Continuing Anglican movement

The term Continuing Anglican refers to Anglican or former Episcopal churches that either separated from the Anglican Communion or formed outside the Anglican Communion in order to continue the faith and practices they believe were altered, revised or abandoned during the modernization of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Beginning with the Congress of St. Louis in 1977, which was a response to changes in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer and to the ordination of women, Anglicans found a number of reasons to shun communion with the member churches of the Anglican Communion. More recent changes, such as the ordination of professing Christians who were openly gay and lesbian to the priesthood and episcopate have sparked more separations and further distanced Continuing churches from the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Anglican Communion as a whole.

Characteristics

Continuing churches have generally been formed by clergy and lay people who left churches belonging to the Anglican Communion. These older Anglican churches are charged by the Continuing Church movement with being greatly compromised by secular cultural standards and liberal approaches to theology.

Many Continuing churches, particularly those in the United States, use the term Anglican to differentiate themselves from The Episcopal Church. This use of the word is controversial because Anglican once referred to those churches in communion with the Church of England and Archbishop of Canterbury. Since many continuing Anglicans believe that the faith of the Archbishop and many of those churches in communion with him has become either unorthodox or un-Christian, these churches have rarely sought communion with Canterbury.

Anglicanism in general has always sought a balance between the emphases of Catholicism and Protestantism, while tolerating a range of expressions of evangelicalism and ceremony. Clergy and laity from all such Anglican factions were active in the formation of the Continuing Anglican movement.

Theological diversity

See: Churchmanship; Oxford movement

While there are high church, broad church, and low church continuing Anglicans, many continuing churches are Anglo-Catholic and employ highly ceremonial liturgical practices. Others adhere to the Evangelical or low church tradition. Low churchmen also tend to favor the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles and more simple services. For instance Morning Prayer may be used in place of the Holy Eucharist for Sunday worship services, although this is not necessarily characteristic of low churchmen.

Most Continuing churches use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer for their services and reject the 1979 revision by the Episcopal Church. Anglo-Catholic bodies may employ the use Missals and other forms for worship.

The Authorized Version of Holy Scripture (also known as the King James Version) is also a common feature of public readings. This is done for many reasons not the least of which are aesthetics and in protest against the supposedly liberal theology that versions such as the New Revised Standard Version are believed to embody.

History

Origin

The movement originated in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America 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.

In 1976, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America 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 [1]. 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 new church, the Right Reverend Charles Doren, was consecrated by a retired bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Right Reverend Albert Chambers of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, along with Bishop Francisco Pagtakhan of the Philippine Independent Church as co-consecrator.

Although expected to be the third bishop participating in Doren's consecration, the Right Reverend Mark Pae of the Anglican Church of Korea sent a letter of consent instead. This development left the new group open to charges of violating the customs of apostolic succession, in which three bishops customarily are present, although only one is necessary for a valid consecration.

The newly-consecrated Bishop Doren then joined with Bishops Chambers and Pagtakhan in consecrating as bishops the Reverend James Mote, the Reverend Robert Morse, and the Reverend Francis Watterson. Bishop Watterson left the movement shortly afterward and became a Roman Catholic priest.

Fractures

During the process of ratifying the new church's constitution, disputes developed which split its dioceses into two American churches and a separate Canadian church. These were the Anglican Catholic Church led by Bishop Mote, the Diocese of Christ the King (now the Anglican Province of Christ the King) led by Bishop Morse, and the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada.

In 1981, Bishop Doren and others left the Anglican Catholic Church to found the United Episcopal Church of North America in opposition to the alleged inhospitality of the other jurisdictions towards Low Churchmen. Two years later, the Anglican Church in America was formed through a merger of a large portion of the Anglican Catholic Church with the entirety of the American Episcopal Church, a body that had been formed by former members of The Episcopal Church prior to the launch of the Continuing Church movement.

Recent developments and statistics

The original generation of Continuing parishes in the U.S. were found mainly in metropolitan areas. Since the late 1990s, a number have appeared in smaller communities, often as a result of a division in the town's existing Episcopal parish(es) or mission(s). The 2007/08 Directory of Traditional Anglican and Episcopal Parishes, published by The Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, contained information on over 900 parishes affiliated with either the Continuing Anglican churches or the Anglican realignment movement.

Reunification Efforts

Processional of clergy from the three Continuing Anglican churches, the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Province of Christ the King, and the United Episcopal Church of North America.

In 2008 various jurisdictions made attempts at overcoming the movement's divisions. The Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Province of Christ the King, and the United Episcopal Church of North America entered into discussions about possible organic unity. In January of 2009 one bishop from each jurisdiction consecrated three new bishops to serve all three jurisdictions.

In addition, the Anglican Episcopal Church and the Diocese of the Great Lakes formed the North American Anglican Conference for mutual assistance between Evangelical Anglican churches. A suffragan bishop was consecrated for the Anglican Episcopal Church in late 2008 by its presiding bishop and three bishops of the Diocese of the Great Lakes.

The principles of the Affirmation of St. Louis and, to a lesser extent, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, provide some basis for unity in the movement, but the jurisdictions are numerous, usually quite small in membership, and often splinter and recombine. Reports put the number of jurisdictions 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.

Unification with the Roman Catholic Church

In 2007, the Traditional Anglican Communion and its United States province, the Anglican Church in America, made a formal proposal to the Roman Catholic Church to be admitted into union with the Vatican in a manner that would permit the retention of her Anglican heritage.

Other Anglican churches

Other Anglican bodies not in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury include the Reformed Episcopal Church 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; the Anglican Orthodox Church, another Low Church body that was founded in 1963, and the Orthodox Anglican Communion founded by the AOC in 1967. These churches are not universally considered to be Continuing Anglican churches because they were founded prior to the beginning of the Continuing Anglican movement of the 1970s; however, they interact with the Continuing churches on a number of levels and are similar to them in belief and practice.

List of churches

The following is a list of churches commonly called "Continuing Anglican", with the approximate number of North American parishes shown in parentheses. Some also have affiliated churches in other countries.

• American Anglican Church (12)
• Anglican Catholic Church (135)
• Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (42)
• Anglican Churches of America (2)
• Anglican Church in America (100)
• Anglican Church of Virginia (8)
• Anglican Episcopal Church (4)
• Anglican Orthodox Church (7)
• Anglican Province of America (103)
• Anglican Province of Christ the King (44)
• Christian Episcopal Church (5)
• Diocese of the Great Lakes (5)
• Diocese of the Holy Cross (21)
• Episcopal Missionary Church (30)
• Holy Catholic Church (Anglican Rite) (25)
• Holy Catholic Church-Western Rite (2)
• Orthodox Anglican Church (12)
• Southern Episcopal Church (3)
• United Anglican Church (10)
• United Episcopal Church of North America (24)

List of seminaries

The following is a list of seminaries associated with the Continuing Anglican movement:

USA

• Anglican Seminary of Virginia (Front Royal, Virginia)
• St. Andrew's Theological College and Seminary (Lexington, North Carolina)
• St. Joseph of Arimathea Anglican Theological College (Berkeley, California)

Licensed outside USA

• St. Andrew's Theological College and Seminary (Italy)
• Seminario Mayor

Further reading

• Divided We Stand: A History of the Continuing Anglican Movement by Douglas Bess, Tractarian Press, 2002, ISBN 0-9719636-0-6. Revised edition, Apocryphile Press, September 2006, ISBN 1-933993-10-3

See also

• Anglican realignment
• Federation of Anglican Churches in the Americas

External links

• List of churches not in the Anglican Communion, at anglicansonline.org. Includes weblinks for most of the Continuing Anglican churches and some other non-Anglican chuches. Some of those listed are now defunct.
• The Measure of A Bishop: The Episcopi Vagantes, Apostolic Succession, and the Legitimacy of the Anglican "Continuing Church" Movement. A master's degree thesis, written by a student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, containing historical information on Continuing Anglican and related churches.