I have recently became interested in the Anglican Church. After becoming less and less comfortable with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Mainly, I see them as unscriptural, and putting traditions over Holy Writ. Once I move out of my parents house (I am 18.) I’ll be attending a Parish affiliated with the Anglican Church in America (ACA), which is also part of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) I have two questions: What do you know about the ACA and the TAC? What is the Anglican confirmation process?
Welcome! The Anglican Communion is going through a tumult similar to the recent Orthodox split, and the Roman Catholic tumults under Pope Francis. It will be messy for some years still, but here is the broad perspective: The ACA is one of the 4 jurisdictions which had left the Episcopal Church in the 1970s, today jointly called the "continuing Anglican movement". There is no official TAC, and the continuing groups are probably what's referred to by that. Over time, through the 1980s and 1990s, while the Anglican Communion was more and more stressed but Rome seemed to be strong under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the continuing churches have felt less and less aligned to the Episcopal Church they sought to "continue" in 1970s. Today they resemble a kind of Anglican/Roman amalgamation -- fiddleback chasubles, the Angelus. They read Papal encyclicals diligently. Etc. They are around 30,000 people gathered in a few key places around the US (south-east United States predominantly). They seek no communion with other Anglican churches around the world, or to be in any kind of international "Anglican Communion". They are also very elderly, with practically zero evangelization, so almost all heads are gray in a "continuing" gathering. We have some people from the Continuing movement here, so I hope I've characterized it accurately. The other big player is the Anglican Church in North America. It has had the cataclysmic battle with the Episcopal Church from 2008 to today still. It started with the Diocese of Pittsburgh directly splitting from the Episcopal Church, and then other dioceses and individual parishes joining in, and worldwide Anglican Provinces supporting it. It is aiming to directly replace the Episcopal Church as the american province of the Anglican Communion. Practically every parish or diocese which abandons the Episcopal Church just flows into ACNA, as happened recently with the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, which was heroically led out by Bishop Lawrence, to become the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina. There is incredible hardship and acrimony between the Episcopal Church (incredibly wealthy and powerful) and the ACNA (still-forming). There have been stories of parishes leaving the Episcopal Church being sued, everyone in the congregation, the vestry, all the clergy, the building stripped from them, and then re-sold to the Muslims to be used as a mosque. However the ACNA is rapidly growing despite that. They have the recognition of almost all of the world's Anglican Primates, and from 2008 to today have gathered around 150,000 members and refugees from the Episcopal Church. In the long term (50 years hence), I see the continuing Churches merging with the Nordic and old Catholic polish jurisdictions to become a kind of an American Old Catholic province with some English traces; and the ACNA becoming the new Anglican Province, replacing the Episcopal Church (which loses about 1 diocese every year and will likely disappear in 10-20 years altogether).
ACA is fine, but a bit too Anglo-Catholic for my tastes. As for the ANCA, it depends on the diocese/parish; there are some fine ones, and there are also some I personally wouldn't attend., either because of WO, Calvinism, being too modern (praise bands), or too charismatic. Yes, most of the Continuing groups are older, but many are still vibrant and doing well. The APA, ACC, and the Diocee of the Holy Cross, are in talks with each other and the ACA about reunion. The REC can also be a good choice; in recent years they have largely moved away from a low-church, Calvinist bent, to a more broad-church and diverse group, even containing some Anglo-Catholics.