Here is a good commentary from the TimesOnline (Longdon Times, that is) by Dr Geoffrey Rowell, the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe. (I found this on Kendall Harmons’ titusonenine, thanks!)
The dangers of unbalancing the ‘broad church’ of Anglicanism Credo
by Geoffrey Rowell
The Times January 28, 2006
A FEW weeks ago a European diplomat asked me to explain what was meant by saying that the Church of England was “a broad church”. As Anglican travellers know all too well, it is quite difficult to explain the identity of Anglicanism to many Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians with no experience of the Church of England. It is, we say, both Catholic and reformed, a Church that experienced the Reformation of the 16th century, yet was careful to maintain the historic threefold apostolic ministry of bishop, priest and deacon; a Church that in its orders of morning and evening prayer (matins and evensong) creatively continued the pattern of the old monastic daily offices, but adapted for congregations; and which retained not only the sacraments, but sacramental signs like the ring in marriage and the sign of the cross in baptism.
If there was concern for reformation, there was also concern for continuity, and it was the faith and order of the early centuries of the Church that were looked to as the benchmark of the English Reformation. Later medieval patterns of worship and practice were tested against the practice of the undivided church of east and west and early apologists for the Church of England emphasised that the English Reformation was a reformation by tradition.
As the genius of the Church of England grew and developed within the broad structure of its “reformed Catholicism” there was room for those with different theological emphases. So the Church of England accommodated groups with differing expressions of worship and different theologies, often co-existing happily, sometimes fighting battles to push at the boundaries.

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