>>15953889>I hoped Anglicans would just stick to catholic traditions except without the pope. But I guess politics seeped in at some point. I wonder if it has to do with the idea of replacing the vatican authority with that of state authority.It's simply because of British culture on these topics. The Church of England, being effectively the state church, can't afford to buck the trend on things like feminism or LGBT or else there will simply be too much outrage from the mass media and politicians who would ask "why is our established church so backwards?!" It being a state church means that even people who are atheist have some sort of stake in whatever they're saying and doing because it's seen that the wider country and monarchy are implicitly connected to it.
>I know there's some controversy and even some anglican parishes are breaking apart or trying to return to more catholic traditions.Not just that, but even among those who remain in the church, it's widely observed that conservative/evangelical parishes are growing while liberal/progressive ones are those that are going bust. It will be interesting to see how that affects the church's positions in coming decades.
Richard Coles, a somewhat famous ex-vicar who was also gay and married to a man, wrote about this a few months ago:
"As more parishes tip into unviability, the trouble for me is that the least viable are the ones I like most. The Church of England I love is a church of liberal sympathies, of broad inclusion, beautiful worship, wise preaching, dog-friendly with Fairtrade biscuits, and when it comes to orthodoxy would rather its members were not Goneril or Regan, proclaiming their zealous devotion, but Cordelia, confessing her love. The churches that are viable — by that I mean growing in numbers and income — tend to be conservative, punchy, fundamentalist in matters of scripture, rigorous in matters of doctrine, and about as likely to offer choral evensong as I am to do the 400m hurdles."
