The via media underlies Anglicanism's notable comprehensiveness, holding within one communion parties of more catholic and more evangelical temper. Critics within and outside the tradition have questioned whether the middle way is a coherent theological position or a practical accommodation, and the breadth it permits has at times produced internal strain.
As a self-understanding, however, it distinguishes Anglican identity from traditions that define themselves by a single confessional stance, and it shapes the tradition's liturgical, sacramental, and pastoral character. The comprehensiveness the via media permits has been strained in recent decades over issues of sexuality and biblical authority.
The 2003 consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as an Episcopal bishop in the United States precipitated the formation in 2008 of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), a movement of conservative bishops and provinces, chiefly across Africa and parts of Asia, who argue that the Anglican Communion's leadership has abandoned scriptural authority and who have in some cases declared themselves out of communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Proponents of the historic via media argue such ruptures show the tradition's breadth stretched past its working limit, while others maintain that holding such disagreement within one communion, rather than resolving it by schism, is itself the middle way in practice.