Bishop David Anderson on the formation of the Anglican Church in North America

December 7th, 2008

Beloved in Christ,

There is very positive news coming out of Chicago this week: the launch of the new Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as an outgrowth of the Common Cause Partnership, which will keep everyone watching for further developments. Numerous planned meetings of Primates in smaller and larger groups, sometimes with the Archbishop of Canterbury and sometimes not, and together with laity in Jamaica as the Anglican Consultative Council, will be occurring over the next six months, guaranteeing that the issues brought forward by GAFCON, the formation of the GAFCON Primates’ Council, and now ACNA, will stay in the center of attention for some time to come.

The launch of the new Anglican Church in North America, an outgrowth of the Common Cause Partners Federation, has been positioned such that there is reasonable hope that Primates of the Anglican Communion, perhaps beginning with the GAFCON Primates’ Council, might begin to recognize the entity as a province in the Anglican Communion. The Jerusalem gathering of GAFCON gave a call for such a new province to be formed, and the approval of a provisional Constitution and Canons of the ACNA is seen as the beginning of this process. the rest