A Neo-Anglican Convert to Orthodoxy

Edith Humphrey, a prominent speaker and laywoman within the neo-Anglican movement, has converted to Eastern Orthodoxy:

At the same time, I have wondered for several years about the possibility of our continuing together, given the foundational differences that we have in our understanding of the Church, of the sacraments, and of the place of tradition. Recent developments, including the continuing autonomy of AMIA within the proposed new Province, suggestions that we can continue in parallel with TEC, Primatial statements that expressed satisfaction with the last Primates’ meeting when it seems to contradict GAFCON, and continued attention to pragmatics rather than to the nature of the Church have been very problematic, in my view. All the while, I have been drawn for some time in a compelling manner towards the Eastern Christian tradition, and have gained deep appreciation for its apostolic claims, its ancient theologians, its healing disciplines, its sacramental spirituality and its rich liturgical tradition. Despite my temptation to stay and fight for the Anglican way, it seems clear to me now that I must go where the Lord is directing me.

This eloquent and graceful testimony explaining the reason for her conversion to the Orthodox Church bears witness in a fresh and poignant way to our absolute need to recover the patrimony, apostolic, patristic and conciliar, of Catholic Anglicanism.

It has been some time since I have read in the blogosphere a more succinct description of what orthodox Anglicanism should look like, to what it should aspire and attend, and what is in fact the proper and acute vocation of the Continuing Anglican Church.

The Internet Monk has prophesied that evangelical conversions to the historic Apostolic Churches are part of the wave of the future.

Catholic Anglicanism, we insist with vigor and a sense of urgency, is Anglicanism fulfilled, Anglicanism completed, the Anglicanism to which the Ecclesia Anglicana has always tended and in which she is truly vivified and embodied.

Doctrinal Anglo-Catholicism is not just a party or group within Anglicanism: she is the Church in her full being, plene esse.

Does not Catholic Anglicanism place the nature of the Church and Sacraments and the role of Sacred Tradition at the centre of her ecclesial life? Does she not also have apostolic claims, ancient theologians, healing disciplines, sacramental spirituality and a rich liturgical tradition? Indeed she has all of these and more - and so we are rightly pressed to bring to the fore once again who we are and what we are... positively and energetically.

Catholic Anglicanism will never entirely fulfill her destiny so long as she focusses on what she does not believe and fails to express with contagious joy and unmistakable lucidity what she actually does believe. The call remains before us to be the Church and to be authentically Anglican and Catholic...