Anglican Church in North America

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is a Christian denomination in the Anglican tradition in the United States and Canada. It also includes ten congregations in Mexico, two mission churches in Guatemala, and a missionary diocese in Cuba. Headquartered in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, the church reported more than 1,000 congregations and more than 130,000 members in 2024. The ACNA is not a member church of the Anglican Communion but has an association with a number of dioceses and leaders of the communion.

The ACNA was founded in 2009 by theological conservatives of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada, who were dissatisfied with doctrinal and social teachings in their former churches, especially regarding the position of women and the ordination of an openly gay bishop, which they considered too liberal and contradictory to traditional Anglican belief (similarly to the Reformed Episcopal Church, which had separated from the Episcopal Church in 1873). Immediately prior to 2009, these conservative Anglicans received support from a number of Anglican churches (provinces) outside of North America, especially in the Global South. Several Episcopal dioceses and many individual parishes in both Canada and the United States in the early 2000s voted to transfer their allegiance to Anglican provinces in South America and Africa. In 2009 many North American Anglican groups which had moved to the South American and African jurisdictions, however, united to form the Anglican Church in North America leading to currently established (as of 2025) movement.

The first archbishop of the ACNA was Robert Duncan, who was succeeded by Foley Beach in 2014. In June 2024, the College of Bishops elected Steve Wood as the third archbishop of the ACNA. Authority was transferred to him during the closing Eucharist at the ACNA Assembly 2024 conference in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. In October 2025, Wood became the first archbishop in the history of the denomination to face an ecclesastical presentment over allegations of sexual harassment, bullying of church staff, and plagiarism. Wood was inhibited on November 16, 2025 by Julian Dobbs, the newly appointed dean and acting archbishop of the ACNA, who subsequently faced allegations of financial misconduct including at a UK-based charity undergoing an active police investigation.

The Anglican Church in North America is a Confessing Anglican denomination, being a member of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON). Unlike the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, the ACNA is not a member province of the Anglican Communion. From its inception, the Anglican Church in North America has sought full communion with those provinces of the Anglican Communion "that hold and maintain the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church"; and maintains full communion with some of the Anglican Global South primates.

The ACNA has attempted to incorporate the full spectrum of conservative Anglicanism within Canada and the United States. As a result, it accommodates Anglo-Catholic, charismatic, and evangelical theological orientations. It also includes those who oppose and those who support the ordination of women. Women can serve as clergy members in some dioceses, while other dioceses maintain an exclusively male clergy. Women are ineligible to serve as bishops. This disagreement over the ordination of women has led to "impaired communion" among some dioceses. The ACNA defines Christian marriage exclusively as a lifelong union between a man and a woman and holds that there are only two expressions of faithful sexuality: lifelong marriage between a man and a woman or abstinence. The church opposes abortion and euthanasia.