In an 1862 message to Congress during the American Civil War Abraham Lincoln warned "the dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion," writes Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent.
He continued "as our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthral ourselves . . . we cannot escape history." They would "nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth".
You might say that last week the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, attempted "nobly" to save the unity of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
His proposal, after lengthy reflection, that a new structure be established whereby churches in disagreement with others in the communion become "associated" churches, with the rest remaining "constituent" churches, was a last attempt at preventing outright schism.
The approach may be subtle as the man's mind, but it was also something of a very last hope in preventing what now seems an inevitable split within the Anglican Communion.
Already it seems he has not been successful. The Americans have now seen to that too.
For within worldwide Anglicanism it is now the case, as Irish Anglican WB Yeats observed of his own time, "things fall apart; the centre cannot hold . . . the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity".
This current convulsion was precipitated by Lincoln's fellow Americans who, apparently, having picked up the unhappy habit of unilateralism from their current administration, went ahead with the installation of an actively gay man as bishop of New Hampshire in November 2003 despite a warning that to do so would be to precipitate the greatest crisis in Anglicanism since the Reformation.
Bishop Gene Robinson's homosexuality was no longer the issue anymore. The crisis was about and remains about unilateralism - the breaking with an Anglican tradition of consensus in decision making.
But, as Archbishop Williams candidly acknowledged in his reflection, "The challenge and hope of being Anglican today: a reflection for the bishops, clergy, and faithful of the Anglican Communion", all has changed utterly.
"There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment. Neither the liberal nor the conservative can simply appeal to a historic identity that doesn't correspond with where we now are."
There is no way the Anglican Communion will remain unchanged by what has and is happening. It is increasingly likely that the greater part of the US Episcopal Church is determined to become semi-detached, at the very least, from the mainstream Anglican Communion.
Last month the US Episcopal house of deputies, made up of more than 800 lay leaders and clergy, (the US Episcopal Church has 2.3 million members) decided at a meeting in Columbus, Ohio, not to agree to a request for a temporary ban on gay bishops.
That request was made in a recommendation by the Windsor Report, published in 2004 and prepared under a committee chaired by Church of Ireland primate Archbishop Robin Eames. It was set up at Lambeth in 2003, following the election of Canon Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire.
Bishop Robinson remains the only gay Episcopal bishop in the US, but last May two gay men and a lesbian were among six finalists to become bishop of a San Francisco diocese.
Last month the newly elected leader of the US Episcopal Church and the first woman to hold the post, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, said she believed homosexuality was not a sin and that homosexuals were created by God to love people of the same gender.
She said: "I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us."
She added that "some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender."
Her comments and election were seen as certain to exacerbate splits within the Episcopal Church. Already many dioceses and parishes are threatening to break away.
Her election, as a woman bishop, seems likely also to widen even further divisions with other Anglican churches, including the Church of England, which does not allow women bishops.
In the worldwide Anglican Communion there are women bishops only in Canada, the US, and New Zealand.
Women bishops do not exist so far in the Church of Ireland, though they are permitted.
Then last Wednesday, the day after Archbishop Williams published his reflection, three conservative US Episcopal dioceses asked to be released from the authority of the US Episcopal Church's presiding bishop.
They cited differences over the ordination of gay bishops but were also probably anticipating Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori taking over in November.
The three dioceses are San Joaquin in California, South Carolina and Pittsburgh. They voted to ask Archbishop Williams to place them under someone else's jurisdiction.
They also felt that Archbishop Williams's proposal of a two-tier structure within the Anglican Communion could push the US Episcopal Church to the fringes of Anglicanism on matters of human sexuality and interpretations of scripture.
The archbishop's proposal showed how Anglicanism had divided into "two bodies within our Church", as Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh said. "They do make clear here in Pittsburgh and to the rest of the communion with which body in the Episcopal Church we stand," he added.
Some individual US Episcopal churches have already opted to operate under the authority of dioceses in Africa but this was the first time entire dioceses have asked to break away.
Meanwhile, on the liberal wing of the US Episcopal Church the diocese of Newark announced, also on Wednesday, that its nominees for bishop included a non-celibate homosexual man living with his male partner.
Spokeswoman for American Anglican Council Cynthia Brust described the announcement as "staggering - way beyond defiance".
Anglicanism, as Seán O'Casey, another great Irishman of that persuasion, wrote in a different context is in "a state of chassis".