The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is a Christian denomination in the Anglican tradition in the United States and Canada. It also includes ten congregations in Mexico, two mission churches in Guatemala, and a missionary diocese in Cuba. Headquartered in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, the church reported 1,005 congregations and 129,868 members in 2025. The ACNA is not a member church of the Anglican Communion but has an association with a number of provinces and leaders of the communion.
The ACNA was founded in 2009 by theological conservatives of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada, who were dissatisfied with doctrinal and social teachings in their former churches, especially regarding the position of women and the ordination of an openly gay bishop, which they considered too liberal and contradictory to traditional Anglican belief (similarly to the Reformed Episcopal Church, which had separated from the Episcopal Church in 1873). Immediately prior to 2009, these conservative Anglicans received support from a number of Anglican churches (provinces) outside of North America, especially in the Global South. Several Episcopal dioceses and many individual parishes in both Canada and the United States in the early 2000s voted to transfer their allegiance to Anglican provinces in South America and Africa. In 2009 many North American Anglican groups which had moved to the South American and African jurisdictions, however, united to form the Anglican Church in North America leading to currently established (as of 2025) movement.
The first archbishop of the ACNA was Robert Duncan, who was succeeded by Foley Beach in 2014. In June 2024, the College of Bishops elected Steve Wood as the third archbishop of the ACNA. Authority was transferred to him during the closing Eucharist at the ACNA Assembly 2024 conference in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. In October 2025, Wood became the first archbishop in the history of the denomination to face an ecclesastical presentment over allegations of sexual harassment, bullying of church staff, and plagiarism. Wood was inhibited on November 16, 2025 by Julian Dobbs, the newly appointed dean and acting archbishop of the ACNA, who subsequently faced allegations of financial misconduct including at a UK-based charity undergoing an active police investigation.
The Anglican Church in North America is a Confessing Anglican denomination, being a member of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON). Unlike the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, the ACNA is not a member province of the Anglican Communion. From its inception, the Anglican Church in North America has sought full communion with those provinces of the Anglican Communion "that hold and maintain the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church"; and maintains full communion with some of the Anglican Global South primates.
The ACNA has attempted to incorporate the full spectrum of conservative Anglicanism within Canada and the United States. As a result, it accommodates Anglo-Catholic, charismatic, and evangelical theological orientations. It also includes those who oppose and those who support the ordination of women. Women can serve as clergy members in some dioceses, while other dioceses maintain an exclusively male clergy. Women are ineligible to serve as bishops. This disagreement over the ordination of women has led to "impaired communion" among some dioceses. The ACNA defines Christian marriage exclusively as a lifelong union between a man and a woman and holds that there are only two expressions of faithful sexuality: lifelong marriage between a man and a woman or abstinence. The church opposes abortion.
History The Anglican Church in North America was founded by Anglicans who had left the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the United States over concerns that the teaching of those churches had grown more liberal. The new body charged that the two existing churches "have increasingly accommodated and incorporated un-Biblical, un-Anglican practices and teaching".
Two major events that contributed to ACNA's formation both involved human sexuality. The first was the 2002 decision of the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada to authorize a rite of blessing for same-sex unions; the second was the General Convention's ratification of the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay non-celibate man, as Bishop of New Hampshire the following year. Conservative opposition to both the Episcopal Church's 1979 edition of the Book of Common Prayer and to the ordination of women priests had led to the founding of an earlier wave of independent Anglican churches, often called the Continuing Anglican movement.
Common Cause Partnership (2004–2008)
In June 2004, the leaders of six conservative Anglican organizations—the Anglican Communion Network, the Reformed Episcopal Church, the Anglican Mission in America, Forward in Faith North America, the Anglican Province of America, and the American Anglican Council—sent a public letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, pledging "to make common cause for the gospel of Jesus Christ and common cause for a united, missionary and orthodox Anglicanism in North America". They called their alliance the Common Cause Partnership and drafted a theological statement in 2006.
In September 2007, fifty-one bishops met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to discern direction and to bind themselves constitutionally, saying they intended to found an "Anglican union". Some of the bishops present were foreign bishops, including a retired archbishop. Features of note from the result of the initial meeting include a broad sharing of clergy between the varied groups, an intention to be a "missionary" or church-planting entity, and an intention, after a brief time, to seek international organizational recognition.
Key members of the partnership participated in the June 2008 meeting of conservative Anglicans in Jerusalem, the Global Anglican Future Conference, which in turn prompted the formation of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. A final statement issued by the conference stated that: "we believe the time is now ripe for the formation of a province in North America for the federation currently known as Common Cause Partnership to be recognised by the Primates' Council" of the Anglican Communion.
The Anglican Province of America participated in the partnership until July 2008.
Establishment (2008–2009) In December 2008, the partnership met in West Chicago, Illinois, as a constitutional convention to form a "separate ecclesiastical structure in North America" for Anglicans distinct from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. At the conventions, the partnership's executive committee approved a provisional constitution and canons for the new church which were to be submitted for formal adoption at the new church's first provincial assembly.
The members of the Common Cause Partnership at the founding of the ACNA were:
The American Anglican Council The Anglican Coalition in Canada The Anglican Communion Network The Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) The Anglican Network in Canada The Convocation of Anglicans in North America Forward in Faith North America The Missionary Convocation of Kenya The Missionary Convocation of the Southern Cone The Missionary Convocation of Uganda The Reformed Episcopal Church The Reformed Communion
Inaugural assembly On June 22, 2009, delegates of the ACNA's founding bodies met at St. Vincent's Cathedral in Bedford, Texas, for an inaugural provincial assembly to ratify its constitution and canons. At this meeting, a number of major steps were taken to officially establish the new denomination, including the election of Robert Duncan, bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh, as archbishop.Conger, George. "New US Province is formed". Religious Intelligence.
Rick Warren, a leading American evangelical, and Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen, leader of the Orthodox Church in America, addressed the audience. There were nine provinces in the Anglican Communion that sent official representatives to the assembly, namely the Church of the Province of West Africa, the Church of Nigeria, the Church of Uganda, the Anglican Church of Kenya, represented by Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone, including Archbishop Gregory Venables, the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, the Church of the Province of Myanmar, the Church of the Province of South East Asia and the Church of the Province of Rwanda.
Other ecumenical observers included Bishop Walter Grundorf of the Anglican Province of America, Samuel Nafzger of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, and Bishop Kevin Vann of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth.
Leaders from three Anglican provinces, John Chew of the Church of the Province of South East Asia, Archbishop Peter Jensen of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and Mouneer Anis, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, formally announced support for the ACNA. From England, Bishop Wallace Benn and Archdeacon Michael Lawson sent greetings from the Church of England Evangelical Council.
Robert Duncan's primacy (2009–2014) Separation of the AMiA The Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) was a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America and, at the same time, maintained its status as a mission of the Church of the Province of Rwanda. This "dual citizenship" was defined by protocol among the Province of Rwanda, the Anglican Mission, and the ACNA.Protocol between Rwanda, the Anglican Mission, and the ACNA. Accessed May 21, 2010.
However, in a May 18, 2010, communiqué, the Anglican Mission announced its decision to transition from full ACNA membership to "ministry partner" status, a designation provided for in the governing structure of the ACNA, and remain a part of the Rwandan province. Reasons cited for the change were that the "dual citizenship" model had caused "significant confusion within the Anglican Mission and the ACNA regarding membership in two provinces, and more importantly, is inconsistent with the Constitution and Canons of the Province of the Anglican Church in Rwanda".The Anglican Mission's Relationship with the Anglican Church in North America, May 18, 2010. Accessed May 21, 2010.
On December 20, 2011, Archbishop Duncan announced that, due to the resignation of the majority of Anglican Mission bishops from the Province of Rwanda on December 5, the Anglican Mission had lost its "ministry partner" status with the ACNA and that most of AMiA's bishops had lost their status in the ACNA's College of Bishops.Archbishop Duncan, "A Pastoral Letter", December 20, 2011. Accessed December 21, 2011. Archbishop Onesphore Rwaje of the Anglican Church of Rwanda and Archbishop Duncan of the Anglican Church in North America issued a Joint Communiqué on April 28, 2012, to address the future of the AMiA. Meanwhile, the House of the Bishops of Rwanda decided to establish the Missionary District in North America (PEARUSA) to pursue the same work in the United States. The AMiA members were given three alternatives: join the PEARUSA, join another Anglican jurisdiction through letters dimissory, or remain in the AMiA. A deadline of August 31, 2012, was established for the clergy and the congregations of the AMiA to decide their future. On April 29, 2012, Archbishop Henri Isingoma expressed his official approval for the temporary admission of the AMiA at the Anglican Church of Congo until its future was clarified. Bishop Chuck Murphy, of the AMiA, expressed his will that the fracture between the AMiA and the ACNA could be solved in an answer letter to Archbishop Duncan, on September 8, 2012.
Foley Beach's primacy (2014–2024)