Sally Stuart’s Christian Writer’s Marketplace blogspot reports today (Monday, June 22, 2009) that evangelical, catholic and charismatic Anglicans are uniting as a new denomination, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

Some history: The Anglican Church (the Church of England) started with King Henry VIII. The king needed an heir, his queen couldn’t give him a son, so he decided he needed a new wife. Unfortunately for that plan, the Catholic clergy wouldn’t comply. So in the Act of Supremacy, Henry declared himself the head of the state church in England. Problem solved! Sort of.

Theologically, the Anglican Church was birthed in tolerance and compromise (compromise can be a good thing!). It was Catholic in forms and liturgy and Protestant in doctrine. Wherever Englishmen sailed around the world, clergy and missionaries planted Anglican churches, both for Englishmen and for the people of the lands where the British flag flew.

For awhile Anglican churches dotted the landscape of the American colonies. The crown wanted to establish a state church in the colonies — the Anglican Church — as the one and only state-sponsored religion. This was the European model, followed by almost all the European countries. In the end, the colonies revoled against usurptation of their religious freedom (and against taxes without representation!). We fought and won the Revolutionary War and established a country with no state church, but with freedom of religion (and conscience).

This forced Anglicans in the new United States to make some changes. They had to gave up their aspirations to be a state church (with all the perks of state patronage). They also got a new name that woudn’t sound like they were trying to sneak in a state church; they called themselves The Protestant Episcopal Church (later shortened to The Episcopal Church).

In case you’re wondering, “Episcopal” means having bishops oversea geographical areas, as opposed to each congregation being its own boss.

Vigorous Anglican churches were established in Africa, Asia and South America and have been growing well for generations. As a result, the Anglican Communion (the fellowship of Anglican churches, with the Archbishop of Canterbury as their titular head) is an ethnically diverse, vibrant community indeed.

But in the United States, for the past few decades the Episcopal Church (also part of the worldwide Anglican Communion) has been getting more and more “liberal” and less and less tolerant of historic Christian understandings. As a result, “conservative” groups have been leaving the Episcopal Church, each with its own particular reason for leaving.

The reasons have varied: scriptural authority; women’s ordination; homosexuality; ordaining homosexuals. Sometimes the churches left alone, sometimes in groups; sometimes to establish new denominations, sometimes to recruit theologically orthodox bishops from Africa or Asia because their own bishops were so hostile to their concerns.

The churches that left ECUSA would say that they stayed true to the original Anglican idea, but the ECUSA left them.

Until recently, these groups have been unable to unite. However, the new ACNA denomination is setting aside differences that have splintered them in the past. Soon it hopes to eventually have its own bishop and be recognized as a legitimate partner in the world-wide Anglican communion.

Some worldviews thinking: If you look at things from a worldviews perspective, it’s clear that the controversies facing the ECUSA are far bigger than whatever the hot-button doctrinal issues grab the headlines. For some time, major figures in the ECUSA, like Bishop John Spong, have been publicly denying every point in the Apostles’ Creed, starting with (incredibly enough) the existence of God!

In other words, if your starting point is anti-theism (as with Spong), nothing else that’s uniquely Christian (like Christ dying for our sins) will make any sense. Spong’s religion (whatever it is) has all the Christian trimmings (liturgy, robes, words), but denies the heart of biblical worldview — and the heart of the gospel.