What I did not want to find, in addition to obviously associated groups that seemed liberal catholic (not my interest), was a preponderance of groups of Anglicans involved in the lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transsexual way of life. There were many groups having the letters “LBGT”. I did not examine to see which might have been healing ministries, if any.

Also there were many groups of Anglicans devoted to being vegetarians which is not my personal issue. Other “Anglican” groups were devoted to being pro-choice, promoting the notion that Jesus is a pantheist, and that they are intellectuals. It seemed to me that the latter might be more concerned with what they think than with what God says. If that is an erroneous impression, I apologize. This batch of what I did not want seems to be purposely listing themselves singly (e.g by location even when associated) so that the Yahoo listing of Anglican groups is discouragingly long to search through.

With effort I did find several discussion groups that seem to be devoted to traditional, reformed catholic Anglicanism.

First, the ones of which I was already a member are BCPClassic (69 members), Barchester (25 members), and evangelicalanglican (66 members). These have the same moderator and many of the same members across groups.

The groups that I either just joined, or in which am awaiting approval of my membership, are Anglican_faith (8), Anglican_Prayer_Book (2 – I was the second), AnglicanContinuum (51), Anglicanism (41), AnglicanOnlineFellowship (80), anglicanqanda (33), Anglo-Evangelical (9), ApostasyDiscussion (321), classicalAnglican (33), co-anglican (74), Evangelical_Anglican_Fellowship (2 – I was the second), and Traditional-Anglicanism (2 –if accepted I’ll be the third). Later I may find that I want to unsubscribe to some of the groups I joined. I avoided groups that had obviously been attacked by spam advertising and might therefore be defunct though still listed by Yahoo Groups.

What I have just described may make for interesting email discussion, but it is also symptomatic of a problem. It seems that several groups are springing up to accomplish the same thing (getting traditional Anglicans connected with each other) without being aware that the other groups already exist. The pattern seems to duplicate the disunited pattern among the Anglican jurisdictions! What to do?! And I saw some of the same names in membership in my newly joined groups as in the groups I already participate in. We all, clergy and especially laity, seem to be seeking more Anglican Christian nurture in fellowship with the like-minded and the like-believing but not quite finding it.

Maybe if members of each group talked about what was being discussed in the other groups – considered unethical by moderators of some of the unpublic groups, and perhaps they have good reasons – they could agree to conglomerate in one or two groups and phase out the surplus groups. I didn’t expect to see so much duplication of groups paralleling the multiplication of jurisdictions. Could the solution be the same? Non-covert communication followed by unification.

Come on in! People who have time and are interested in this sort of contact with fellow Anglicans are encouraged – by me as well as by the group owners/moderators – to read the descriptions and join in good faith and honesty, not for sabotage. It is not likely to hurt – usually it is fun as well as interesting, and perhaps we can be constructive toward Anglican unity or at least toward relieving this symptom of a multitude of possibly and apparently redundant discussion groups on Yahoo.

---Irene Teas does volunteer work for the Prayer Book Society