Coming to Terms: Exploring the Dynamics of Our Differences

By likening Anglican comprehensiveness to quilt-making, this paper explores the potential for imagining Anglican identity in terms of complex, juxtaposed, and connected patterns. It suggests that four dimensions of the present tensions in the Anglican Communion might be illuminated by thinking like quilt-makers: (1) how to understand truth and approach ideological differences; (2) how to understand and deal with power; (3) what it might mean to give priority to practice; and (4) what is meant by community or solidarity. In broad strokes, the paper maps the terrain of the current differences by looking at these four dimensions. It concludes with some reflections about Incarnation as a characteristic theological principle of both Anglicans and quilt-makers.