Continuing Anglicans Plan Historic Event

Four Continuing Anglican Churches will meet in Atlanta, Georgia, October 2 to 6. Church leaders plan to sign an agreement establishing full communion (communio in sacris) among the four bodies in a move toward full unity. The Churches also will discuss common plans for mission and evangelism.

Each Church will hold mandatory business meetings and Synods, and all four will join in common worship and social occasions. The classic 1928 Book of Common Prayer is used throughout the Continuing Anglican Church in the United States, so named because member dioceses and parishes continue the doctrine and practice of the faith established in ancient times.

The four Churches and their episcopal leaders are the Anglican Church in America (Brian Marsh), the Anglican Catholic Church (Mark Haverland), the Anglican Province of America (Walter Grundorf), and the Diocese of the Holy Cross (Paul Hewett). The Joint Synods will meet at the Crowne Plaza Atlanta Perimeter at Ravinia, north Atlanta.

The four Churches have grown increasingly close in recent years, and look to the Congress of Saint Louis (1977) and The Affirmation of St. Louis as common historical and theological touchstones. The Churches are united by commitments to credal orthodoxy; to traditional Anglican worship rooted in the historic Books of Common Prayer; to the three-fold Apostolic ministry of male bishops, priests, and deacons; and to traditional morality in issues affecting the sanctity of life and human sexuality.

While all four Churches seek closer relations with other ecclesial bodies with Anglican backgrounds, they differ from most of them in a firm belief that innovations since the mid-1970s such as modernist liturgies and the purported ordination of women to Holy Orders constitute unacceptable developments that remove Anglicans from the central tradition of the Undivided Church of the first millennium.