The Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK) is one of the many churches in the Continuing Anglican movement (also called Traditional Episcopal). Our province (as well as the Anglican Catholic Church, with whom we are in full communion) traces its beginnings to the Congress of St. Louis. The Congress of St. Louis was a gathering of Episcopalians and Anglicans united in opposition to a major revision to the Prayer Book, and the accompanying theological changes in the mainline Episcopal church. The Congress produced the Affirmation of St. Louis which repudiated the mainline Episcopal church for its secularization and departure from the adherence to Holy Scripture and Tradition, among other things.
The Affirmation of St. Louis
In 1977 an international congress of nearly 2,000 Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people met in St. Louis, Missouri, united in opposition to the theological liberalization that was taking place in the Episcopal Church. The backsliding of the mainline church was evident: Bishop James Pike wrote against the doctrine of the Trinity. Bishop John Spong declared “Theism is dead” and denied many essential Christian doctrines. Many Anglicans saw that the mainline church was heading in a direction that was not biblical, and which ultimately “departed from Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”
Over the years it has become clear that separating from the mainline Episcopal church in order to continue orthodox Anglicanism in America was the right choice. With the 2003 consecration of practicing homosexual Gene Robinson as bishop, many Episcopalians are only now realizing what the signers of the Affirmation of St. Louis saw in the late seventies.