Convocation of Anglicans in North America

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The Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) is an Anglican body in the United States comprised primarily of U.S. Anglican and Episcopal churches that have disaffiliated from the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA). CANA was initially a missionary initiative of the Anglican Church of Nigeria that ministered to Nigerian Anglicans living and working in the United States, an area in which previously the only ministry of the Anglican Communion had been through The Episcopal Church, which also welcomed Nigerian Anglicans in the United States. CANA has grown as part of the broader Anglican realignment.^[1]

1 Leadership
2 Beliefs
3 Controversy regarding overlapping Anglican jurisdictions
4 Member parishes
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Leadership

In June 2006, the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, then the rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, was elected by the Anglican Church of Nigeria as the Missionary Bishop for CANA. Minns was consecrated in Abuja, Nigeria in August 2006.

In March 2007, the Rt. Rev David J. Bena, retired from his post as the Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany, became the Suffragan Bishop for CANA.^[2]

[edit] Beliefs

CANA is more theologically conservative than ECUSA, in particular on how to interpret the Bible, as demonstrated in clashes over human sexuality and marriage that have occurred between ECUSA and member churches that have disaffiliated to join CANA.

The following excerpts were taken from the CANA Convocation's Web site FAQ.

Core Values

“

CANA is Christ-centered and outwardly focused, mission driven with an emphasis on evangelism and discipleship, church planting, and a passion for reaching and serving the least, the last and the lost.^[3]

”

Interpretation of The Bible

“

CANA holds to the traditional formularies of Anglican Christianity. It adheres to "the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacrament and Discipline of the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as the Lord has commanded in his holy word and as the same are received as taught in the Book of Common Prayer and the ordinal of 1662 and in the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion" (quotation from the Constitution of the Anglican Church of Nigeria).^[4]

”

Human Sexuality

CANA "believes that Marriage, by Divine institution is a lifelong and exclusive union and partnership between one man and one woman."^[4]

[edit] Controversy regarding overlapping Anglican jurisdictions

CANA, as a missionary iniative of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, has been accused of breaking the Anglican tradition of having ecclesiastial jurisdictions that do not geographically overlap.^[5] In particular, CANA's Anglican District of Virginia covers the same territory as The Episcopal Church's Dioceses of Virginia and Southern Virginia. The Lambeth Commission on Communion (appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury), in the Windsor Report (2004) called on "bishops who...intervene in provinces other than their own" to express regret for the consequences of their actions and to effect a moratorium on further interventions.^[6] While Anglican churches generally do not establish jurisdiction in areas already served by other provinces within the with the worldwide Anglican Communion, there are other Anglican groups (not affiliated with the Anglican Communion), such as the Anglican Province of America and Reformed Episcopal Church, which overlap with dioceses and provinces of The Episcopal Church.

[edit] Member parishes

In December 2006, Truro Church, The Falls Church, Church of the Apostles in Fairfax, and other ECUSA churches in Northern Virginia voted to leave the ECUSA Diocese of Virginia, following a process called "40 Days of Discernment"^[7], and affiliate with CANA. The departing churches took almost 5,000 parishioners with them.^[8] These churches formed an association within CANA called the Anglican District of Virginia.^[9] In January 2007, clergy of the the departing churches were "inhibited" (barred from duty)^[10], and the churches' ownership of their property was legally disputed by the ECUSA Diocese of Virginia and the national church after the diocese declared the property of the churches to be "abandoned."^[11]

However, these were not the first churches in Virginia to affiliate with CANA: Church of the Messiah, an ECUSA Diocese of Southern Virginia parish in Chesapeake, Virginia, in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, voted to leave ECUSA and move to CANA in October 2006.^[12]

In February 2007, St. Andrew's-in-the-Pines, a 350-member ECUSA congregation in Atlanta, Georgia voted to leave the ECUSA Diocese of Atlanta and join CANA.^[13] The group of parishioners that voted to leave later dropped its claims to parish property and reorganized as the Anglican Church of Fayette County. ^[14]

In March 2007, Grace Church and St. Stephen's in Colorado Springs, Colorado disaffiliated with the ECUSA Diocese of Colorado to join CANA. ^[15]