Underlying this is something that dawned on me last week with a renewed force. We have not yet got to the point where we can no longer recognise one another as seeking to obey the same Lord. To make a very simple point, common Bible study would not be possible if we did not see in one another at least some of the same habits of attention and devotion to Scripture, whatever the diversity of interpretation. We can see that the other person is trying to listen to God's self-communication in scripture, not just imposing an agenda. But this entails a more complex and challenging point. If we recognise this much, we have to recognise that the other person or community or tradition is not simply going to go away. They are near enough to be capable of conversation, shared prayer and shared discernment with us. They are not just going to be defeated and silenced. For the foreseeable future, they are going to be there, recognisably doing something like what we are doing. We can't pretend.

But we'd like to. All of us – and I do emphatically mean liberals as well as traditionalists – have a bit of us that is in love with purity, that wants to find in the other a perfect echo of ourselves and to be able to present to the world outside a united face, whether of clear commitments to the liberties and dignities of humanity as seen in the modern world or of unswerving fidelity to the faith delivered to the saints – or both, of course. But what are we to do in a world where people don't go away? where the Church of God overall is never going to be pure as we would want to define purity and we are always going to be embarrassed by the fact that we bear the same name as people whose views we don't own or approve to the extent that they follow the same patterns and habits of prayer and listening?

Anglicanism has always tacitly acknowledged this as a real issue – not because of an indifference to basic doctrinal integrity, a lazy belief that any formulation will do (the Creeds remain our touchstone, accepted as providing the authoritative framework in which we read Scripture), but because of a keen pragmatic awareness of the oddity and resilience of flesh and blood, the diversity of personal perception or reception of the common heritage, perhaps rooted in the commitment of our Church of England to be genuinely a church for this particular place and language and culture. Many feel that just this is what is now threatened from both ends of our current debates, whether on sexuality or on the role of ordained women.