I certainly understand what you are saying and believe what you have said to be true. Think about the implications of your comments. Episcopalians have been content to focus on the goings on of their own parish with little or no concern for the very different goings on, I assume either theological or liturgical, in the parish across town. To an Orthodox person, this is astonishing. We are and always have been intensely aware of the the goings on in the wider Church. Even in the ancient Church, every chrismated Christian felt an intense obligation to be informed of The Faith and to defend orthodoxy of both The Faith and its praxis everywhere. There are famous stories of travelers bringing back to the seat of a bishop or metropolitan or even patriarch stories of some heterodox practice having developed somewhere. With surprising speed given the times and the difficulties of communication, the local hierarch would be informed and the heterodox opinion or practice supressed. Of course, at other times heresy took root and it took decades to root it out, but that was usually on account of a heretical emperor supporting the heresy. Condemnation of the heresy, the proclamation of Anathema, was almost instantaneous. +Mark of Ephesus' efforts to overthrow the False Union of Florence in 1453 took almost no time at all, despite the fact that the Eastern hierarchy, except St. Mark, had accepted the same as had the Imperial government. +Mark rallied the lower clergy and the people, who took up the cry "Better the Sultan's turban than the Pope's mitre" and that, in short order, was that.
Orthodoxy has preserved The Faith precisely because we all, clergy, hierarchy and laity, serve as an orthodox theological and liturgical check on each other. I suppose we could be accused of being a Church composed of Torquemadas, but maybe that's a justifiable appellation. I've seen lower clergy and laity condemn an Archbishop, an Ethnarc, as un-Orthodox to his face in a diocesan council; within a few months, the Archbishop was gone, finished as an Orthodox hierarch though his support had been both broad and deep...and wrong. Neither the laity, nor the clergy nor his fellow hierarchs would remain in communion with him. His "superior", a Patriarch, faced the same threat had he not acted.
Is it possible that the insular nature of Episcopalian parishes is rooted in those compromises the Anglican Church made early in its history to accomodate heterodox belief and practice in the interests of political peace in England? If so, like virtually all the other compromises churches or ecclesial assemblies have made with the world, it has come back to bite ECUSA.
I think I might have mentioned somewhere along the way that in the early 1900s Orthodoxy and Anglicanism were very close and there was talk of a union of the two. Without much thought, Bishop St. Raphael of Brooklyn, the Orthodox hierarch in America at the time, issued an order allowing Orthodox people, in certain limited circumstances, to be ministered to by Episcopal priests. Apparently the Bishop was informed that his order was being either misrepresented or misinterpreted by Episcopal priests. In response he carefully reviewed Anglican theology, something apparently he hadn't done before and issued a new order reversing the first and resigning from the Anglican/Orthodox Union which had been established with an eye to uniting the Churches. His letter revoking the previous order is a good example of how Orthodoxy deals with heterodoxy. Here's a link:
http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/ecumenical/raphael_hawaweeny_episcopal_relations.htm
Kolokotronis, it's way too late in my day to give this proper answer, but I am thinking upon this.
By your Orthodox standards we Anglicans are still a new church and still finding our way. We do not have in our church your extensive Orthodox history of the introduction of heresies and your church's subsequent corrections. You say, "at other times heresy took root and it took decades to root it out" -- why do we Anglicans not get the same accord you accord your Orthodox forebears? If you all were so diligent, how did one or more heresies even take such a deep root? But what is clear is that the Orthodox have developed an "immune system" that works, and that is good. (And I, at least, am willing to learn.)
We Anglicans have not been down this road before, and though we have the guidance of your experience, some of our experience makes us slower to pull the trigger -- today. We (I am speaking for worldwide Anglicanism, and I'm not sure I am qualified to do so) are on new and unfamiliar ground.
I have no doubt but that if Anglicanism survives this crisis (and by survive I mean the world-wide Anglican Communion, because IMHO if it does not survive we will be little more than another Protestant sect), we will have new safeguards, new guidelines, a new immune system and faster (if not yet Orthodox-lightning-quick) triggers.
If Anglicanism doesn't survive... well, I will quit posting here. Because I won't be an Anglican anymore. Fair enough?