Anglican continuing churches
The Anglican continuing churches are churches following the Anglican tradition but which have broken with Canterbury and with the Episcopal Church in the USA (ECUSA) because of what they view as a failure of orthodoxy.The current modest prominence of the movement started with the St. Louis Congress in 1977. That congress formulated a theological statement, the Affirmation of St. Louis, which 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."
Before then the major Anglican group in the United States out of communion with Canterbury had been the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC), which left the Protestant Episcopal Church (now known as ECUSA) in 1873 in opposition to the advance of Anglo-Catholicism. The major group in England had been the Free Church of England which was founded in 1844 for similar reasons and is now in communion with the REC.
The continuing churches are generally Anglo-Catholic in approach, and their liturgies are often (but not always) 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 other forms. The use of the Authorized Version of Holy Scripture (KJV) as opposed to modern translations is an identifying mark of most continuing churches.
The principles of the Affirmation of St. Louis provide some basis for unity in the movement, but non-ECUSA jurisdictions are numerous and often splinter and recombine. Reports put their number at somewhere between 20 and 40, although only a few of these count more than ten parishes. Also, only about a half-dozen of the churches popularly called "continuing churches" actually emerged from the meeting at St. Louis. The term has become a catch-phrase for non-ECUSA Anglican groups as a whole, regardless of their actual origin and outlook.
The recent consecration of Gene Robinson as ECUSA's Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire has given the movement a boost, but has also increased interest in other churches, in particular the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA). While it has much in common with historic American evangelical Anglicanism, AMiA is a mission under the supervision of the Archbishop of Rwanda and the Archbishop of Southeast Asia, and is thus through them in communion with Canterbury (although not yet recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury).
Acting on an earlier promise to settle the issue of the ordination of women, AMiA recently decided against ordaining women to the priesthood. Several who were priested in ECUSA before joining AMiA remain in good standing. In general, Anglo-Catholics favorable to AMiA have been opposed to the practice while "evangelicals" (i.e. charismatics) have supported it. The older continuing churches do not approve of the ordination of women to the diaconate, a practice that AMiA allows.
The following is a list of continuing and similar churches, with the approximate number of North American parishes shown in parentheses. [Note that anyone can edit this page to update information or correct errors or omissions simply by clicking on "Edit this page" below. Vandalism or introduction of tendentious material can easily be reversed with a couple of clicks by causing the page to revert to its pre-edit form.]
External links
More information is available from the Anglicans Online "Not In the Communion" page.