The root problem is that Anglicans of all flavors have forgotten what it means to be Anglican: from the 17th century onward, the Church of England and its progeny found creative ways to finesse disagreements. Thus by the time of Barchester Towers there were high church, low church, and broad church factions that were able to coexist without schisms or purges. In the US Episcopal Church, there was an urban elite that looked the other way over unorthodox sexuality, as well as a country party that embraced low or broad church views and middle-American mores.
I recall an Episcopal adult forum discussion in the mid-2000s in which a priest made the point, valid at that immediate post-Robinson, pre-ACNA moment, that the disputes that led to the 1977 St Louis Affirmation were water under the bridge, nobody in TEC was having any second thoughts, the ordination of women and the 1979 prayer book were by then noncontroversial, and the breakaway denominations that resulted from it were small and shrinking. He felt that the election of Robinson and what it reflected about TEC's views on sexuality would, over time, be treated the same way.
As of 2012, that hasn't been the case. Four whole dioceses broke away in 2009 basically over Robinson, whose career by then was ending anyhow, and who would be replaced as Bishop of New Hampshire by an openly straight male. TEC then pushed a fifth diocese, South Carolina, out of the denomination in 2012, with an aggressive anti-conservative stance that could well affect other conservative dioceses. Somehow, TEC and the ACNA lost the point of Anglicanism along the way.
This hasn't been good policy for anyone. Insofar as TEC has had moral teachings at all -- I remember finding a tract in a narthex during the 1980s that emphasized that to be a good Episcopalian, you definitely had to feed your pets -- it has advocated only the widest possible public acceptance of sexuality other than straight monogamy, quietly abandoning pretty much everything else in the moral sphere. Since sexuality, whichever your preference but not minimizing its importance, is hardly the only segment of Christian moral thought, this is most peculiar.
We might say that the liberal elite urban-avant garde wing of Episcopalianism has triumphed, except that the J.P.Morgans are no longer endowing parishes or dioceses. For all I know, Bill Gates might be a Wiccan, and the Hollywood types who once supported St Mary of the Angels, now deceased, have been replaced by a generation of Scientologists. The Episcopal Diocese of Washington, whose see embraces a pinnacle of US wealthy society, is in financial free-fall. Whatever the effect on middle-Americans, current TEC policy has been fiscally counterproductive, in that the faction it most wishes to appease is also the faction that's stopped its pledges and bequests.
The other side of the coin, as I've suggested above, is that the scandals in the establishment have provided openings to charlatans, such as the current leadership of the ACA. But leaving aside the quacks, the reality is that the disputes among Anglicans simply mean that they're trying to divide an ever-shrinking pie into smaller and smaller pieces. As we've seen in the St Mary of the Angels case (and many, many others), not only is the pie shrinking, but more and more of it is going to unproductive use in legal fees.
The disputes among "continuing Anglicans" have themselves been highly contentious, with even the second ACNA (the first having dissolved in its own set of disputes) breaking into factions in the short time since its founding. The tiny "worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion", as we've seen, split into high church-low church factions and purged the high churchmen. Its remaining prelates are bitterly anti-Catholic -- but as we've seen, they're also quacks who shouldn't have the credibility the bloggers give them. If anyone ever thought that leaving The Episcopal Church was going to solve anything, they've long since been proven utterly misguided.
I don't see a good solution for Anglicanism.
