The thing that shouts out at me from “Road to Lambeth Gets Rockier" [TLC, Dec. 41] is the incredible hubris and enmity of Archbishop Peter Akinola, Bishop Robert Duncan, and the so-called Anglican Communion Network (ACN). The animosity and arrogance make it difficult for me to believe that their words come from a good place. Indeed, I have the same difficulty with Akinola, Duncan and the ACN on the right that I have with Bishop John Spong on the left; namely, that Bishop Spong has no didgeridoo — no resonating bass sound of “deep calling to deep.” All I hear is a high-pitched, shrill anger and arrogance.

The ACN and its ilk seem obsessed with claiming to be the “true” Anglicans. But no legitimate historian will ever ignore the Episcopal Church as the immediate antecedent of any of these dissident groups. Their origin will always be determined to have been in the coalescing of angry Episcopalians.

“Realignment” is merely a propagandistic euphemism. Regardless of what they call themselves, they will never be Anglican, nor will the Episcopal Church ever cease to be Anglican even if denied the fellowship of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the simple reason that to be a true Anglican, or Baptist, or Quaker, or Roman Catholic, or true member of any other denomination is to be shaped and formed by the ethos of a particular group.

The ACN has shown in various ways, such as including the fundamentalist pastor Rick Warren as one of its presenters and definers, that it has more in common with modern conservative American protestantism than it has with historic Anglicanism. It is the eristic and legalistic spirit of American evangelicalism/fundamentalism that informs and defines groups like the ACN, not the Anglican spirit expressed in a commitment to reason, tradition and scripture. (The Rev.) Lawrence Hart Conifer, Colo.