Maryland: Unionville church joins ACNA

August 08, 2009
By Ron Cassie
News-Post Staff

After 25-plus years in Unionville, the Life in Jesus Church officially changed its name to Jesus Our Shepherd last Sunday. The name change is not superficial, but highlights a switch in affiliation to the new Anglican province in North America where the Rev. Philip Zampino believes the church has found a home.

Zampino, 67, a graduate of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University, founded the Life in Jesus Church, which today has just a handful of congregants. He initially formed it under the Episcopal House of Bishops as a religious community, but Zampino left the Episcopal Church U.S.A. -- and took his community with him -- in the early 1990s.

Upset over evolving Episcopal U.S.A. positions on issues such as abortion, women's ordination, homosexuality and biblical interpretation, Zampino later associated his church with the International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church. That relationship was not a good fit in the end, Zampino said recently.

So, when the Anglican Church in North America formed, he became interested in joining the new movement, which has come about largely as a result of schisms in several U.S. dioceses over decisions by the national church leadership, including the ordination of gay and female clergy.

"In the Episcopal church, for 25-30 years, small groups have been breaking off forming splinter associations and going on independently," Zampino said. "And what has finally taken place over the last several years, is that several U.S. dioceses have broken with the Episcopal Church U.S.A."

The Anglican Church in North America unites 700 Anglican parishes in 12 Anglican jurisdictions in North America into a single church, according to an ACNA press release sent out last spring after recognition by the Standing Committee of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion). The jurisdictions coming together include the Anglican Coalition in Canada, the dioceses of Fort Worth, Texas, Pittsburgh, Quincy and San Joaquin, Calif., the Anglican Mission in the Americas, the Anglican Network in Canada, the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, the Reformed Episcopal Church and several missionary initiatives.

By forming the new Anglican Church in North America and seeking recognition from African provinces, the province of the Southern Cone of South America and other Anglican provinces, the ACNA hopes to join the worldwide Anglican Communion, but separately from the Episcopal Church U.S.A. the rest