I was talking with a friend the other day who is currently serving in an ACNA mission but who comes from the APA. His remark about ACNA was interesting. He noted that there is a huge segment of people in that province who, if it had not been for the consecration of Vicky Gene Robinison, would have happily remained Episcopalians. Their move out of TEc to ACNA, in his estimation, wasn't so much evidence of their being traditional Anglicans as it was of their being mere anti-gay bigots (his words). He went on to say that these peeople really have no clue as to what it means to be a traditional Anglican, or as to just what had happened to the Church of England and her spawn throughout the globe long, long before Robinson's consecration.
I've alluded here at OJC to what my friend is talking about, calling it the "Anglican Disease." What happened to Anglicanism, I maintain, is that both the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment worked in tandem to cut the CofE and her daughters loose from the Catholic faith, the former doing so by its preference for the academy over Catholic authority to settle theological questions, the latter doing so by its radical questioning of all traditional authority - which took place, again, mainly in Anglican academies. In this day and age even purported conservative Anglican theologians are not immune to the disease. Witness, for example, ACNA theologian William Witt's reference to "Ph.D Anglicanism" and "Reformation Christians" in his defense of the uncatholic monstrosity of women's ordination. Dr. Witt and too many like him in ACNA are examples of the phenomenon my friend was talking about. These people believe themselves to be conservative Anglicans, when nothing could be further from the truth. They are to Anglicanism what neo-conservativism is to the GOP. One perceptive writer at Touchstone calls them "latcons."