The Anglican church (known as the Episcopal church in the US) began as just another variation of the Roman Catholic Church, but over the centuries it has become a denomination in its own right. One of its chief characteristics is its inclusiveness: it is reluctant to exclude anyone from the Anglican congregation. And this means that the Anglican church carries within its openness the seeds of its own destruction. For if it is open to just about anyone, no matter what their way of life, then ultimately what the Anglican church believes at its core will sooner or later be called into question. This imminent danger can be seen in the recent debates in Anglicanism about female ordination and gay and lesbian rights.

It's for precisely this reason that most denominations and most religions define carefully what the member must believe and not believe, should do and not do. And it's also the reason that the meditative tradition in most religions will tend to be a fringe tradition at best, and frowned upon in a number of cases. For meditation, practiced with a sincerely open mind, is open-ended in a manner analogous to Anglicanism; and that is why even those faiths which permit meditation tend to place restrictions upon its practice so that it is not open-ended, for otherwise its practitioners may end up believing something at variance with their respective religions.

For those of us with religious affiliations, the possible "open-endedness" of Step 11 meditation presents a challenge. To practice meditation as recommended by our own faith provides the comfort of remaining within the fold. But to practice open-ended meditation is to begin a journey to the place where we see that all religious faiths are based on the same spiritual truths; and that is a place where at one and the same time we find we are completely alone and completely at one with all other people.