Congress of St. Louis in the context of "Albert J. duBois"

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⭐ Core Definition: Congress of St. Louis

The September 14–16, 1977 Congress of St. Louis was an international gathering of nearly 2,000 Anglicans in St. Louis, Missouri, united in their rejection of theological changes introduced by the Anglican Church of Canada and by the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (then known as Protestant Episcopal Church USA) in its General Convention of 1976. Anglicans who attended this congress felt that these changes amounted to foundational alterations in the American and Canadian provinces of the Anglican Communion and meant that they had "departed from Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church." Theological liberalism, financial support for political action groups, participation in the Consultation on Church Union (COCU), revisions to the Book of Common Prayer, and the ordination of women priests were not the only reasons for the split, but they were seen by these churches as evidence of the mainline church's departure from Anglican orthodoxy. The idea for a congress originated with the Reverend Canon Albert J. duBois in 1973 in preparation for the Louisville General Convention of the Episcopal Church. Canon duBois and the group called "Anglicans United" toured parishes in advance of the Congress to garner support. In 1976, the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen, an organization founded in 1973 as a coordinating agent for laypeople and clergy concerned about the breakdown of faith and order within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, met to organize a Church Congress in St. Louis the following year.

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Congress of St. Louis in the context of Continuing Anglican movement

The Continuing Anglican movement, also known as the Anglican Continuum, encompasses a number of Christian churches, principally based in North America, that have an Anglican identity and tradition but are not part of the Anglican Communion. These churches generally believe that traditional forms of Anglican faith and worship have been unacceptably revised or abandoned within some churches of the Anglican Communion, but that they, the Continuing Anglicans, are preserving or "continuing" both Anglican lines of apostolic succession and historic Anglican belief and practice.

The term was first used in 1948 to describe members of the Church of England in Nandyal who refused to enter the emerging Church of South India, which united the Anglican Church of India, Burma and Ceylon with the Reformed (Presbyterian and Congregationalist) and Methodist churches in India. Today, however, the term usually refers to the churches that descend from the 1977 Congress of St. Louis, at which the foundation was laid for a new Anglican church in North America and which produced the Affirmation of St. Louis, which opens with the title "The Continuation of Anglicanism". Some church bodies that pre-date the Congress of St. Louis (such as the Free Church of England and the Reformed Episcopal Church), or are of more recent origin (such as the Church of England (Continuing) and Independent Anglican Church Canada Synod), have referred to themselves as "Continuing Anglican" as they are traditional in belief and practice, though did not emerge subsequent to the Congress of St. Louis. As these bodies are members of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON), they are referred to as "Confessing Anglican churches".

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