Continuing Anglican Movement
The
Continuing Anglican Movement is a group of
Christian churches which follow the
Anglican tradition but which split from one or another
province of the
Anglican Communion because of its perceived rejection of orthodoxy. The movement originated in the
Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) and the
Anglican Church of Canada. Related churches in other countries, such as the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia and the Church of England (Continuing) were founded later. The issues which most contributed to the founding of "Continuing" churches were approval of women priests and the introduction of revised versions of the Book of Common Prayer.
In
1976, the
General Convention of the ECUSA voted to approve the ordination of women to the
priesthood and to the
episcopate and also provisionally adopted a new and doctrinally controversial
Book of Common Prayer, later called the 1979 version. During the following year,
1977, several thousand dissenting
clergy and laypersons responded to those actions by meeting in St. Louis, Missouri under the auspices of the
Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen and adopted a theological statement, the
Affirmation of St. Louis. The Affirmation expressed a determination "to continue in the Catholic Faith, Apostolic Order, Orthodox Worship and Evangelical Witness of the traditional Anglican Church, doing all things necessary for the continuance of the same".
Out of this meeting came a new church with the provisional name of Anglican Church in North America (Episcopal). The first bishop of the church, the Rt. Rev. Charles D. D. Doren, was consecrated by a retired bishop of ECUSA, the Rt. Rev. Albert Chambers, along with a bishop of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church as co-consecrator. Although expected to be the third bishop participating in Doren's consecration, the Rt. Rev. Mark Pae of the Anglican Church of Korea sent a letter of consent instead. Consecrations of bishops normally involve three existing bishops as a guarantee of the candidate's worthiness, but there are many cases in church history of a single consecrator, and these are not considered invalid consecrations for lack of the customary three.
During the process of ratifying the new church's Constitution, disputes developed which split its several dioceses into two American churches and one separate Canadian church. These are the
Anglican Catholic Church, the Diocese of Christ the King (later renamed the
Anglican Province of Christ the King), and the
Anglican Catholic Church of Canada. Several years after this, the
United Episcopal Church of North America was founded in opposition to the alleged inhospitality of the other jurisdictions towards Low Churchmen.
The continuing churches are generally
Anglo-Catholic in approach, and their liturgies are usually more
high church than
low church. Most of them use the 1928
Book of Common Prayer that preceded the prayer book adopted by ECUSA in 1979, although some use Missals and other forms. The use of the
Authorized Version of Holy Scripture (also known as the
King James Version) as opposed to modern translations, is a distinguishing mark of most continuing churches.
The principles of the Affirmation of St. Louis and the
Thirty-nine Articles of Religion provide some basis for unity in the movement, but these jurisdictions are numerous and often splinter and recombine. Reports put their number at somewhere between 20 and 40, mostly in North America, but fewer than a dozen of the churches popularly called "
continuing churches" can be traced back to the meeting in St. Louis. The 2005/06
Directory of Traditional Anglican and Episcopal Parishes, published by The Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, contains information on over 400 Continuing Anglican parishes which requested to be listed.
Other bodies not in
communion with Canterbury include the
Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) in the United States, which left the Episcopal Church in 1873 in opposition to the advance of
Anglo-Catholicism; the
Free Church of England, which was founded in 1844 for similar reasons; and the
Anglican Orthodox Church, another Low Church body that was founded in 1963.
These churches are not always considered to be Continuing Anglican churches, although the REC has recently moved to associate itself more closely with them by entering into agreements with several continuing churches, the Anglican Province of Nigeria, and with conservative elements in ECUSA itself. The REC has signed a
concordat of intercommunion with the
Anglican Province of America, a largely Anglo-Catholic Continuing body. This agreement projects a formal merger of the two churches by 2008.
The following is a list of churches commonly called "Continuing Anglican," with the approximate number of North American parishes shown in parentheses. Some have additional affiliates in other countries.
*
American Anglican Church. (11)
*
Anglican Catholic Church. (88)
*
Anglican Catholic Church of Canada. (46) The Canadian counterpart of the Anglican Church in America.
*
Anglican Church in America. (83)
*
Anglican Church of Virginia. (6)
*
Anglican Churches of America. (2)
*
Anglican Diocese of the Good Shepherd. (7)
*
Anglican Episcopal Church. (5)
*
Anglican Orthodox Church. (5)
*
Anglican Province of America. (69)
*
Anglican Province of Christ the King. (55)
*
Anglican Rite Old Catholic Church. Old Catholics using an Anglican rite.
*
Christian Episcopal Church. (7)
*
Diocese of the Holy Cross. (18)
*
Episcopal Missionary Church. (28)
*
Holy Catholic Church (Anglican Rite). (35)
*
Orthodox Anglican Church. (8)
*
Reformed Episcopal Church. (119)
*
Southern Episcopal Church. (3)
*
Traditional Protestant Episcopal Church. (5)
*
United Anglican Church. (11)
*
United Episcopal Church of North America. (22)
This
map locates some of the Continuing Anglican parishes in the United States along with other Anglican parishes not affiliated with ECUSA. (You can limit the map to a particular jurisdiction by changing the ShowAll parameter to Provice=APA, for instance. See the list of province acronyms at the bottom of the map.)
See also
*
The Measure of A Bishop: The Episcopi Vagantes, Apostolic Succession, and the Legitimacy of the Anglican "Continuing Church" Movement. A Master's thesis, written by a student at
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, containing a great deal of historical information on Continuing Anglican and related Churches.
*
Affirmation of St. LouisDivided We Stand: A History of the Continuing Anglican Movement by Douglas Bess was published in 2002.
