The Anglican Province of America, one of the largest continuing Anglican churches in North America, has deposed one of its bishops in a dispute related to its discipline of firebrand priest Calvin Robinson in January.
Presiding Bishop Chandler Holder Jones inhibited the Rt. Rev. Robert Todd Giffin on August 1, with a 30-day grace period to repent before consequences of deposition are enforced. This move came after Giffin, who had been expressing his disagreement with Jones and a desire to leave the APA, announced the formation of a new “Anglican Missionary Church,” a “no wokeness” denomination, on July 30.
Giffin had been growing increasingly frustrated with other conservative Anglicans during the course of the year. Giffin had even blocked Presiding Bishop Jones on Facebook, but unblocked him on July 27 to announce that if Jones would not allow Giffin to receive Calvin Robinson as a priest, it would create an “irreparable break.”
“It’s shameful, and all of them knew it,” Giffin wrote about his fellow bishops’ lack of support for the social media provocateur. Archbishop Mark Haverland removed Robinson from ministry in the Anglican Catholic Church last January after he performed what he called a parody of a gesture by Elon Musk that critics equated with a Nazi salute.
Robinson was subsequently licensed by Bishop Ray Sutton of the Reformed Episcopal Church, part of the Anglican Church in North America, in May. But that license was revoked ten days later, after Sutton’s decision was harshly criticized by other ACNA leaders, including Archbishop Steve Wood.
Giffin was bishop of the APA’s Diocese of the Central and Western States, a position he held since 2021. He previously served as a bishop in the now-defunct Diocese of Mid-America, for which he was consecrated in 2012.
He took four congregations with him: the cathedral in San Antonio, a parish in Conroe, Texas, a parish in Tucson, Arizona, and a mission in Valparaiso, Indiana. Two other parishes from the diocese opted to remain in the Anglican Province of America.
Giffin explained his motives in an August 3 Facebook post: “The Diocese of the Central and Western States today has voted to disaffiliate from the APA. It separates itself from the ‘continuum’ as a new movement without this label. It is now a non-geographic, traditional Anglican Diocese that allows for both modern and traditional BCP worship, as well as the American and Anglican Missals, with celebrations both ad orientem (East) and ad populum (West). A Diocese steadfastly opposed to WO [women’s ordination], no wokeness, and pro-life. A traditional Anglican Diocese living in the 21st century but immovable on essentials.”
In July, he posted his vision for a denomination that would have “no women’s ordination, no mandatory subscription to the Articles, and no adherence to woke ideology,” and that would permit the use of the ACNA’s 2019 Book of Common Prayer, the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the Anglican Missal.
“No jurisdiction has chosen this path, they are either stuck in an Anglicanism of past centuries or in a church with purported women’s ordination, either directly or indirectly,” he wrote. After visiting Robinson’s parish in Michigan, Giffin said, “Let’s create a new Anglicanism.” He expressed frustration about the state of Anglicanism in the United States, saying that part of the problem was “so many dozens of jurisdictions, so many dozens of bishops.”
Giffin is no stranger to dozens of jurisdictions. He attended Cranmer Theological School and then Nashotah House as a seminarian of the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy, although it is unclear if he was ordained in that diocese. He then did work in the Charismatic Episcopal Church and the Anglican Catholic Church.
Giffin then returned to the Episcopal Church and founded a parish that he later brought into several other jurisdictions, including the ACNA and the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate, and then into the APA. He expressed a desire to plant many churches for his Anglican Missionary Church. “It will aggressively support those who have been marginalized by the continuum and the ACNA,” he wrote.
The Anglican Province of America was founded in 1995, and has incorporated congregations of several church bodies that formed after breaking away from the Episcopal Church in the mid-20th century over disputes about women’s ordination and prayer book revision.
The mostly Anglo-Catholic APA, which has 34 churches and about 6,000 members, is one of the largest denominations in the continuum. It is headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia, and most of its congregations are in the Southeast.
The Anglican Catholic Church formed a joint synod with the APA in 2016 and has pledged to work toward corporate union.
Giffin’s new Anglican Missionary Church differs from the Episcopal Missionary Church, a small continuing Anglican denomination founded in 1992 and first led by Donald Davies, the retired Bishop of Fort Worth.
Greta Gaffin is a freelance writer based in Boston. She has a master of theological studies degree from Boston University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
