Anglican day of reckoning coming

By Julia Duin
Feb. 8, 2010

On Wednesday, there wil be an important vote in London on whether the Brits will side with a nascent would-be 39th North American Anglican province that has split with the U.S. Episcopal Church.

The General Synod, the governing body for the 27-million-member Church of England (on paper that's who belongs but real attendance is only a few million per Sunday) will vote whether to align themselves with the 100,000-member Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). That is about one-tenth the membership of the U.S. Episcopal Church. Some Canadian Anglicans are part of the ACNA as well. The London Times explains a bit of the background here.

The ACNA, meeting last June in Bedford, Texas, adopted a constitution and appointed its first archbishop (Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh) to head the new church, which is constituted of former Episcopalians who left the denomination over issues of biblical authority, which had been simmering since the late 1960s, and the 2003 consecration of V. Gene Robinson as the denomination's first openly gay bishop. Several Anglican provinces have signified they will recognize the ACNA but the big kahuna is the Church of England. Once the ACNA gets recognized by enough of the current 38 provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion as a legitimate Anglican body in North America, it's only a matter of time before they supplant the Episcopal Church, which at this moment claims it is the sole approved Anglican presence north of the Mexican border. the rest