Observations at the halfway point

One of the things that I've been very interested in this week, is the question of "What does it mean to be Anglican?"

This has come up throughout the week in one way or another in many fora. There are quite a few ways to answer it:
- Anglican means people in fellowship with Canterbury
- Anglican means people who use the prayer book as the basis for worship
- Anglican means people who have a particular system of episcopal government
- Anglican means people who subscribe to the historic creeds and documents of Anglicanism such as the 39 articles
- Anglican means people who see the vernacular word and sacraments as central to their life together

Probably we can all relate to at some bits of all those definitions. The more time I've spent here the more I think that it is important to use the historical bases of Anglicanism to guide our Anglican identity. I hope that this will be reflected in the statement that eventually comes out of GAFCON. I think we need to see this meeting as the start of a movement to reclaim and revive the understandings of the gospel and the church that motivated the founders of the Anglican church.