The Anglican Free Communion International

This Communion was established in England on 2 November 1897 by a union of several small British episcopates established in the 1870s in reaction to the rising Anglo-Catholicism of the Church of England.

On 1 January 2020, a group of bishops of the Anglican Free Communion formally declared their intent to remove Archbishop Richard Arthur Palmer from the post of Presiding Bishop and replace him with Bishop Ronald Lee Firestone. They then rebranded the communion “Anglican Free Communion International” (AFCI) and consider themselves the legitimate heir to the original communion.

The Anglican Free Communion International is the legal successor of the Free Protestant Episcopal Church; thus, it accepts the validity of all bishops of such Church until the removal of Archbishop Richard Arthur Palmer in 2020. After that, the Presiding Archbishops of the Anglican Free Communion International have been:

•            Archbishop Ronald Lee Firestone (2020-2021);

•            Archbishop Raul E. Toro Jr (since 2022).

The Anglican Free Communion) is one of the oldest Anglican Communions in existence.

It is constituted by a large group of Anglicans of all varieties of churchmanship from Anglo-Catholic (High Church), Evangelical (Low Church), Latitudinarian (Broad Church), Charismatic and Liberal.

All Provinces of the Communion are autonomous, comprising self-governing churches and families of churches worldwide.

The Communion celebrates the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion alongside the traditional Anglican sacraments.

It uses the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (BCP) and considers itself a “middle way” (via media) between Roman Catholicism and Lutheran and Reformed theologies