The Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Formally founded in 1867 in London, the communion has more than 85 million members within the Church of England and other autocephalous national and regional churches in full communion. The traditional origins of Anglican doctrine are summarised in the Thirty-nine Articles (1571) and The Books of Homilies. The archbishop of Canterbury in England acts as a focus of unity, recognised as primus inter pares, but does not exercise authority in Anglican provinces outside of the Church of England. Most, but not all, member churches of the communion are the historic national or regional Anglican churches.
The Church of England is the established Christian church in England and the Crown Dependencies. It is the origin of the Anglican tradition, with foundational doctrines being contained in the Thirty-nine Articles and The Books of Homilies. Its adherents are called Anglicans.
In certain Christian denominations, holy orders are the ordained ministries of bishop, priest (presbyter), and deacon, and the sacrament or rite by which candidates are ordained to those orders. Churches recognizing these orders include the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Assyrian, Old Catholic, Independent Catholic and some Lutheran churches. Except for Lutherans and some Anglicans, these churches regard ordination as a sacrament.
The Free Church of England (FCE) is an Episcopal Church based in England. The church was founded when a number of congregations separated from the established Church of England in the middle of the 19th century.
Since the 1990s, the Anglican Communion has struggled with controversy regarding homosexuality in the church. In 1998, the 13th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops passed a resolution "rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture". However, this is not legally binding. "Like all Lambeth Conference resolutions, it is not legally binding on all provinces of the Communion, including the Church of England, though it commends an essential and persuasive view of the attitude of the Communion." "Anglican national churches in Brazil, South Africa, South India, New Zealand and Canada have taken steps toward approving and celebrating same-sex relationships amid strong resistance among other national churches within the 80 million-member global body. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has allowed same-sex marriage since 2015, and the Scottish Episcopal Church has allowed same-sex marriage since 2017." In 2017, clergy within the Church of England indicated their inclination towards supporting same-sex marriage by dismissing a bishops' report that explicitly asserted the exclusivity of church weddings to unions between a man and a woman. At General Synod in 2019, the Church of England announced that same-gender couples may remain recognised as married after one spouse experiences a gender transition. In 2023, the Church of England announced that it would authorise "prayers of thanksgiving, dedication and for God's blessing for same-sex couples."
Peter Jasper Akinola is the former Anglican Primate of the Church of Nigeria. He is also the former bishop of Abuja and Archbishop of Province III, which covered the northern and central parts of the country. When the division into ecclesiastical provinces was adopted in 2002, he became the first Archbishop of Abuja Province, a position he held until 2010. He is married and a father of six.
The Diocese of Sydney is a diocese in Sydney, within the Province of New South Wales of the Anglican Church of Australia. The majority of the diocese is evangelical and low church in tradition.
The Anglican Church of Australia, originally known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It is the second largest church in Australia after the Roman Catholic Church.
The Church of Uganda (C/U) is a member province of the Anglican Communion. Currently, there are 37 dioceses that make up the Church of Uganda, each headed by a bishop.
Apostolicae curae is the title of an apostolic letter, issued in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII, declaring all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void". The Anglican Communion made no official reply, but the archbishops of Canterbury and York of the Church of England published a response known by its Latin title Saepius officio in 1897.
Michael James Nazir-Ali is a Pakistani-born British Roman Catholic priest and former Anglican bishop. He served as the 106th Bishop of Rochester from 1994 to 2009 and, before that, as Bishop of Raiwind in Pakistan. He is currently the director of the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue. In 2021, he was received into the Catholic Church and was ordained as a priest for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on 30 October 2021, one of several Anglican bishops who converted to Catholicism that year. In 2022, he was made a monsignor. He is a dual citizen of Pakistan and Britain.
The Convergence Movement, also known as the Ancient-Future Faith, whose foundation is primarily attributed to Robert E. Webber in 1985, is an ecumenical movement. Developed as an effort among evangelical, charismatic and Pentecostal, and liturgical Christians and denominations blending their forms of worship, the movement has been defined for its predominant use of the Anglican tradition's Book of Common Prayer; use from additional liturgical sources common to Lutheranism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Catholicism have also been employed.
The Anglican realignment is a movement among some Anglicans to align themselves under new or alternative oversight within or outside the Anglican Communion. This movement is primarily active in parts of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. Two of the major events that contributed to the movement were the 2002 decision of the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada to authorise a rite of blessing for same-sex unions, and the nomination of two openly gay priests in 2003 to become bishops. Jeffrey John, an openly gay priest with a long-time partner, was appointed to be the next Bishop of Reading in the Church of England and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church ratified the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay non-celibate man, as Bishop of New Hampshire. Jeffrey John ultimately declined the appointment due to pressure.
The Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is a communion of conservative Anglican churches that formed in 2008 in response to ongoing theological disputes in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Conservative Anglicans met in 2008 at the Global Anglican Future Conference, creating the Jerusalem Declaration and establishing the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), which was rebranded as GAFCON in 2017.
The Episcopal Church (TEC), also officially the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America (PECUSA), is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion based in the United States with additional dioceses elsewhere. It is a mainline Protestant denomination and is divided into nine provinces. The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church is Sean W. Rowe.
John William Goddard is a British Roman Catholic priest and former Anglican bishop. From 2000 to 2014, he was Bishop of Burnley, a suffragan bishop in the Church of England's Diocese of Blackburn. He left the Church of England and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 2021. He was ordained deacon on Tuesday 29 March 2022 and priest on Saturday 2 April 2022 by Bishop Tom Williams in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool.
The ordination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) clergy who are open about their sexuality or gender identity; are sexually active if lesbian, gay, or bisexual; or are in committed same-sex relationships is a debated practice within some contemporary Christian denominations.
The ordination of women in the Anglican Communion has been increasingly common in certain provinces since the 1970s. Several provinces, however, and certain dioceses within otherwise ordaining provinces, continue to ordain only men. Disputes over the ordination of women have contributed to the establishment and growth of progressive tendencies, such as the Anglican realignment and Continuing Anglican movements.
In Christianity, the ordination of women has been taking place in an increasing number of Protestant and Old Catholic churches, starting in the 20th century. Since ancient times, certain churches of the Orthodox tradition, such as the Coptic Orthodox Church, have raised women to the office of deaconess. While ordination of women has been approved in many denominations, it is a very controversial and divisive topic.
Richard Henry "Harry" Goodhew AO is a retired Australian Anglican bishop who served as the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney from 1993 to 2000. Appointed as a compromise between opposing "conservative" and "liberal" factions of the Sydney Diocese, Goodhew attempted to heal rifts within the diocese while maintaining an Evangelical stance in keeping with the general ethos of the diocese.
