North American Anglican Open Communion
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Unreliable citations may be challenged or deleted. ( August 2018) Anglican Church in North AmericaClassificationOrientation, and orientationsArchbishopAssociations,RegionCanada, United States, Mexico, CubaOriginJune 22, 2009,andCommon Cause PartnershipCongregations1,037 (2017)Members134,593 (2017)Official websiteThe Anglican Church in North America ( ACNA) is a in the tradition in the United States and Canada. It also includes ten congregations in Mexico and a missionary diocese in Cuba.
Anglicanism in Nigeria It includes the Church of England and a variety of others around the world united by shared doctrine and practice under the Anglican Communion umbrella organization. The Archbishop of Canterbury is regarded as the unofficial spiritual leader of the international Anglican community.
North American Anglican Open Communion Day
Headquartered in, the church reported 30 and 1,037 serving an estimated membership of 134,593 in 2017. The first of the ACNA was, who was succeeded by in 2014.The ACNA was founded in 2009 by former members of the in the United States and the who were dissatisfied with liberal doctrinal and social teachings in their former churches, which they considered contradictory to traditional Anglican belief. Prior to 2009, these conservative Anglicans had begun to receive support from a number of Anglican churches (or ) outside of North America, especially in the. Several Episcopal dioceses and many individual parishes in both Canada and the United States voted to. In 2009, many Anglican groups who had withdrawn from the two North American provinces united to form the Anglican Church in North America.Unlike the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, the ACNA is not a member province of the. From its inception, the Anglican Church in North America has sought full communion with those provinces of the Anglican Communion 'that hold and maintain the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church'; and the church maintains the Anglican Global South primates.The ACNA has attempted to incorporate the full spectrum of conservative Anglicanism within Canada and the United States.
As a result, it accommodates, and theological orientations. It also includes those who oppose and those who support the. Women can serve as members in some dioceses, while other dioceses maintain an exclusively male clergy. Women are ineligible to serve as. This disagreement over the ordination of women has led to 'impaired communion' among some dioceses. The ACNA defines exclusively as a lifelong union between a man and a woman and holds that there are only two expressions of faithful sexuality: lifelong marriage between a man and a woman or abstinence. The church holds a position on.
Contents.History The Anglican Church in North America was founded by Anglicans who had left the and the over concerns that the teaching of those churches had grown more liberal. The new body charged that the two existing churches 'have increasingly accommodated and incorporated un-Biblical, un-Anglican practices and teaching'.
Two major events that contributed to ACNA's formation both involved human sexuality. The first was the 2002 decision of the in Canada to authorize a rite of blessing for; the second was the 's ratification of the election of, an openly gay non-celibate man, as the following year.The new Anglican group also charged that the existing churches had abandoned the traditional Christian belief that Jesus Christ is the only way to. In particular, of the Episcopal Church from 2006 to 2015, was strongly criticized for her comments to that effect. Conservative opposition to both the Episcopal Church's 1979 edition of the and to the ordination of women priests led to the founding of an earlier wave of independent Anglican churches, often called the.Common Cause Partnership Part of a series on the. See also:In its Fundamental Declarations, the Anglican Church in North America declares itself part of the, confessing to be the only way to. ACNA's provincial flagThe Anglican Church in North America is structured as a self-governing, multinational. The province's polity is described in its constitution.
The basic level of organization is the. Each congregation is part of a led by a. Dioceses are self-governing bodies that operate according to their own diocesan canon law (as long as this is consistent with the provincial constitution), and they are able to leave the province at any time if they so choose.The ACNA is a church where both clergy and participate in church governance. Every five years, between 250 and 300 diocesan delegates meet as a representative body called the Provincial Assembly. Each diocese is represented by its bishop, two clergy delegates, and two lay delegates. In addition, a diocese receives one additional clergy delegate and one additional lay delegate for every 1,000 constituents, calculated by average attendance at Sunday church services.
Dioceses also send youth representatives between the ages of 16 and 26, and these representatives have full voting rights. The Provincial Assembly must approve all constitutional amendments and new canons before they go into effect.
Other duties of the assembly include deliberating on church affairs and making recommendations to the provincial governing bodies on such matters.The ACNA's governing body is the Provincial Council. The council meets every June and is responsible for enacting policy, approving a budget, and recommending changes to the constitution and canons. Each diocese selects a bishop, a clergy member, and two lay persons to represent it on the council. The council itself may also appoint up to six other persons as members, bringing the total number to around 140 members. Council members serve five-year terms. The Provincial Council is led by an executive committee, which sets the council's agenda and serves as the church's.
The executive committee's 12 members are divided equally between clergy and laity. In addition to meeting three times a year in person, they communicate regularly by conference call.All bishops in active ministry are members of the. The college elects the, the presiding officer and of the church, who convenes the Provincial Assembly, the Provincial Council, and the College of Bishops. The college also has authority to approve diocesan elections of bishops, or in some cases actually elect bishops.
There are 50 active bishops sitting in the college. The archbishop has a cabinet composed of leading bishops within the church which functions as a council of advice. The Provincial Tribunal is an empowered to rule on constitutional and canonical disputes.Local congregations hold their own property and the province disavows any claim on the property of local congregations. Existing property-holding arrangements within the founding member entities are not affected by their relation to the province.
The province also disavows any authority to control the member entities' policies regarding the question of the ordination of women as deacons or priests.The constitution and canons specify that other non-member groups (such as a seminary, monastic order or ministry organization, or a diocese, congregation or other entity) may be considered for association as ministry partners or affiliated ministries. These affiliated groups may have representation in church gatherings as determined by the archbishop and may withdraw from affiliation or have their affiliation ended with or without cause. ACNA affiliated ministries include Anglican Global Mission Partners (a missionary organization), Anglican Relief and Development Fund, and Anglican 1000 (a initiative).Dioceses and statistics. Further information:In 2018, the Anglican Church in North America reported 1,037 congregations with a membership of 134,593 and an average Sunday attendance of 93,489.
This is an increase from statistics reported in 2009, the year the church was founded. In 2009, the church reported 703 congregations and an average Sunday attendance of 69,167. ACNA had a maximum of 30 dioceses, that was reduced to 28, with the withdrawal of the and the to remain solely as and dioceses, on 23 May 2019. ACNA congregations are now organized into the following 28 dioceses:. REC. (Not to be confused with the older, an autonomous jurisdiction.). REC, with the Convocation of the West and Western Canada.
REC, with the Convocation of Eastern Canada. REC.Ecumenical relations. This section may lend to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. Please by rewriting it in a that contextualizes different points of view.
( August 2018) Anglican churches The ACNA's constitution expresses the goal to seek recognition as a province of the Anglican Communion. A total of nine Anglican provinces sent formal delegations to the inaugural assembly. The Anglican Church in North America has not yet requested formal recognition by the Anglican Communion office as a province recognized by the Anglican instruments of communion. The office of the Archbishop of Canterbury has said it would possibly take years for the ACNA to gain official recognition from the rest of the Anglican Communion.ACNA's relations are not friendly with the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church of Canada, despite the presence of theologically conservative Anglicans in both churches.
Many ACNA parishes, bishops, and other clergy were originally members of these churches. The re-alignment process has seen both sides charge each other with. In several cases there have been protracted legal disputes over church property (for example, when the ACNA's split from the Episcopal Church's ), with some of these lawsuits continuing for years.The primates' council has said that the new church is 'fully Anglican' and called for its recognition by existing provinces of the Anglican Communion. Archbishop Robert Duncan was present at the Fourth Encounter that took place in Singapore, from 19 to 23 April 2010, where he presided at the Eucharist and met primates and representatives from 20 Anglican provinces.
The Global South Encounter final statement declared: 'We are grateful that the recently formed Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is a faithful expression of Anglicanism. We welcomed them as partners in the Gospel and our hope is that all provinces will be in full communion with the clergy and people of the ACNA and the Communion Partners.' In March 2009, the Anglican Church of Nigeria declared itself to be in full communion with the Anglican Church in North America, followed by the of the Anglican Church of Uganda in June 2009 and the in December 2011.
Inasmuch as these churches report approximately 30,500,000 members, and the Anglican Communion reports over 80,000,000 members, the ACNA is in communion with churches comprising somewhat over one-third of the membership of the Anglican Communion. – The passed on the final day of its 2009 synod a resolution welcoming the creation of the ACNA and expressing a desire to be in full communion. The resolution also called for the diocese's standing committee to seek a general synod motion affirming the to be in full communion with the ACNA. The Anglican Diocese of Sydney declared itself to be in 'full communion' with ACNA during its synod on 13 October 2015.In 2010, the affirmed 'the desire of those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America to remain within the Anglican family' and called upon the archbishops of Canterbury and York to report back to the synod after further study in 2011.
Published in December 2011, the archbishops' follow up report recommended 'an open-ended engagement with ACNA on the part of the Church of England and the Communion' but also stated that a definitive outcome would be unclear for sometime.Archbishop Robert Duncan met following his invitation the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, in May 2013, to discuss the recognition of the ACNA ordinations in the near future. Welby announced on 16 January 2014 that, Rector of Truro Church in, a parish of the ACNA, had been elected unanimously to serve as one of the of. Baucum was installed on 14 March 2014, attended by both Justin Welby and Robert Duncan. In October 2014, Welby stated that Tory Baucum had been ordained before ACNA's inception and because of that his Anglican orders were valid, so he was eligible to be elected to that office. He further stated that ACNA was a separate church and not part of the Anglican Communion.In October 2014 the passed a motion recognizing the ACNA as a 'member church of the Anglican Communion'.
On 9 October 2014, following the ceremony of investiture of as archbishop and primate of ACNA, an official statement, which recognized Beach as 'a fellow Primate of the Anglican Communion', was signed by the seven Anglican archbishops present: of Jerusalem and the Middle East, of Kenya, of Nigeria, of Uganda, of Rwanda, of Myanmar, and of the Southern Cone of America. However, the authority to decide whether ACNA should be admitted to the worldwide Anglican Communion lies with the, and not with individual member churches or provinces.
By David Goodhew and Jeremy BonnerSubstantial swathes of the Anglican Communion were unaware of the birth of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) in 2009 and remain unaware of it to this day. Others may be conscious of ACNA’s existence but, depending on which side of the various theological divides they fall, will question (or exaggerate) its size and significance. This article is an attempt to clarify the nature of ACNA on its 10th birthday.ACNA is reporting growth, but is that growth real? Originating primarily as an exodus of parishes and dioceses unhappy at the theological stance of the Episcopal Church (TEC), does ACNA remain primarily a reaction to TEC, or is it changing into something else as the break from TEC recedes into the past?Put briefly, the data shows that ACNA has been growing and that it has significant reach beyond the usual Anglican enclaves in North America, but it has vulnerabilities, too.Understanding ACNA matters. It matters greatly both for Anglicans in the United States and, as similar divisions spread to other areas, for the Anglican Communion more widely.The Value of ACNA’s DataAs a new denomination, ACNA’s systems of data collection are still bedding in. Data up to 2012 appears to contain significant noise, but data from 2013 is increasingly solid. In recent years the majority of parishes provided detailed data.
The Episcopal Church long enjoyed more effective data collection protocols than many other parts of the Anglican Communion, and some of these have been inherited by ACNA. ACNA’s data can also be checked against other sources of information, and, while it is not infallible, we believe the conclusions in this article hold water.There is some evidence that ACNA’s data may be undercounting.
Photo credit: Joy HunterThe sizable number of closures and openings of congregations in the past decade means that ACNA has substantially changed in its first 10 years. In 2009, it was largely defined by being “ex-TEC.” Now, many members and congregations have no memory of being part of TEC. Talking with members of ACNA, we sense that that it may be reaching a tipping point, in that more working clergy have no knowledge of or experience in TEC.The geography is equally fascinating.
Only about a quarter of ACNA’s members reside in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, compared to more than one-third of TEC’s members. Almost half of the denomination’s members reside in a belt of settlement extending from Washington, D.C., across the Upper South (North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee) to Texas and the Southwest. This region has also been — coincidentally — one in which TEC’s rate of membership decline has hitherto been less than elsewhere, though that may be changing.One notable shift is ACNA’s congregational expansion in the Midwest, an area where TEC has been historically weak. If one excludes from the ACNA congregational statistics those dioceses that left TEC en masse, then the Midwest is ACNA’s best performing region outside the South. While the number of ACNA members in the Midwest remains modest, there may be more members of ACNA in the Midwest than in the Pacific Rim states.Another key area is ethnicity. It is sometimes noted that ACNA has influenced African churches in recent years, but it ought also to be noted that African churches are influencing ACNA just as much, or more.
Most striking is ACNA’s Diocese of the Trinity, which is predominantly Nigerian, is rapidly proliferating, and for which the Church of Nigeria has just consecrated four new bishops, which has caused unease elsewhere in ACNA.While affirming an openness to all, the Diocese of the Trinity bears remarkable resemblance to the so-called national parishes established by the Roman Catholic Church in the United States at the height of mass immigration and which only fell into desuetude in the 1950s. As with Roman Catholicism, ACNA may find having a national diocese in the shape of the Nigerian Diocese of the Trinity is both a strength and complication.While we have no detailed ethnic breakdown, there is evidence that ACNA is reaching beyond the white community and may even be growing more ethnically diverse than TEC — which remains 87 percent white. As the American population rapidly diversifies, this is of potentially great importance for the future.ACNA contains an intriguing mix of traditions. It is strongly linked to the global GAFCON network, yet is markedly friendlier to Catholic spirituality and liturgy than most of GAFCON.
ACNA is making significant attempts at a via media— with a stress on blending evangelical, charismatic, and Anglo-Catholic traditions and including those in favor and those opposed to the ordination of women. ACNA’s enthusiasm for church planting will further alter its blend of traditions in ways as yet unknown.A different question is the background of ACNA ordinands. The denomination is ordaining significant numbers of people.
If the bulk of ordinands are from the newer dioceses with little memory of TEC, that will substantially influence the future path of ACNA.Comparing ACNA with TEC and the Anglican Church in CanadaACNA is much smaller than TEC, but their trajectories are converging. The Sunday attendance of TEC domestic dioceses dropped from 623,691 in 2013 to 556,744 in 2017. Even if the 9000 worshipers from the seceding Diocese of South Carolina are stripped out, this is still a loss of 58,000, nearly 10 percent down.
ACNA’s growing attendance needs setting in this context. ACNA dioceses that left en masse from TEC are still doing better (or at least no worse) than comparable TEC dioceses.
The new dioceses of ACNA have tended to do much better than anywhere in TEC, which shows hardly any of the church planting vigor in parts of ACNA. Photo credit: ACNAWere ACNA’s growth and TEC’s decline to continue at the same rate, it would take several decades for them to draw level.
But the gap is closing significantly. On any given week in 2013, one could expect to find one member of ACNA at worship, compared to 11 members of TEC, but in 2017 one member of ACNA would be balanced by eight members in TEC.A different question arises in relation to the Anglican Church in Canada. The comparison is inexact, since the latter, obviously, does not cover the United States, whereas ACNA covers the United States and Canada.
It is not possible to obtain overall figures for the historic Anglican Church of Canada for the last 10 years. But the evidence available suggests that it has shrunk dramatically.In 2001 the Diocese of New Westminster had a Sunday attendance of 10,500; a more recent diocesan profile that this had halved to 5,554 by 2012. On the basis of this and other evidence, ACNA may well now have a larger Sunday attendance than the Anglican Church of Canada.Beyond this, ACNA is nearly double the size of the Church in Wales and six or seven times the size of the Scottish Episcopal Church. ACNA’s growth makes it distinct from most Anglican churches in the West, and is likely to affect them over time.A different form of comparison is the way ACNA relates to the wider Communion. Many Anglicans in the Global North are blithely unaware that ACNA exists, but much of the Global South now has stronger links with ACNA than with TEC and other Global North churches.ConclusionACNA faces many challenges, notably over gender in ministry and how its various traditions relate to one another. As the time lengthens since the break with TEC, the unity evoked by having a common opponent may lessen and have less ability to hold ACNA together.A different question is how ACNA relates to wider culture.
ACNA is not only at variance with TEC but, as a theologically conservative church, it is at odds with the elite culture that dominates the media and academia. Conversely, it faces the delicate question of how it relates to the polarized America of Donald Trump. Navigating the waters of popular culture can make navigating ecclesial division feel tame in comparison.
At the same time, ACNA’s combination of theological conservatism with liturgy and episcopacy may have a particular appeal to American evangelicals seeking greater historic rootedness while retaining orthodox theology within an English-speaking culture. This could be a fruitful furrow for harvest in the future.Notwithstanding all the qualifiers, members of TEC and the wider Communion need to recognize that ACNA is now of significant size and is expanding. And in terms of church planting, ACNA is streets ahead of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada. There is growing evidence of its ability to connect with minority ethnic communities, especially recent migrants.Whether ACNA could ever catch TEC up is impossible to answer — and not that important right now.
It is more important for all Anglicans to recognize that, 10 years on from its foundation, ACNA is a substantial and growing force in North American Anglicanism.The Rev. David Goodhew is director of ministerial practice at Cranmer Hall, St.
John’s College, Durham University. He directs the Centre for Church Growth Research ( ).Dr. Jeremy Bonner is honorary fellow of the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. With Mark Chapman he recently edited (Brill, 2019).This essay is a companion to earlier work on the Episcopal Church in the USA, based on the research of Jeremy Bonner found in (Routledge, 2017). Most of the statistical data on ACNA is, or has been, publicly available. We are grateful to a range of people for their assistance in researching this article, but stress that the conclusions reached are entirely our responsibility. The growth of our parish reflects these trends.
My wife and I were twenty-year Episcopalians (we grew up and came to faith in another Christian tradition) when we joined a congregation of what was then AMiA (then a “missionary partner” of the newly-created ACNA). Two years later we joined five other families from the congregation and from outside it (including two Baptist families) to establish a new mission/church plant. Our family (my wife and I and our daughters) were the only ex-Episcopalians among the original founding households. Over the course of the last six years, our now parish has grown Read more ». This is a remarkably deep dive into the statistics. I very much appreciate Goodhew identifying different challenges and strengths in the ACNA. I am one of a tiny number of people in my congregation who was confirmed in the Episcopal Church: the vast majority came from other traditions and have no memory or experience of ministry with the Episcopal Church (and, importantly, no animosity).
The church plant that I am a part of has a charismatic vicar, an anglo-catholic assistant, and an evangelical postulant for ordination.