Our Anglican Relationships

The Falls Church Anglican is part of the Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic (DOMA), a diocese in the Anglican Church in North America.

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)
(from the ACNA website)

The Anglican Church in North America unites some 100,000 Anglicans in nearly 1,000 congregations across the United States and Canada into a single Church. It is a Province-in-formation in the global Anglican Communion. The Most Rev. Robert Duncan is the archbishop of the Church and bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh.

The Anglican Church in North America was initiated at the request of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCon) in June 2008 and formally recognized by the GAFCon Primates – leaders of Anglican Churches representing 70 percent of the active Anglicans globally – on April 16, 2009 after a thorough examination of the Anglican Church's leadership, organizational structure, proposed constitution and proposed canons.

To learn more about the Anglican Church in North America and what it means to be an Anglican Christian, visit the ACNA website at http://anglicanchurch.net.

What we stand for

Members of the Anglican Church in North America are in the mainstream, both globally and historically, of Christianity – the biblically-faithful way of following Jesus and being part of the “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church”. As Anglicans, this orthodoxy is defined by and centered on our church’s classic formularies – the Book of Common Prayer, including the Ordinal, and the Thirty-nine Articles – which all point back to the authority of the Holy Bible and articulate foundational principles of the Anglican tradition throughout the world. We wholeheartedly embrace the Jerusalem Declaration, the founding declaration of the global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, and the Theological Statement of the Common Cause Partnership – the precursor to the Anglican Church in North America.

The Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic (DOMA)
(from the DOMA website)

The Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic is a regional diocese of the Anglican Church in North America dedicated to reaching North America with the transforming love of Jesus Christ. The Diocese consists of 35 member churches in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C. and northeastern North Carolina. The Right Reverend John Guernsey serves as Bishop. The Diocese of the Mid-Atlantic is made up of member churches in Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC and northeastern North Carolina. For more information, visit the DOMA website at www.anglicandoma.org

Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCon)

In 2006, The Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) produced a positional paper, The Road to Lambeth, which identified a crisis of doctrine and also of leadership, observing correctly that the Anglican Communion was at a crossroads; it had to decide, without further hesitation, which way to go. One road, that of compromising Biblical truth, would lead to destruction and disunity. The other road might have its own obstacles, but it would lead to God and to life. It is this second road that has brought us to GAFCon.

Excerpt from The Way, the Truth, and the Life
Official GAFCon study resource
http://www.gafcon.org/

Many orthodox Anglican churches around the world participate in fellowship with GAFCon and are working toward the same universal truths and goals so eloquently articulated by this group of like-minded Primates in the Anglican Communion.

Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA)

Early in our process of separating from The Episcopal Church, our Senior Warden at The Falls Church Anglican at that time, Tom Wilson, gave the apt analogy of seeing CANA as a lifeboat, which has always been part of CANA's own vision—the vision being, of course, to land us on the shores of a new Anglican province. The ACNA is that shore and we have landed safely there. CANA is one of the seven “founding jurisdictions”) that helped establish the ACNA, and remains energetically committed to helping build ACNA and strengthen its position in GAFCON and the broader Anglican Communion. Through its continuing ties to the Church of Nigeria, CANA directly connects North American Anglicans to more than nineteen million Anglicans in the largest (and rapidly growing) Province of the Anglican Communion.

CANA congregations and clergy thus continue to enjoy the privileges of membership in both CANA and in the ACNA. These relationships help us understand and manage some practical issues that arise as we live in this current period of evolving ecclesiastical structures in GAFCON and the broader Anglican Communion. We retain our ties to CANA partly for that reason and also in fond and respectful memory of the saving connections it provided during a complex and difficult time.