Anglican Catholic Church
| Anglican Catholic Church | |
|---|---|
ACC coat of arms
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| Classification | Continuing Anglican |
| Orientation | Anglo-Catholic |
| Polity | Episcopal |
| Associations | Intercommunion with Anglican Province of Christ the King, United Episcopal Church of North America |
| Region | United States, Canada, Latin America, United Kingdom, Haiti, Southern Africa, The Congo, South Sudan, and Colombia |
| Origin | 1977 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. |
| Separated from | the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada |
| Congregations | 112 (Worldwide) |
| Members | 10,000 (Worldwide) |
The Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) is a body of Christians in the continuing Anglican movement, which is separate from the Anglican Communion centered on the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The continuing Anglican movement and the Anglican Catholic Church grew out of the 1977 Congress of St. Louis. The congress was held in response to the Episcopal Church's revision of the Book of Common Prayer, which organizers felt abandoned a true commitment to both scripture and historical Anglicanism. The decision to allow the ordination of women was one part of a larger theological position opposed by the Congress. As a result of the Congress, various Anglicans separated from the Episcopal Church and formed the "Anglican Catholic Church" in order to continue the Anglican tradition as they understood it. Its adherents have therefore claimed that this church is the true heir of the Church of England in the United States.
The Congress's statement of principles (the "Affirmation of St. Louis") summarized the new church's reason for being as follows: "…the Anglican Church of Canada and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, by their unlawful attempts to alter Faith, Order and Morality (especially in their General Synod of 1975 and General Convention of 1976), have departed from Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church."
In January 1978, four bishops (Charles D. Doren, James O. Mote, Robert Morse and Francis Watterson) were consecrated. What had provisionally been called the Anglican Church in North America (Episcopal), eventually divided. The Canadian parishes formed the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, and American parishes formed three separate bodies, the Anglican Catholic Church, the United Episcopal Church of North America and the Diocese of Christ the King. In 1984 the five dioceses of the Church of India (CIPBC) were received by the Anglican Catholic Church and constituted as its second province, but they rescinded communion in 2014 over issues of primacy between the provincial archbishops, John Augustine and Mark D. Haverland.
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