Leaders who defected from the Episcopal Church completed the formation of a conservative branch of Anglicanism in North America earlier this week by ratifying the constitution of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

The document was signed during the ACNA Inaugural Provincial Assembly, which drew some 800 participants to Bedford, Texas, this week. Pittsburg Bishop Robert Duncan, who was installed as the group's first archbishop, said the formation of ACNA is part of a "reformation" marked by a return to orthodox Christianity within the 77 million-member Anglican Communion and beyond.

"Our God is up to something very big, both with us and with others," Duncan said. "The Father truly is drawing His children together again in a surprising and sovereign move of the Holy Spirit. He is again re-forming His church."

The formation of ACNA, said to represent some 100,000 Anglicans in 700 parishes, is the latest response to liberal moves within the Episcopal Church that culminated with the ordination of an openly gay bishop in 2003. Since then, roughly 200 congregations have left what had been the only U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion, ACNA leaders said. Most of the defectors, including several charismatic parishes, have aligned with conservative dioceses in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America, where Anglicanism is experiencing the most growth.

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Leaders said the formation of ACNA relieves North American congregations from having to seek oversight overseas. While drafting its constitution, ACNA worked with bishops who have taken in the defecting parishes and dioceses to develop protocols for those congregations to ultimately align with the new North American province.

"Each time province's table will be a little different, but the ultimate goal is for these protectorates to end and for all of the churches to become full members and fully participating in the Anglican Church in North America as their province," said Phil Ashey, who helped draft the ACNA constitution and serves as chief operating officer for the American Anglican Council, a founding member of ACNA. "I think most of them are looking for North American bishops [who are] closer to home and closer therefore to their immediate needs and concerns."

The new Anglican province replaces the Anglican Communion Network, one of several groups that emerged in the last five years to unite breakaway Episcopal churches. ACNA will combine eight diverse networks, including groups that hold opposing views on women's ordination. Ashey said ACNA will not impose one position on divisive issues such as women's ordination, but that remains a thorny issue for the new church. Duncan said women may be ordained as deacons and priests within the ACNA, but not as bishops because the rest of the Anglican Communion sees ordination of women as bishops as "a sad and arrogant American approach," according to USA Today.

"The bishop is the symbol of the diocese and putting someone other dioceses do not recognize as capable of holding the office in the post is divisive in the international church," Duncan said.

Ashey noted that the new constitution emphasizes evangelism and missions, characteristics he says the Episcopal Church neglected. "In our articles, we ... talk about extending the kingdom of God by so presenting Jesus by the power of the Spirit that people would come to know Him so everyone will come to know Him as Lord," he said. "That language is exactly the kind of language the Episcopal Church has not only refused to affirm when presented to it at general convention, but which the Episcopal Church has repudiate by its actions and its focus on everything but leading people into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit."

Although detractors believe the new group will splinter apart because it comes out of a schism, Jeff Walton, director of Anglican Action for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, said there are positive signs that it will survive as a viable expression of Anglicanism in North America. "What we're seeing is this body come together based on a number of disparate groups, of different theologies and different experiences that are coming together for the first time and uniting rather than dividing," Walton said. "I think that's pretty positive." [charismamag.com, 6/23/09]

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