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Anglicans
January 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The Anglicans are usually referred to as being part of the Church of England or other church gatherings around the world in the Anglican Communion. The group of churches come under the umbrella of the Archbishop of Canterbury
In the United States the Anglican communion is known as the Episopal Church and currently to date there are around 80 million Anglicans world wide and close to 2 million just residing in America alone.
Beyond the Uk and USA there are a lot of Anglicans that live in Nigeria, Uganda and Australia.
Where did the Anglicans come from? Well it appears that they can be traced back to the work that was done by St. Augustine in England back in the sixth century.
There are quite a number of Anglicans that refer to themselves as catholic and some that say they are protestant basically so they can let others know that they are not part of the roman catholic church but they are a succession from the apostle Peter.
Anglicans tend to stay close to things such as the Creed, the book of common prayer, the decisions of the Lambeth conferences which occurs every 10 years and the leadership of the archbishop of canterbury.
Now an interesting point is that there was some articles written by the Church of England, 39 to be exact and its in these that the Anglican tradition has been very much formed through. One of the articles goes into the doctrine of purgatory which obviously today people dont accept as being true.
Now the archbishop of caterbury doesnt carry any major authority beyond the Anglican churches in England.
There are many Anglican churches which are not in unity with the see of Canterbury, the church of England and many of the world wide Anglican community… ( Suprise, Suprise this seems to be common nowdays with small divisions of groups )
The ones that have broke away are the Anglican Catholic Church, The Anglican PRovince of CHrist the King and the United Episcopal Church of NOrth American.. apparently they divided over changes that were made to the Common prayer book, biblical authority and the Ordination of Women and Homosexuality
Yes today many are very anti Anglican churches being ok with Ordaining women and allowing homosexuals to continue their lifestyles
An example is that of Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 who was openly gay, there have been other cases such as Peter Jasper Aknola who is the arch bishop of the Church of Nigeria who has stated that the Nigerian churches are imparised communion with the Episcopal church in USA.
Now in 2004 the Lambeth commission on Communion released the Winsor report which is meant to be a document that addresses how Anglicans should handle crisis created by Gene Robinsons election and how they will move ahead with blessing gay unions in British Columbia
Something interesting about the Anglicans and a point to be made is that they read the same bible as Evangelicals and yet differ on their interpretation of scripture in regards to homosexuality and ordination of women.
This is becoming a common occurence and the reason why people dont hold to there being an absolute truth but only relative based on intepretation.
Websites
www.anglicancommunion.org
www.anglicansonline.org
www.ecusa.anglican.org
www.anglican.ca
www.united-episcopal.org
