Explore Authentic Faith

Anglicans are professing Christians, in fact, the third largest Christian denomination in the world behind Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Though the Anglican Church emerges from England (Anglo-'of the English'), by far most Anglicans in the world live in Africa. One thing that makes the Anglican reformation unique is we embrace both our Protestant and Catholic heritage. Some see us as reformed Catholics, some as “via media” (middle way), and we have a vibrant charismatic tradition. The Anglican Church did not begin with Henry VIII wanting a divorce; we existed in Celtic traditions since the second of third centuries as part of the "one, holy, catholic, apostolic" church. We celebrate our Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. We separated from the Roman Catholic church in the 1500s yet share a common history. We are biblically-sound, based on the authority of the Bible, and we contend for the faith “once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.” (Jude 3) The Three Creeds are guardrails on biblical theology.

When our country was forming and we were heading into war with England, and having a 'Church of England' in your community was not a safe identity. The American branch of the Church of England adopted the name Protestant Episcopal Church in the early 1780s, and then formally under the name The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America in 1789. The name The Episcopal Church (TEC) was officially recognized in 1967. The term Episcopal is refers to our ecceliastical structure (deacons, priests, bishops). TEC remains part of the worldwide Anglican Communion in connection with Canterbury and the Church of England.

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) came into being in 2009 following widespread concerns globally regarding a theological drift by away from historic and biblical orthodoxy of several Anglican Provinces including the TEC. Both TEC and the ACNA are part of historic Anglicanism, but ACNA is connected into the broader global Anglican tradition through Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) along with several other Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFC) provinces. GAFCON is a global historic movement, representing the majority of Anglicans around the world, guarding Christian orthodoxy, raising up faithful leaders and churches, generating missional resources, and maintaining the historic Anglican biblical faith for the glory of God and His Kingdom! 

The 1880 Congress of Milan heavily damaged western Deaf education by banning sign language in favor of "oralism"—forcing deaf students to attempt to learn speech and lip-reading. This shifted U.S. schools toward oral-only training, caused Deaf teachers to lose their jobs and stigmatized American Sign Language for decades. This infamous gathering of educators clearly had an devastating impact on the Deaf Community educationally and socially. Like any oppressed linguistic-cultural group, there were many heroic Deaf men and women who passed on the heart-language of ASL in churches and Deaf Clubs who were positive role-models for deaf young people. This helped keep the culture alive. The churches, including chaplains at the Schools for the Deaf were significant allies in this long struggle for identity and opportunity. Banning signing had devastating effects, and is still a bias in many places, but this was not the primary reason for the v

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