church, the lower diocese of SC. Although I'm no longer a member of the Episcopal Church, I still have an affection for it.
You said, "But the not-at-all subtle subtext of the ex-Anglicans seems to be to definitively put the Episcopal Church in particular outside the church; the principle of the moment would appear to be, 'where I came from, there is not the church.'" While I'm new to Fr. Stephen's site, I did pick up somewhere that he is an ex-Anglican. But even with my Anglican and Evangelical background, I did not sense Fr. Stephen's remarks are directed more at Anglicans than anyone else outside the Orthodox Church.
Is there something I've missed that focuses Fr. Stephen's remarks at Anglicans?
Perhaps it is just me inserting a lot of subtext, but the particular concentration on Protestants tends to point back at the Anglicans, who, after all, are the Protestant Catholics. It's more my sense that ex-Anglicans, and especially ex-Anglican clerics, seem to have an extraordinary focus on ecclesiology.
Though there is a LOT of ecclesiological craziness in Orthodoxy, much more than you would gather here. The mainline of Orthodoxy is much more congenial to Anglicans than you would ever guess by reading blogs and internet fora. But there is this whole background of separatist bodies behind it, and one very commonly sees people skipping from one True Church to another. The crazy parts of Orthodoxy are MUCH crazier than the crazy parts of Anglicanism or Catholicism, and the craziness there almost always revolves around ecclesiology. There is some distress now that ROCOR/ROCA is finally, after many, many decades, moving towards reunion with the Moscow patriarchate-- because a lot of people are invested in ROCOR as the surviving True Church.
Interesting remarks, thank you. Ecclesiology is indeed a question that Anglican priests have to come to grips with if they are converting to Orthodoxy (I cannot speak of the Roman experience), because when being received into the Church, Anglicans specifically have to renounce the "Branch Theory" as heresy. The exact character of my holy orders was never really addressed (no definitive position taken) although it was necessary for me to submit to "re-ordination" to both diaconate and priesthood. I never took this as someone denying what I had been, nor even asking me to deny anything about it. In hindsight I do not think that the bread and wine of the Eucharist ever became other than the Body and Blood of Christ at the liturgy, even when I was an Anglican. That, at least, was my faith and no one asked me to deny that.
Problematic was that it was not in communion with the fullness of the Orthodox Church. Thus the question would be: "Why Anglican and not Orthodox? Since the Anglican Church clearly rejected much of Orthodox doctrine, in practice as well as in theory." I was brought into Anglicanism with the understanding that "this is the Orthodox Church of the West." I came to believe that it was not.
I no where wrote or write that non-Orthodox are not Christians. I specifically said that anyone who claims Christ as Savior is a Christian.
Church, I started from the beginning, is a problem. And I do not think it is an easy problem. I noted in comments if not in the body of the post that none of us created the situation in which we were born. It's a big mess out there and I have nothing but sympathy for anyone who is working with the mess. Ecclesiology is a real question and must be dealt with seriously, but not with facile arguments of the invisibility of the Church (that solves everything way too easily).
Anglicanism itself is perhaps just now coming to grips with ecclesiology for the first time. It will be interesting to see how things shake out. I think its a very good discussion for Anglicans to be having. I suspect that good solid ecclesiological answers will help their conversations with both Rome and the Orthodox if that should come about again.
But tell me, where have I denied the reality of any of my former life and orders or ever said that I was not a Christian before. I never have and never will. If something I have said implied that, then I should correct it.
Much of the time, when it comes to these hard questions, I find it difficult to get a straight answer out of Orthodoxy as a whole. On this question, often enough, I get an emphatically Cyprianic answer: that there are no sacraments outside the (Orthodox) Church. Perhaps you would prefer not to make such a claim, but if it be made, and the boundary of the church be drawn between the East and the Anglicans, the conclusion is impossible to avoid.
I don't think it's ecclesiology we are being made to come to grips with, so much as it is the limits of latitudinarianism. We are finding that we are having to draw lines against our nature. And that sure is a problem, but it doesn't have to be interpreted as an ecclesiological problem. No individual below a bishop has to confront ecclesiology in terms of who is out; they only need have enough confidence that they are in. It is only polities who have to deal with the boundary drawing, and even then, it isn't necessary to equate the lines of division with the boundaries of the church.
I do not think that church is an easy problem. It is an insoluble problem.
I think the converts have a two pronged approach that makes them fall in to this.
A. They want to justify their actions to themselves.
B. They want to further justify their actions by having other people repeat them.
Some people get over it, and some do not.
Regarding Anglicanism, it seems clear that in the 20th century a good many Orthodox hierarchs and theologians thought we were very close to coming together, and frankly in my opinion how tragic it is that this didn't happen.
I will admit one of the things that really unsettled me personally in the ECUSA was an issue of ecclesiology.
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