Anglican Catholic Church


The Anglican Catholic Church, also known as the Anglican Catholic Church , is a body of Christians in the continuing Anglican movement, which is separate from the Anglican Communion. This denomination is separate from the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia and the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada.
The continuing Anglican movement, including the Anglican Catholic Church, grew out of the 1977 Congress of St. Louis. Within historic Anglicanism the ACC sees itself as "rooted in a Catholic stream of faith and practice that embraces Henrician Catholicism, the theological method of Hooker and the Carolines, the piety and learning of Andrewes, the recovering liturgical practice of the Non-Jurors, the Oxford Movement, through the Ritualists, to modern Anglo-Catholicism."

Name

"Anglican Catholic Church" had previously been considered as a possible alternative name for the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA, which is commonly called the "Episcopal Church". What had provisionally been called the Anglican Church in North America at the Congress of St. Louis was renamed the Anglican Catholic Church at the constitutional assembly in Denver, 18–21 October 1978. The name was registered with the US Patent Office in 1979.
According to the church, Anglican in this context simply means "English", while Catholic indicates that the church sees itself as part of the universal undivided church.

History

The Congress of St. Louis was held in response to the Episcopal Church's revision of the Book of Common Prayer, which organizers felt abandoned a true commitment to both scripture and historical Anglicanism. The decision to allow the ordination of women was one part of a larger theological position opposed by the congress. As a result of the congress, various Anglicans separated from the Episcopal Church and formed the "Anglican Catholic Church" to continue the Anglican tradition as they understood it. Its adherents have therefore claimed that this church is the true heir of the Church of England in the United States.
The congress's statement of principles summarized the new church's reason for being as follows:
In January 1978, four bishops were consecrated. The new church continued to appeal to disaffected Episcopalians to join. The Anglican Catholic Church created the missionary diocese of the Caribbean and New Granada in 1982, and consecrated Justo Pastor Ruiz, a former Episcopal priest, its first bishop.
Questions over jurisdiction and authority caused the church to be eventually divided. The Canadian parishes formed the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, and American parishes formed three separate bodies, the Anglican Catholic Church, the United Episcopal Church of North America and the Diocese of Christ the King. In 1981, the Anglican Catholic Church had 8 dioceses and a missionary district, each with their own bishop, with around 200 congregations in 38 states. The number of members was estimated to be between 10,000 and 20,000 persons. In 1983, a statement of unity led to the coalescence of the Anglican Catholic Church. Those opposed to the newly organized church and the adoption of the Constitution and Canons that were drafted in 1978 in Dallas, left with Bishop Robert Harvey of the Diocese of the Southwest, among whom was Fr. Lester Kinsolving. In 1984 a portion of the Anglican Episcopal Church of North America which had not previously merged with the American Episcopal Church, including the bishops Walter Hollis Adams, Thomas Kleppinger, and Robert G. Wilkes, merged with the ACC to become the non-geographical Diocese of St. Paul. In 1986, Adams and some congregations left the ACC and reconstituted the Anglican Episcopal Church of North America.
In 1988 the church reported 12,000 members, with 200 parishes and priests, in the United States. Worldwide membership included an additional 8,000 members. In addition to the eight dioceses in the United States, there were missionary dioceses in Australia, South Africa, Columbia, and the United Kingdom. At the 1989 Provincial Synod, Archbishop Louis Falk proposed that the Anglican Catholic Church become a worldwide traditional alternative to the Anglican Communion. In 1990, the ACC was reported to have 10 dioceses, 14 bishops and 200 U.S. congregations serving 20,000 people.
Due to resistance to aspects of Falk's plan, in 1991 a number of parishes left the Anglican Catholic Church to merge with the American Episcopal Church and form the Anglican Church in America, and Falk left the ACC to become primate of the newly formed Traditional Anglican Communion. In 1997 additional parishes and five bishops left and formed the Holy Catholic Church.
Since 1990 the Anglican Catholic Church has expanded to six continents and nearly two dozen countries, including the Americas, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Africa, so that today the Anglican Catholic Church has over 250 parish churches and missions worldwide, and at the end of 2015 the membership of the Original Province was counted as 30,711. Worldwide mission and development is done through the St. Paul Mission Society, which was founded to "provide funding, personnel, and other forms of support for domestic and international missions," and to assist in "the amelioration, relief, and assistance of persons and communities distressed by natural or man-made events or disasters or by adverse social or political situations." Based in the US, the main focus of the Society is in the developing world. At Provincial Synod, October 2007, Wilson Garang and his Diocese of Aweil in Sudan were received into the Anglican Catholic Church. In 2015, the number of ACC dioceses in South Africa grew to four. At the 24th Provincial Synod, in September 2021, a new province, the province of South Africa, was canonically erected. In 2024, the ACC expanded into Tanzania. Archbishop Haverland intalled Bp. Kutta as the first ACC bishop in Tanzania on September 15, 2024.
In October 2005 Mark Haverland of Athens, Georgia, replaced John Vockler, who was in charge from 2001 to 2005, as archbishop and metropolitan. In 2017 the ACC signed the Atlanta Concordat with the Anglican Church in America, the Anglican Province of America, and the Diocese of the Holy Cross forming the "G4." At the Provincial Synod in September 2021, the Diocese of the Holy Cross voted to join the ACC as a non-geographical diocese.
In January 2025, the Anglican Catholic Church received international media attention when it decided to remove Fr. Calvin Robinson from active ministry. This decision followed a controversial gesture made by Robinson at the 2025 National Pro-Life Summit. Robinson had moved to the United States in September 2024 to serve as Priest-in-Charge of an ACC parish in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The ACC released a statement indicating that Robinson's license was revoked due to his engagement in online trolling and other behaviors deemed incompatible with the priesthood. Following extensive media coverage, the ACC issued a follow-up statement clarifying that Robinson had not been "defrocked" in the sense of being deposed from the priesthood, but was at liberty to seek alternative ecclesial membership.

Ecumenical relations and relations with other Anglican jurisdictions

ACC-APCK-UECNA-ACA

From 2005 to 2011, the ACC and the United Episcopal Church of North America explored opportunities for greater cooperation and the possibility of achieving organic unity. On May 17, 2007, Archbishop Haverland signed an inter-communion agreement negotiated with the United Episcopal Church of North America. In July, Archbishop Haverland published a statement on church unity, calling on UECNA and the Anglican Province of Christ the King to join him in building "full organic unity." Bishop Presley Hutchens of the ACC addressed delegates to the UECNA convention of October 2008 and discussed the possibility of uniting the ACC and UECNA. Although well received at the time, there was a feeling among many of the delegates that the proposal was being rushed, and that no proper consideration was being given to the theological, constitutional, and canonical issues thrown up by the move. In January 2009 one bishop from each jurisdiction consecrated three suffragan bishops in St. Louis, intending that they serve all three jurisdictions. Moves towards unity with the Anglican Catholic Church were referred for further discussion and subsequently stalled in 2011 by the decision of UECNA to remain an independent jurisdiction.
On August 1, 2025, the ACC ended intercommunion with the UECNA due to doctrinal differences around the Affirmation of St. Louis and the Anglican Formularies.
The ACA voted to merge with the ACC on June 6, 2025.

GAFCON and ACNA

In 2008, Archbishop Mark Haverland published a response to the 2008 meeting of Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem, which states "GAFCON produced a now widely published statement which does not address the innovations that led to the formation of our own Continuing Church in 1976-8: namely the "ordination of women," a new and radical Prayer Book, and a pro-abortion policy." The response concludes:
We call upon all self-described Anglicans to reject clearly and decisively all of the liturgical, moral, and theological errors of recent years, beginning with the ordination of women.  We call upon all self-described Anglicans to return to the central Tradition of Christendom and to recognize that evangelical and neo-Pentecostalist Protestantism is no safe haven.  We welcome GAFCON as a small step in the right direction.  But we confidently predict that the ambiguities and silences that characterize its statement will lead rapidly to fragmentation and confusion without any countervailing theological achievement.  The only issue addressed in a somewhat adequate fashion by GAFCON is homosexuality. Far more is at stake.
In 2009, Archbishop Mark Haverland published a letter to Bishop Robert Duncan, concerning the invitation to participate in the inaugural provincial assembly of the Anglican Church in North America on June 22–25, 2009. The letter indicates that the differences between the ACC and ACNA are "first principles" which do not allow unity, but offers a dialogue in the future if those "first principles" are resolved.
In December 2012, Archbishop Mark Haverland, together with the Rt. Rev. Paul Hewett, the Most Rev. Walter Grundorf, the Most Rev. Brian Marsh, and the Most Rev. Peter D. Robinson published a joint open letter to ACNA titled "An Appeal from the Continuing Anglican Churches to the ACNA and Associated Churches" which called for ACNA to re-examine the post-1976 innovations they have accepted:
We call upon ACNA to heed our call to return to your classical Anglican roots.We commend to your prayerful attention the Affirmation of Saint Louis, which we firmly believe provides a sound basis for a renewed and fulfilled Anglicanism on our continent. We urge you to heed the call of Metropolitan Jonah, whose concerns we share. Anglicanism in North America cannot be both united and orthodox on a partially revolutionized basis. We call upon you to repudiate firmly any claim to alter doctrine or order against the consensus of the Catholic and Orthodox world. We call upon you to embrace the classical Prayer Book tradition.