The reviews and web reactions I've seen are largely superficial and driven by the particular set of blinkers that each "continuing Anglican" who reads it appears to be wearing. The book's story covers the movement from its roots in dissatisfaction with The Episcopal Church's drift toward wacky leftism in the 1960s, through 1999 -- it's significant that it stops before the election of openly gay TEC Bishop Eugene Robinson in 2003, the Portsmouth meeting and letter of 2007, the departure of five TEC dioceses to form the ACNA in 2009, and Anglicanorum coetibus and the erection of Anglican Ordinariates in 2009 and afterward. But as analysis, as I'll discuss below, it lets a reader put Portsmouth and the Ordinariates in context.
The book has another big, big context, which Bess doesn't dilly-dally about expressing:
[B]y the 1980s the sectarians were forced to confront a more disappointing reality. Their movement had not shaken the Episcopal Church to its knees, nor had it succeeded in gaining large numbers of adherents, since the total membership in the movement numbered [optimistically] in the tens of thousands, rather than the hundreds of thousands or millions, as had initially been hoped for.Bess bookends his history with a further assessment:
Most observers of the Continuum, whether inside or outside of it, have interpreted the movement in largely negative terms. The reaction of mainstream Episcopalians has been one of near total silence for more than two decades.As an active Episcopalian from about 1980 until my wife's and my decision to become Catholic by the best possible path in 2011, I can certainly corroborate that view. Indeed, most of the "continuers" of my acquaintance, clergy and lay, are now former "continuers" looking actively for a Plan B, who freely express the view that they've been had. Our Episcopalian friends have hardly noticed, other than to express sympathy with our parish's plight. I write here from the perspective of someone who (I think correctly) always thought the Continuum was faintly disreputable, who never seriously considered joining it, and who went into the St Mary's parish only when it was in the Patrimony of the Primate with the clear intention of becoming Catholic. Nevertheless, my wife and I were had as well.
The organizational history that Bess covers, it seems to me, has two chief strains. One is the Anglican Catholic Church, the main official body that resulted from the 1977 St Louis conference, and its quasi-ecumenical dance with the pre-St Louis American Episcopal Church, which lasted until the partial merger of the two in 1991 to form the Anglican Church in America and the subsequent Traditional Anglican Communion. The other strain covers all the other continuing bodies, including the rump ACC. Naturally, the strain that interests me is the ACC-AEC-ACA-TAC evolution. Louis Falk is a major figure throughout that history, and he appears as such in Bess's book. As a result, I'll have still more to say about Falk here, especially in light of what we know about him now. However, I very much doubt now that the ACA or the TAC will outlive Falk by much, if at all.
The history of Falk, the ACC, and the ACA also sheds light on the Portsmouth letter, and again, what we now know about Falk gives a new perspective on what happened there, what Falk and Hepworth may have intended, what they actually got from the Vatican, and how they reacted. Portsmouth, it seems to me, is simply a culmination of other quasi-ecumenical conferences post-St Louis, ranging from the 1981 Spartanburg meeting, the ACC-AEC dialogues of the 1980s, the 1991 Deerfield Beach meeting, and the subsequent purge of the AEC's Anthony Clavier from the merged ACA, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Night of the Long Knives.
Handsome is as handsome does. A leopard doesn't change its spots. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Stay tuned!
