Editing Continuing Anglican movement (section)

{{Short description|Groups outside the Anglican Communion}}
{{for|the Confessing Anglican movement|Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans}}
{{Anglicanism}}
{{Use mdy dates|cs1-dates=l|date=May 2024}}

The '''Continuing Anglican movement''', also known as the '''Anglican Continuum''', encompasses a number of Christian churches, principally based in North America, that have an [[Anglican]] identity and tradition but are not part of the [[Anglican Communion]]. These churches generally believe that traditional forms of Anglican faith and worship have been unacceptably revised or abandoned within some churches of the Anglican Communion, but that they, the Continuing Anglicans, are preserving or "continuing" both Anglican lines of [[apostolic succession]] and historic Anglican belief and practice.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Clendenin |first=George |title=First Session: Thursday October 5, Anglican Joint Synods Banquet |date=October 5, 2017 |access-date=April 11, 2023 |format=MP4 video |via=Dropbox |url= https://www.dropbox.com/s/54tgimofs32krgy/Session%201%20Full.mp4?e=1&dl=0 |url-status=live |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20240516025712/https://cuindlis.org/webarchive/1st_Session,_Thu._Oct._5;_Clendenin,_George;_2017_Anglican_Joint_Synods_Banquet.mp4 |archive-date=May 16, 2024}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last=Doenecke |first=Justus D. |title=Schism in Perspective: A Comparative View |magazine=Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church |date=1986 |volume=55 |issue=4 |pages=321–325 |jstor=42974144}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Vecsey |first=George |date=November 25, 1978 |title=Breakaway bishop says he's 'loyalist': Denies he's a male chauvinist; church has 5 dioceses; service in borrowed church deposition is defended |url= https://www.proquest.com/docview/123580876 |work=The New York Times |pages=26 |id={{ProQuest|123580876}} }}</ref>

The term was first used in 1948 to describe members of the Church of England in [[Nandyal]] who refused to enter the emerging [[Church of South India]], which united the Anglican [[Church of India, Burma and Ceylon]] with the Reformed (Presbyterian and Congregationalist) and Methodist churches in India.<ref name="WMC2020">{{cite web |title=Church of South India |date=November 9, 2019 |url= https://worldmethodistcouncil.org/member-churches/name/india-church-of-south-india-bangalore-episcopal-area/ |publisher=[[World Methodist Council]] |access-date=June 25, 2020 |quote=The Church of South India is a United Church that came into existence on 27 September 1947. The churches that came into the union were the Anglican Church, the Methodist Church, and the South India United Church (a union in 1904 of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches). Later the Basel Mission Churches in South India also joined the Union. The Church of South India is the first example in church history of the union of Episcopal and non-Episcopal churches, and is thus one of the early pioneers of the ecumenical movement. The CSI strives to maintain fellowship with all those branches of the church which the uniting churches enjoyed before the union. It is a member of the World Methodist Council, the Anglican Consultative Council, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Council for World Mission, and the Association of Missions and Churches in South West Germany.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Brown |first=L. W. |title=Three Years of Church Union |url= https://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/churchman/065-02_082.pdf}}</ref> Today, however, the term usually refers to the churches that descend from the [[Congress of St. Louis]], at which the foundation was laid for a new Anglican church in North America and which produced the Affirmation of St. Louis, which opens with the title "The Continuation of Anglicanism".<ref name="affirmation" /> Some church bodies that pre-date the Congress of St. Louis (such as the [[Free Church of England]] and [[Reformed Episcopal Church]]), or are of more recent origin (such as the [[Church of England (Continuing)]] and [[Independent Anglican Church Canada Synod]]), have referred to themselves as "Continuing Anglican" as they are traditional in belief and practice, though did not emerge subsequent to the Congress of St. Louis. As these bodies are members of the [[Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans]] (GAFCON), they are referred to as "[[Confessing Movement|Confessing Anglican churches]]".<ref>{{cite web |title=Letter to the Churches |url=https://anglicanchurch.net/letter-to-the-churches-gafcon-assembly-2018/ |publisher=[[Anglican Church in North America]] |access-date=3 February 2025 |language=English |date=22 June 2018|quote=the Primates Council should continue to recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions.}}</ref>

The churches defined as "Continuing Anglican" are historically separate from [[Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans|GAFCON]] that contains Confessing Anglican denominations such as the [[Anglican Church in North America]],<ref>{{Cite web |date=December 2, 2009 |title=Archbishop Haverland's Message on GAFCON |url= https://www.anglicancatholic.org/gafcon.html |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20091202063056/http://www.anglicancatholic.org/gafcon.html |archive-date=December 2, 2009 |access-date=April 11, 2023}}</ref> though in literature GAFCON members have been referred to as "Continuing Anglican" in the sense that they seek to embody "conservative Anglicanism" or "Traditional Anglicanism".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Davis |first1=Michael Warren |title=Anglican Church in North America |url=https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/10/archbishop-anglican-church-north-america.html |publisher=The Imaginative Conservative |access-date=2 February 2025 |language=English |date=19 October 2014|quote=The ACNA is the largest single umbrella organization within the Continuing Anglican Movement, a diverse and incongruous collection of churches who have broken from The Episcopal Church, USA.}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last1=Sabisky |first1=Andrew |title=Conservative Anglicans are close to despair. Is the CofE about to split? |url=https://catholicherald.co.uk/conservative-anglicans-are-close-to-despair-is-the-cofe-about-to-split/ |publisher=[[Catholic Herald]] |access-date=2 February 2025 |date=20 July 2017|quote=The orthodox either went to the various Continuing Anglican churches – most notably the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)}}</ref>