Moderate evangelicals are also upset at the vituperation of the current arguments in the church :: Spero News

Quoting:

Amid confusion about who will play a role at the global Anglican Primates meeting in Tanzania this week – with reports that even the evangelical Dr John Sentamu is unacceptable to hardliners gathered around Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola – a UK-based broad church organization has declared “Enough is Enough”.
...
Speaking at the launch of a fundraising initiative for “the Anglican centre”, the Bishop of Salisbury, Dr David Stancliffe, said: “I live by the catholic conviction that the whole is bigger than the sum of the parts. I welcome this campaign to reinvigorate and encourage the broad centre of the Church of England.”
...
an ‘open letter’ has been sent to the Archbishops of Canterbury, York, Wales and Armagh on behalf of a 500-strong Anglican clergy organization, the Society of Catholic Priests, calling on them to refrain from action against the Episcopal Church of the USA.

The letter warns the leaders of the Anglican Communion not to treat TEC/ECUSA as the source of all the problems in the church. Instead, the Rev Jonathan Clark, who heads up SCP, asks the Primates to recognise that “fractures within the Communion run not between but through provinces, dioceses and parishes.”
...
Moderate evangelicals are also upset at the vituperation of the current arguments in the church. Fulcrum (“renewing the evangelical centre”) is among those who are seeking to maintain dialogue while holding on to their biblical and Reformed principles.

Confessed centrist :: fatherjones.com, Anglican Centrist

The opening:

With the election of the Very Rev. Shannon Johnston as bishop coadjutor in Virginia, many have been commenting in the blogosphere and old media about his being a 'centrist.' Some are saying, 'But what does that really mean?' Some commentators wonder: "Isn't a centrist just somebody who can't make up his mind?" And the answer is no.

Bottomline:

In my humble opinion, the Anglican Centrists of the world are more tolerant of difference than those on the radical left and right, we really aren't as polarizing and black/white as they are. It is simple as that. We recognize that this kind of dynamic tension between opposing ideas is in fact the place in which we understand the truth to emerge most often. And because of this, we don't want to allow the balance to come unglued and fall out of dynamic tension -- and yet it is this very thing the far left and right are prepared to do now.

Read the whole thing.

A third way?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

How many considered themselves liberal Christians? A smattering of hands and a few cheers. Conservative? Louder claps and hoots. Then he asked: "How many of you wish there could be a third alternative?"

The room erupted with cheers. The host then introduced McLaren as a fellow pilgrim in search of the third alternative. The nondenominational evangelist —- labeled a "sage" for "emergent church," a growing theological movement aimed at a new generation —- was surprised by the response but says he understands it now.

"One of the reasons they cheered is their sense that the polarization between conservative and liberal, evangelical and mainline, left and right has gotten so extreme, it seems like a cartoon," he says. "People have this sense that we've lost our balance."

My emphasis. Link provided by titusonenine. Are they expressing a desire to be centrists?

Coadjutor-elect The Rev. Shannon Johnston :: WaPO

Quote:

The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia has picked its next leader, a 48-year-old Alabamian who says one of the most endearing qualities of his denomination, roiled by disagreements centering on homosexuality, is "our ability to 'agree to disagree' on issues, biblical and otherwise."
...
In a candidate questionnaire and in other comments about the role of gays and lesbians in the church, Johnston has been vague, if centrist. In a 2005 article posted on his church's Web site about the dispute, he wrote: "I insist that the answer will not come from one of the two 'sides' but rather will be found in the Center."

In the candidate questionnaire, he also said he supported -- "with some reservations" -- a 2004 report by an Anglican commission that rebuked the U.S. church for ordaining a gay bishop and blessing same-sex unions and called for both practices to stop until some consensus emerges in the Communion, the second-largest church in the world.

The impressions of EpiscoSours are close to mine. EpiscoSours writes:

The Mediator. I continued to be won over by Fr. Johnston’s charm and humor and his solid understanding of what it means to be Anglican. My question to him was about the Windsor Report, which he understands as a process; I asked him what he expected the end result of that process to be in 5, or 10, or 20 years. He didn’t think that the process would or should last that long, that there would come a time when we would have to make progress in pastoral care for LGBT Episcopalians. I think he does have a goal, but he wants to get there in a theologically correct manner. I’m not certain if anyone else was reassured, but I was anyway.

But Fr. Johnston is a very calming presence, and this as well is what our diocese needs.

UPDATE: Jim Naughton (dailyepiscopalian) has much, much more about what it means to be a centrist in The Episcopal Church. Read the whole thing. Here is his bottomline:

It is easier for me to understand, and to converse with leading figures on the Anglican right like Kendall Harmon and Matt Kennedy than with those who think that sitting out this struggle is a transcendent moral act. Perhaps because it seems to me more Christian to argue with someone--see the Council of Jerusalem, or any Church council, for that matter--than to look down on them.

So, if anyone who identifies themselves as a centrist can explain their philosophy to me, I would appreciate it.

Especially if you are a candidate or nominee for bishop, perhaps? I'm not (though I'm eligible - you don't have to be ordained to be a bishop, you know). My guess is the answer is that centrists work towards consensus and value process as intrinsic whose we are. That doesn't mean the compromise their values if others stymie consensus or give them a veto, but they do try to bring everyone along, listen, and try to get us to the right place.

As an example, a centrist might say confirmation of Gene Robinson was wrong because we were not at consensus on issues of homosexuality. Centrists might ask some to wait for justice - just a while? - for the sake of the body.

Bishop Lee and New Coadjutor Agree on Vision of Big Tent Church :: The Living Church

Quote:

After electing the Very Rev. Shannon Johnston as Bishop Coadjutor of Virginia the day before, the annual council meeting mostly followed a path of genteel centrism in the resolutions it approved in the business portion. During a Jan. 27 press conference at the end of the two-day council meeting, Virginia Bishop Peter James Lee and Fr. Johnston shared a "big tent" vision of the diocese and The Episcopal Church.

Earlier in the day, delegates and visitors to the business portion heard Colonel Jean Reed, president of the standing committee report that it has declined to consent to the election of the Rev. Mark Lawrence as Bishop of South Carolina.

In a news conference afterward, Bishop Lee said that he, unlike the standing committee, had given consent to Fr. Lawrence’s election.

“My hope is that he will be confirmed as a sign that The Episcopal Church is a big tent, and that we have room for people of his theological convictions,” Bishop Lee said.

Fr. Johnston agreed with Bishop Lee regarding consent to Fr. Lawrence’s election, saying he was pleased to be part of the Mississippi standing committee’s decision to grant its consent.

After electing Fr. Johnston, who describes himself as a vocal centrist, the resolutions most likely to divide the council were softened into substitutes by committee, and the council approved most of them in nearly unanimous numbers.