nglican Catholic Church to found the United Episcopal Church of North America in opposition to the alleged inhospitality of the other jurisdictions towards Low Churchmen.
Recent developments and statisticsEdit
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.
In 2007 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. A Communion Agreement was entered into on May 17, 2007. In January 2009 one bishop from each jurisdiction consecrated three suffragan bishops in St. Louis, just a few miles from where the Congress of St. Louis first met. The three new bishops will serve all three jurisdictions.
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.
Another regional association facilitating increased dialogue and fellowship opportunities is Common Cause Appalachia, to which some continuing Anglican churches in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee belong.
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 ChurchEdit
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 their Anglican heritage.
Other Anglican churchesEdit
Other Anglican bodies not in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury include the Reformed Episcopal Church in the United States, which was formed in 1873 in opposition to the advance of Anglo-Catholicism in the Episcopal Church; the Free Church of England, which was founded in England 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 relate to the Continuing churches on a number of levels and have similarities in beliefs and practices.
The following is a list of church bodies 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 (12)
- Anglican Province of America (76)
- Anglican Province of Christ the King (44)
- Christian Episcopal Church (5)
- Diocese of the Great Lakes (5)
- Diocese of the Holy Cross (21)
- Episcopal Missi