Does being Anglican entail "a painful degree of complexity"?

[O]ne thing that becoming an RC resolves is a painful degree of complexity, about theology, authority, and belonging, which the C of E is incapable of solving because it goes to the heart of what it is ... Being a Anglican is a vocation, and living with complexity is a large part of what that means.

So said Angela Tilby's Church Times column following the decision of Bishop Jonathan Goodall (of The Society) to abandon Anglicanism for Rome.  I find this to be a rather odd view.  After all, Anglican converts to Rome have to embrace - rather than reject - "a painful degree of complexity": about their past sacramental life; if ordained, about the orders they received; and years of affirming that they were fully members of the Church Catholic. As Caroline Moore - wife of journalist Charles Moore, a former Anglican who became a Roman Catholic - memorably stated, "It shot in upon me, with terrible force, that I could not join a church that taught that George Herbert was no true priest".

This is not to deny a diversity within Anglicanism.  This diversity, however, is hardly a recent feature.  It is not as if it is a virus newly-introduced to Anglicanism, an unpleasant surprise catching us unawares.  It has been inherent to the Anglican experience over centuries, built into our polity and our piety. In the Elizabeth, Jacobean, and Caroline Church, it was seen in the contrast between the preaching and theology of Lancelot Andrewes and John Davenant.  It was seen in the contrast between the liturgical styles of some cathedrals and the Chapel Royal alongside the liturgy of the average parish church: copes, chant, and altar in one, in the other plain surplice, metrical psalms, and communion table in the chancel.  In the 18th century, it meant the distinctly Low Church preaching of Hoadly and Clarke existing alongside the High Church orthodoxy present in the pulpits of Waterland and Secker.

But is this not the complexity to which Angela Tilby refers? I think the answer must be 'no' because the alternatives carry with them much greater complexities.  The use of ecclesial power to stamp out theological and liturgical diversities in order to impose a tighter uniformity of doctrine and practice can result, as Hooker warned, in the Church being distracted from the Christological centre: 

This is the error of all popish definitions that hitherto have been brought. They define not the Church by that which the Church essentially is, but by that wherein they imagine their own more perfect than the rest are (LEP V.68.6)

What is more, Hooker also alerts us to how this requires the Church to unwisely seek to make windows into the heart:

imposing upon the Church a burden to enter further into men's hearts and to make a deeper search of their consciences than any Law of God or reason of man enforceth (V.68.9).

Much greater and more troublesome complexity arises, therefore, when latitude and comprehension are denied in pursuit of uniformity and sectarianism.

It was a commitment to latitude and comprehension, and a determination to not go beyond how "God's promises ... be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture", which found expression in the declarations of James I and Charles I amidst the heated controversies over predestination. The complexity of allowing differing views on predestination to co-exist within the Church of England was much less complex than any attempt to enforce doctrinal uniformity.  James I's directions to preachers prohibited attempts to foster uniformity from the pulpit precisely because of how such calls undermined the Church's peace:

That no preacher of what title soever under the degree of a bishop, or dean at the least, do from henceforth presume to preach in any popular auditory the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation or of the universality, efficacity, resistibility or irresistibility of God's grace.

Similarly, Charles I's Declaration recognised that latitude on this matter of doctrine was significantly less complex than imposing uniformity:

That therefore in these both curious and unhappy differences, which have for so many hundred years, in different times and places, exercised the Church of Christ, We will, that all further curious search be laid aside, and these disputes shut up in God's promises.

Both those who supported and those who opposed Dort could subscribe to Article 17, as Charles stated: "yet We take comfort in this, that all Clergymen within Our Realm have always most willingly subscribed to the Articles established". Beyond this, nothing more was required and latitude was granted.  This understanding persisted, with the High Church Bishop Horsley declaring in a Charge of 1800:

I know not what hinders but that the highest Supralapsarian Calvinist may be as good a churchman as an Arminian; and if the Church of England in her moderation opens her arms to both, neither can with a very good grace desire that the other should be excluded.

In other words, living with contrasting, even opposing, doctrinal commitments on such a soteriologically significant matter is not new to Anglican experience. Alternatives - such as that defined by Dort and the rejected Lambeth Articles - result in theological, philosophical, and pastoral complexities far exceeding any complexity associated with latitude and comprehension.

As already suggested, there was also latitude on liturgical matters in the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline Church and this too persisted.  As F.C. Mather indicated in his study of Georgian churchmanship, "Laudian or Caroline ceremonies" such as bowing to the altar and at the Lord's Name were routine in some places, absent in others.  In some places, clergy carefully followed the rubric directing the use of the Athanasian Creed, in others set it aside.  Daily services and observance of holy days were maintained in some places, but was not elsewhere.  

Again, it is the alternative which produces complexity, the attempt to enforce an extensive uniformity in liturgy and ceremonies, rather than keeping "the mean between the two extremes, of too much stiffness in refusing, and of too much easiness in admitting any variation from it". Admittedly contemporary Church of England practice, in which Westminster Directory-like worship exists alongside use of the Roman Missal, is a nonsense, but in most CofE parishes and in wider contemporary Anglican use of authorised and common liturgical texts remains normative, coherent, and identifiable.  The complexity which can be associated with this is nothing compared to the implications of Traditionis custodes.  

As C.S. Lewis reminds us, the complexities that come with the alternatives are rather profound:

It takes all sorts to make a world; or a church. This may be even truer of a church. If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them, and heaven will display far more variety than hell. "One fold" doesn't mean "one pool". Cultivated roses and daffodils are no more alike than wild roses and daffodils. What pleased me most about a Greek Orthodox mass I once attended was that there seemed to be no prescribed behaviour for the congregation. Some stood, some knelt, some sat, some walked; one crawled about the floor like a caterpillar. And the beauty of it was that nobody took the slightest notice of what anyone else was doing. I wish we Anglicans would follow their example. One meets people who are perturbed because someone in the next pew does, or does not, cross himself. They oughtn't even to have seen, let alone censured. "Who art thou that judgest Another's servant?"

So, no, being an Anglican does not entail living with a greater degree of complexity than is found in any other Christian tradition. The supposed weaknesses that might lead an Anglican to Rome - too much diversity, too little coherence, not enough clarity - have much less complexity about them than the answer provided by the Bishop of Rome's claims to full, immediate, and universal ordinary jurisdiction. Nor is Anglican complexity any less than that associated with Geneva or Constantinople.  If we do wish to identify what is particular to the Anglican vocation, it is not "a painful degree of complexity".