Anglican Church in America
The Anglican Church in America is a traditional church in the USA that has split off from the American Episcopal Church . The church was created in 1991 through the merger of the American Episcopal Church and parts of the Anglican Catholic Church , and its first head was Louis Falk .
Members and congregations of what is now the Anglican Church in America separated from the Episcopal Church in the USA in 1977 after the latter admitted women to the priesthood in 1976 and initiated a revision process for the Book of Common Prayer (a liturgical book ) that was to be the result of the liturgical reform movement and resulted in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. She still uses the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church in the USA from 1928 and rejects both the ordination of the homosexual Gene Robinson as bishop and participation in various ecumenical bodies. She invokes what she calls the traditional Anglican Church lineage , despite not being in full communion with the Church of England , something that is considered by many to be an essential characteristic of an Anglican Church. It forms part of the Traditional Anglican Communion .
structure
The Anglican Church in America is divided into 6 dioceses :
- The Diocese of Eastern U.S. - Alabama , Delaware , the District of Columbia , Florida , Georgia , Kentucky , Maryland , Mississippi , New Jersey , North Carolina , Ohio , Pennsylvania , South Carolina , Tennessee , from Virginia and West Virginia .
- The Missouri Valley Diocese - Illinois , Indiana , Iowa , Kansas , Michigan , Minnesota , Missouri , Nebraska , North Dakota , South Dakota, and Wisconsin .
- The Diocese of the Southwest - Arkansas , Colorado , Louisiana , New Mexico , Oklahoma, and Texas .
- The Diocese of the West - Alaska , Arizona , California , Hawaii , Idaho , Montana , Nevada , Oregon , Utah , Washington, and Wyoming .
- The Diocese of Northeast - Connecticut , Maine , Massachusetts , New Hampshire , New York , Rhode Island, and Vermont .
- The Diocese of Central America - including all Latin American countries
The sprawling dioceses are characterized by a very low density of parishes. The Diocese of Eastern US has only one parish in the states of Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey or Pennsylvania, none at all in Delaware, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia or in the capital district (District of Columbia), five in Florida, two in North Carolina, for a total of 13 parishes in an area of 104 million people and a size roughly equivalent to France, Germany and Spain combined. For comparison, the Episcopal Church has 36 dioceses in the same area, all of which have at least 13 parishes, but many have several hundred parishes.