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The split resulted from the decision of the Episcopal Church to ordain women in the 1970s, to create a new Book of Common Prayer, and to revise some of its standards on sexual and marital matters.
A group of dissenting clergy and laypersons met at the St. Louis Congress in 1977, and formulated a theological statement, the Affirmation of St. Louis, which expressed a determination "to continue in the Catholic Faith, Apostolic Order, Orthodox Worship and Evangelical Witness of the traditional Anglican Church, doing all things necessary for the continuance of the same." Out of this meeting came a new church with the provisional name, Anglican Church in North America. Within three years it was to divide into these three bodies: the Anglican Catholic Church , the Anglican Province of Christ the King, and the United Episcopal Church of North America .
Other small bodies identified with the Continuing Anglican movement followed in succeeding years as controversies continued within the Episcopal Church over the ordination of women, the required use of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and more recently, over the election of an openly homosexual priest to be a bishop.
The continuing churches are generally Anglo-Catholic in approach, and their liturgies are often (but not always) more high church than low church. Most of them use the 1928 Book of Common Prayer that preceded the prayer book adopted by ECUSA in 1979, although some use other forms. The use of the Authorized Version of Holy Scripture (KJV) as opposed to modern translations is an identifying mark of most continuing churches, as is the rejection of the ordination of women.
The principles of the Affirmation of St. Louis and the thirty-nine Articles of Religion provide some basis for unity in the movement, but non-ECUSA jurisdictions are numerous and often splinter and recombine. Reports put their number at somewhere between 20 and 40, although only a few of these count more than ten parishes. Only about a half-dozen of the churches popularly called "continuing churches" can be traced back to the meeting at St. Louis. The term has become a catch-phrase for non-ECUSA Anglican groups as a whole, regardless of their actual origin and outlook.
Other bodies not in communion with Canterbury include the Reformed Episcopal Church in the United States, which left the Episcopal Church in 1873 in opposition to the advance of Anglo-Catholicism; the Free Church of EnglandThe Free Church of England is an Anglican church which separated from the established Church of England in 1844. The church was founded by evangelical clergy in Devon in response to the Anglo-Catholicism of Henry Phillpotts, the Bishop of Exeter. It was i, which was founded in 1844 for similar reasons and is now in communion with the REC; and the Charismatic Episcopal Church , which holds to a belief in Pentecostal gifts of the Holy SpiritThe Holy Spirit, from the Christian viewpoint,has a distinct function in the Trinity which, while related to God's will, is not God's will personified. The Christian and Jewish views of the Holy Spirit vary greatly. In the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) the. These churches are not generally considered to be Continuing Anglican churches, although the REC has recently moved to associate herself more closely with them.
The recent consecration of Gene RobinsonThe Right Reverend Vicki Gene Robinson (born May 29, 1947) is the ninth bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church. Robinson was elected bishop in 2003 and entered office on March 7, 2004. Prior to becoming bishop, he served as assista as ECUSA's Bishop Coadjutor of New Hampshire gave the movement a boost, but has also increased interest in other churches, in particular the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA). While it has much in common with the continuing churches, AMiA is a mission under the supervision of the Archbishop of Rwanda and the Archbishop of Southeast Asia, and thus through them claims communion with Canterbury (although not yet recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury).
Acting on an earlier promise to settle the issue of the ordination of women, AMiA recently decided against ordaining women to the priesthood. Several who were priested in ECUSA before joining AMiA remain in good standing. In general, Anglo-Catholics favorable to AMiA have been opposed to the practice while "evangelicals" (i.e. charismatics) have supported it. The older continuing churches do not approve of the ordination of women to the diaconate, a practice that AMiA allows.