As I live in England, I'm not used to these terms. Can someone please give me a brief overview of these two churches and explain the differences? Thanks
the Episcopal Church has been the American province of the Anglican Communion since the early 1800s, it's the one we all know of from when we were growing up In the 1990s they had begun to ordain actively homosexual priests In 1998, resolution 1.10 of the worldwide Lambeth Conference had decreed the practice of homosexuality to be against the scriptures In 2003, the Episcopal Church had consecrated an openly homosexual bishop: Gene Robinson -who proceeded to "marry" and then later "divorce" his partner -the cries of resolution 1.10 went unanswered -resolution 1.10 had never been repealed, and still remains on the books; what this means for the "Anglican" status of the Episcopal church is not for me to know, but remains for canon lawyers In 2006,7,8, the Episcopal Church had put under discipline and excommunicated several bishops who resisted the new gay episcopacy, as well as the overall abandonment of biblical orthodoxy -various worldwide provinces had begun to form various Anglican bodies within the US, sheltering those orphaned clergy In 2008, many of the worldwide provinces came together and created "GAFCON", an umbrella for new direction of the Anglican communion -Jerusalem declaration, https://www.gafcon.org/about/jerusalem-declaration -this founding statement signed in 2008, calls for a renewed biblical orthodoxy, and re-establishes the 1662 BCP, the articles, and the other historic aspects of Anglicanism as mandatory for Anglican orthodoxy Also in 2008, the worldwide provinces came together to unite the exiled American clergy into a new Anglican province in the United States; ACNA (anglican church in north america) Since 2008, the episcopal church has shed many of its orthodox clergy, and they have been received in ACNA That at least is the history as I understood it
Hi Elmo I have the same trouble. I thought all countries had just one Anglican Church till I joined here. I have trouble sorting out the ABCs to the DEFs of the Anglican groups so I put a helpful little thread on it here. https://forums.anglican.net/threads/anglican-groups-have-i-got-this-right.1011/
You, of course, know what 'Anglican' means. The word 'Episcopalian' is the term Americans generally use instead of 'Anglican'. Effectively, it means the same thing. I have discovered that if you use the word 'Anglican' with some Americans it stumps them. You then have to explain you mean 'Episcopalian'. The Anglican church in the USA calls itself 'The Episcopal Church' and commonly uses the abbreviation TEC. As an aside Anglican is also the correct adjective to use to refer to those of us who are members of the Church of England because 'Anglican' basically means 'English'. The abbreviation ACNA stands for the 'Anglican Church in North America'. It is composed of Anglicans who left TEC and the Anglican Church in Canada who were dissatisfeid with the liberal doctrinal and social teachings of those two Anglican churches. The ACNA is not one of the member churches of the Anglican Communion although it is a church in the Anglican tradition. I believe the ACNA covers a range of churchmanship. For example, it is not exclusively Catholic or Evangelical but embraces both. I am not absolutely certain where it stands on the ordination of women.
The ordination of women is permitted in ACNA. In some dioceses it is quite common, in others a bit of a novelty, and in a few it is banned. The churchmanship thing is highly variable. You could go to a church that has hymnals and a choir, or one that has a band, or one that has a woman wearing a Panama shirt making up the Communion liturgy as she goes. The ACNA affirmed the convergence position at its inception, meaning much of its practice follows the charismatic movement.
So basically, the ACNA has the same degree of uncertainty about just what it is that the Episcopal Church does. It’s very difficult for me to believe that such disunity beneath the surface will be anymore of a bulwark against secularization over the long term than what the Episcopal Church has experienced. If there’s pressure to adopt practices from Revivalism in general or the charismatic movement, just how recognizably “Anglican” will it look 25-50 years from now? I just don’t see ACNA as a viable alternative. (Plus, I was initially attracted to Anglicanism specifically because I was trying to get as far away from the evangelical/revivalist/charismatic tradition as possible.) That being said, over that same 25-50 years, the Episcopal Church will almost certainly have merged with the ELCA, and possibly with the UCC as well, thus becoming multi-confessional while remaining in the Anglican Communion (similar to what the Church of South India did after 1948). This scenario exemplifies well what Edward Norman had to say about Anglican unity several decades ago: “Problems of identity, unity and authority, were not solved, and sometimes were not specifically addressed, by the expansion of the Church of England overseas. The ‘Anglican Communion’ - an expression first used in 1851 - is simply a number of autonomous bodies which exactly reproduce the same problems of identity as the parent Church.” http://justus.anglican.org/resources/misc/norman98.html
Shane, these are misleading comments. You should state your biases up front, because you’re not in ACNA and incentivized to tear it down. The person asked for a simple TEC/ACNA comparison, not for an excuse to jump in with an ideological tear down. This is inaccurate and incomplete. While several dioceses still permit women deacons (coming out of the Episcopal Church after all), very few dioceses permit women priests anymore, and there are no women bishops, by a national canonical prohibition. While liturgical disobedience and abuses are plague of all Christian churches these days, this statement is also misleading and inaccurate. While in principle “you could” go to the one and then the other, in practice it is only 2-3 dioceses where such abuse can be found anymore. With a unified Prayer Book having been passed in 2019, there is far less liturgical abuse compared to other big Churches out there.
This is a delusional myth. The number of dioceses with women priests is growing. That is why my own church is getting ACNA clergy at a steady trickle. Read the canons, as I did several years ago. It is more than half that permit the ordination of women. In fact, all ACNA diocese accept for MDAS and the REC dioceses allow for ordination of women to the diaconate. That is one of the major misunderstandings between the Continuing Anglicans and the ACNA. Our women may be deaconesses, which is a lay order, but they are not ordained as in most of ACNA. I know you are in the REC and your canons on the deaconess are commendable and constitute a framework from which several of the Continuing churches work. But most of ACNA is highly confused on this matter.
I am pretty sure Shane is correct on the number of WO diocese growing. I am pretty sure it was the Diocese of the Carolina's that flopped over to WO. We have two problem diocese in C4SO and the Diocese of Pittsburg. We also have the WO problem. I am all in for the ACNA but we have to get those two problems under control. I can never take the sacraments at the hands of a woman priest. I live in an area that is in a WO diocese. My church I attend is 40 miles away and is in a non WO diocese. I would love for a non WO church to be planted in my community. Maybe the REC or the MDAS could plant one here. Both are non geographical diocese.
You're talking about the canons. But nothing has changed or worsened in that regard. This has been the case from the start. What I'm talking about is not the canonical change (which happens last), but the cultural change, which is happening as we speak. Literally no bishops (except for the one we all know about) are proud of a WO position; its there by default from their TEC days, but no one believes it's an incredible improvement over the Anglican orthodoxy, or the Scriptures. First the culture changes, and then the canons will change. How do you expect the canons to change if there's no cultural shift? I am telling you about the cultural shift, since I'm involved with these people on a regular basis. In practice what that means is that almost no women enter priesthood, across the whole province, despite the canons in some of the dioceses (a hangover from the TEC days). I don't disagree. Most people simply don't know the difference between deaconesses and women deacons. It's not that there's a disobedience, a stubborn subversive intent. People just don't know the difference. They see of references to it in the church fathers, even in scripture, and it seems like an obvious point. There is no visible counter-voice at the moment. What there will be over the next 10 years is an educational push to explain among the various dioceses the difference between the two. These things take time. Anyway I just wanted to jump in because I thought the discussion took an underhanded turn. Let me leave it to others to discuss the OP.
Comments #9-11 just give me further room for pause. As I understand it, one breakaway Anglican group is actively taking in clergy from another one, because a minority in the latter are still opposed tooth-and-nail to WO. It sounds like there is a divorce looming within the ACNA itself over the issue (which is sad); so what happens then...yet more splintering? Why should a person currently in TEC be interested in that? I genuinely don't understand the motivation. On top of the evangelical/charismatic issue I mentioned before, I also don't want anything to do with a communion that doesn't promote the equality of women in the 21st century, and I think I represent the overwhelming majority of Episcopalians in that regard. This means that future ACNA growth will largely not be at the expense of Episcopalians, but rather disaffected Roman Catholics, or evangelical/charismatic types - none of whom have a particularly strong attachment to anything recognizable as "tradition". For a group that's trying to maintain a specifically "Anglican" identity, that's a serious problem. The ACNA - like the Episcopal Church - also has an aging demographics issue as well as a real problem reaching young people. None of this inspires much confidence. I don't mean any disrespect here. These are just some of the problems as I see them. I wasn't raised Anglican, so I had the choice as an adult to go to either the Episcopal Church or to one of the alternatives.
Just to jump back in real quick (last time I promise), The scriptures are morally perfect. Women's dignity was at the heart of the Church for the last 5000 years, old testament, new testament and thereafter. The question of spiritual authority has nothing to do with women's dignity. As for 'equality', that is not a moral ideal; wasn't for the Apostles, wasn't for our Lord, wasn't for any great theologians, and isn't for God. It's a 19th century messed up pseudo-ethic, which all traditional Christians are rejecting in greater numbers. The divorce was far more likely at the beginning, back in 2008 when the ACNA was far more just a clump of powerful fiefdoms than something uniform with an authoritative central authority. Today (only 14 years later) things have changed tremendously, in several regards: -the ACNA has a real central authority, which has promulgated a widely-received new Prayer Book, which will centralize and unify worship across the entire province. Prior to the new BCP, a diocese could legitimately use the highly-contentious 1979 BCP, and the traditionalists couldn't object. Today that is finished. The only BCPs you'll find in ACNA from now on are the 2019 one, and the 1662/1928 ones. So a remarkably unified (and orthodox) worship. -also a widely promulgated ACNA catechism. As you all know I'm not in favor of confessional tomes of doctrine, both from the Roman and the Lutheran sides; I think those were mistakes, and the church fathers/anglican divines were wiser in "less is more". But for all intents and purposes, the thick tome that is the ACNA catechism will do a lot of good in tremendously unifying orthodoxy across the whole province. Again that was promulgated from the center; and the fiefdoms accepted it. -ACNA has begun to play a key role in the worldwide Gafcon movement itself. Despite ACNA itself having been a child of other Provinces in our prior years. Our Archbishop has become the chairman of Gafcon, so ACNA is a big driver for Anglican orthodoxy worldwide as well. -cultural shifts: I mentioned before that there is no energy from the pro-WO side; and all the energy is on the "orthodoxy" side. Anglican Twitter is incredibly active, and nearly all voices and statements come from the orthodox side. The same is reflected within the ACNA hierarchy, up to the bishops. Nobody sees ACNA as a vehicle for progressive Christianity. To be honest, the group identifying as "Episcopalians" is not a target the ACNA should trouble itself over. First off, that is an incredibly small group, which is disappearing on its own anyway (whether or not ACNA would have been formed). As I've mentioned in other threads, the actual people identifying as Episcopalians shrinks by something like 100k every single year. One word: catechesis. Anyway, that's all guys. I'm out for a few days!
Many valid points. Yes, the Orthodox Anglican Church accepts ACNA refugees with some regularity. And the point about TEC not being a garden to pick through anymore is a point our Archbishop makes quite regularly. He is adamant that we cannot look to TEC for growth as was done in the 80s and 90s. Anyone who is still hanging out there is not overly bothered by what they are doing. The challenge for us is to do real evangelism and bring in people that weren't going to church. For instance, in the Ohio county I now live, only about 37% of belong to a church. I live 4 miles from the county line. In the next county, only 26% of people belong to a church. So I've got about 23,000 people around me who don't go to church. This is borne out by conversations my daughter has on her school bus. Most of the kids she rides with have never gone to a church service.
Give it time. There is no reason to think the ACNA is more insulated from secularizing social pressures than its mainline parent churches have been. It always has been, but it's not nearly as small as the ACNA. The ACNA would have to grow at about 20% per year for 20 years in a row to equal the Episcopal Church's current size. There is also no reason to believe the Episcopal Church will cease to exist based on recent trends. That's not the way statistical trend forecasting works. Membership has followed a hyperbolic path going back to the 1960s and eventually those paths level out, and it's easy enough to come up with reasons why that would be. Just like weather and gas prices, the same things aren't happening the same way in every diocese. Some congregations and dioceses are doing well; others are not. One also needs to take the 2020-2021 numbers with a grain of salt for the sake of trend forecasting because of COVID. But they have to agree on what to teach in the first place and how to teach it, otherwise what you really have is just congregationalism, with largely symbolic bishops. It's already clear there's one issue that's the subject of serious disagreement; there must be others as well.
All they need to do is teach is the ACNA Catechism. If they only teach that, and the traditionalist dioceses (like mine) add their voice into the mix, then we'll be on a solid road ahead.
I would say that your Archbishop is correct. It sounds like you guys have a far more realistic appraisal of the situation at hand, and what areas require the most focus (need for evangelism, how much of the population is actively religious, etc.). I appreciate the insight here.
I'll also say that part of my issue with the ACNA vis-a-vis WO is the sheer vehemence (and, frankly, ugliness) with which it is often expressed. One does not find this in, e.g., Eastern Orthodoxy. The subject virtually never comes up, and there's a very important reason why: the overwhelming majority of Eastern Orthodox women do not want WO. There is no reason to discuss it in that context, and no one is being deprived of anything they consider their right. But women are also the ones largely keeping the lights on in many of those churches, especially in the Old World. If a critical mass of Orthodox women ever decided that they wanted access to the priesthood, it would eventually happen. So when the ACNA allows it but there is still a loud minority that hates it - even though the bulk of ACNA women seem to like it - it just comes across as ignorance and bigotry. But if WO isn't practiced and it's simply not an issue because there's consensus about (meaning the women agree), that's not particularly bothersome.
Sheer speculation, and considering the history of the Orthodox churches the odds seem high against such a development IMO. Again, sheer speculation coming from someone who is not in the ACNA and has no feeling for the "pulse" of the ACNA. Or do you have statistical data to back up this presumptuous claim that "the bulk of ACNA women seem to like" women's ordination? If there is a trend that we in ACNA can see (and we have the ears in the doorways, unlike some other folks who peer through our stained-glass windows and think they see clearly which way the wind is blowing in our churches), that trend is away from, not toward, WO. And frankly, we in the ACNA are glad when pro-WO individuals elect to stay out of the ACNA, because we don't need more bad influences jumping into our lifeboat and dragging us down in the vortex of their sinking ship.