The term Continuing Anglican refers to a number of churches in various countries that have been formed outside of the Anglican Communion. These churches generally believe that "traditional" forms of Anglican faith and worship have been unacceptably revised or abandoned within some Anglican Communion churches in recent decades. They claim, therefore, that they are "continuing" the traditional forms of Anglicanism. The modern Continuing movement principally dates to the Congress of St. Louis in the United States in 1977, at which participants rejected changes that had been made in the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer and the ordination of women. More recent changes in the North American churches of the Anglican Communion, such as the ordination of gay and lesbian people to the priesthood and episcopate, have created further separations.
Relations with the Anglican CommunionEdit
Continuing churches have generally been formed by clergy and lay people who left churches belonging to the Anglican Communion. These particular Anglican Communion churches are charged by the Continuing movement with being greatly compromised by adopting increasingly secular cultural standards and liberal approaches to theology. Many Continuing Anglicans believe that the faith of some churches in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury has become either unorthodox or un-Christian and therefore have not sought to also be in communion with them. Although the term Anglican usually refers to those churches in communion with the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury, many Continuing churches, particularly those in the United States, use the term Anglican to differentiate themselves from the Episcopal Church. Many continuing Anglicans feel that they are remaining true to historic Anglican tradition and Biblical Christianity, and it is the Episcopal Church in the United States as well as other parts of the Anglican Communion which have become heretical.
Anglicanism in general has always sought a balance between the emphases of Catholicism and Protestantism, while tolerating a range of expressions of evangelicalism and ceremony. Clergy and laity from all Anglican churchmanship traditions have been active in the formation of the Continuing movement.
While there are high church, broad church, and low church Continuing Anglicans, many Continuing churches are Anglo-Catholic with highly ceremonial liturgical practices. Others belong to a more Evangelical or low church tradition and tend to support the Thirty-nine Articles and simpler worship services. Morning Prayer, for instance, is often used instead of the Holy Eucharist for Sunday worship services, although this is not necessarily true of all low church parishes. This is often due more to the lack of a regular priest than to preference, given the importance of this Sacrament in Continuing Anglican practice.
Most Continuing churches in the United States reject the 1979 revision of the Book of Common Prayer by the Episcopal Church and use the 1928 version or prior official versions of the Book of Common Prayer for their services instead. In addition, Anglo-Catholic bodies may use the Anglican Missal or English Missal in celebrating the Eucharist.
Use of the Authorized Version of Holy Scripture (also known as the King James Version) during worship is also a common feature. This is done for many reasons, not the least of which are aesthetics, and in protest against what some claim to be liberal theology that updated versions such as the New Revised Standard Version are believed to embody.
The movement originated in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America and the Anglican Church of Canada. Related churches in other countries, such as the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia and the Church of England (Continuing), were founded later.
In 1976, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America voted to approve the ordination of women to the priesthood and to the episcopate and also provisionally adopted a new and doctrinally controversial Book of Com