The irreversible consequences of his fall were even easier to envisage once he was portrayed as an egg – in the manner of Lewis Carroll’s, Through the Looking- Glass of 1871, since an egg once broken so very obviously cannot be mended.
Is there a parallel fall in store for the world-wide Anglican Communion and will it be similarly irreparable? A seemingly ineluctable process of fragmentation does now seem to be underway and, if this fall from earlier unity is as deep as the current splits portend, it is highly doubtful just when the fulness of Communion could ever be restored. Since even when repair is attempted, the fear must be that the Anglican Communion will end up echoing, at a sadly deeper level, the ironic lines of John Betjeman – about the mere fabric of a church – that,
These pages have now carried three articles in successive editions setting out views as to how and why the rupture of the Anglican Communion is happening, two by Archbishop Emeritus Mouneer Anis and, in this edition, one by Samy Fawzi Shehata the present Archbishop of the Province of Alexandria. Both archbishops have been leading figures in the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) which brings together over half of the Provinces which have hitherto comprised the Anglican Communion, and which includes the member Provinces of the quite separate and previously more radical GAFCON group. (A full listing of member and non-member provinces of the GSFA is given below in Appendix I)
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