Some of us like to take vacation trips. Some of us have to go away on business. Many reasons exist for traveling, and sometimes those travels occur over a weekend. Let's suppose you are traveling and you spend Saturday night in a small town. When you wake up on Sunday morning, you think about attending church services and you have the time available. Suppose that the options given are the only ones available. Which would you choose, and why? First and second choices are acceptable, if you'd like to vote for more than one.
I'm an Anglican, so I'd visit the Episcopal church. This answer seems intuitive. There's probably something seriously wrong if there's more votes for the RC church or the Baptist church on an Anglican forum...
I would go with a Roman or a Methodist church (some of them still retain traces of Anglicanism). But more likely, I would do a Matins divine service with my trusty 1662 Book of Common Prayer. (The Matins / morning prayer service doesn’t require an ordained priest to be done.) Even now, I have little kids and some days when it’s just too crazy at home to go to my parish, I will do that 1662 Matins at home, and/or livestream from my parish. A TEC church with a female priest is gonna be a no for me dawg. I have enough rainbow/gender confusion in the culture around me.
Because I didn't want to list that option. When traveling and stopping in some unfamiliar town, no one can tell from a quick search of local churches how loving one church is (or is not), right? Now, if one travels to a particular town during weekends with some frequency, the situation will be different than the one I'm envisioning; from my personal standpoint, I like to go camping and sightseeing in different locales, rarely repeating (the US is a big country with much to see and do). Folks in England might have to pretend they've gone to the continent for this, I suppose...
It might be because I'm not American, but it seems like you're missing the forest for the trees here. The other churches are actually heretical. Now, I get you've got some issues with TES, I personally am a little uncomfortable with some of the stuff they say and do, and I've got an ocean of distance to innoculate me, so I understand where you're coming from. But they're still in the Anglican Communion. If TES hold some beliefs you deem heretical, they simply cannot hold more heretical beliefs than a church not in the Anglican Communion. Otherwise we'd give them the boot like we did Methodism and Roman Catholicism. I'm quite sure TES retains (quite some more) traces of Anglicanism as well. I don't want to overstep too much as someone who still doesn't really grasp the nuances of the ACNA/TEC split yet (I hadn't paid any attention to it at all until I joined this forum a week or so ago), but it still seems abundantly obvious to me TEC is the closest church to ACNA out of the ones listed. Don't let hatred for your fellow Christians into your hearts, we're all brothers in the eyes of God. It would be a tragedy if you get deceived by some other power to spend so much time focusing on your differences you distance yourself from God.
Well, being "in the Anglican Communion" doesn't carry much water with ACNA folks, probably because ACNA itself is not in the Anglican Communion and isn't looking to be in it (AFAIK) for some very good reasons. And ordination of female priests is one symptom of the problems within that Communion. I would feel somewhat uncomfortable receiving the Eucharist from a female priest. It seems totally foreign to me. But who knows, maybe she would deliver a great sermon.... On another side of things, I'm too acutely aware of the problems with RC theology to feel at all comfortable sitting through one of their masses.
I think there's two things to unpack here: I hope that's not true. Being part of the Anglican Communion symbolises a shared brotherhood with your fellow Christians all around the world. It makes you part of a global network of people who share a common set of beliefs in God, and that community and fellowship generates a warmth in the same way attending a church with a community does instead of sitting a home reading scripture in solitary confinement. Joining together with people of diverse backgrounds, cultures and language groups to become closer to forming a complete body of Christ on Earth is only a good thing. It makes sense to me why the rest of the Communion was resistant to accepting ACNA in 2008, as a political response to prevent other schismatic elements from sowing disunity, but I would hope ACNA is lobbying hard to be accepted into the communion in 2022. If they not looking to hold hands with their brothers across the street, across the border, and across the ponds then that's truly tragic. ACNA also permits the ordination of female priests, in line with the Anglican Communion's approach. That is, it's an issue to be determined diocese by diocese, bishop by bishop. If one diocese wants to ordain women, they can. If another wants to limit their ordination to only the deaconate, that's also fine. If they want to refuse to ordain women entirely, all good on that front as well. If it's a symptom of a problem in churches in communion with Canterbury, it's a symptom of a problem in churches also not in communion with Canterbury.
My practice when I moved around with the armed forces was to worship at the nearest one until I found good reason to look further afield. That way I got to appreciate many different styles of worship and some interesting theological points of view, (not all of which I agreed with). Though I did travel some distance to attend The Anglican Church in The Hague when I was on a training course in Holland, a 30 minute tram ride from the Hotel. .
I think Rexlion was probably a bit excessive in his formulation, since we most definitely are in the Anglican Communion; in fact the great majority of the worldwide Anglican Communion is with ACNA and has officially recognized us. The only point is, we are not in communion with Canterbury. But given how the most ancient and hallowed See of Canterbury these days is taken by heretics, estimates say that by 2040 or 2050 the Church of England will have gone extinct, at which point the orthodox Anglicans will buy all the churches and re-plant Anglicanism in England. So I am not too worried about our current wrinkles with Canterbury. So let me guess, a partially liturgical Methodist pastor who focuses on the gospel and has traces of Anglican liturgy and chant, is further away from me than this?
Let’s be clear here: given what’s going on in the UMC these days, and given that there are still plenty of traditionalists in TEC, the likelihood that these stark alternatives would be @ZachT’s actual choices is slim to none. And communion with other Anglican bodies does not make a church Anglican. If it did, the ELCA and UCC would be Anglican as well. I think it’s important to be fair to what @ZachT is saying here.
My mistake, I guess. Somehow I had gotten the impression that ACNA isn't in the Anglican Communion. I'm not too conversant with all of that. Apparently Abp. Welby's 2014 statement and (secretary general) Abp. Idowu-Fearon's 2017 statement are not controlling; I keep forgetting that binding decrees are the stuff of popes. But this thread was meant to be asking, without recriminations or second-guessing, where each of us would prefer to attend, given the choices presented.
I was referring to the alternatives of a perfectly orthodox UMC church on the one hand vs. a completely off-the-radar TEC parish on the other.
I'd choose by checking their websites in order to rule out the problematic options. In most hypothetical instances it'd probably be a non-denom church so we wouldn't have to worry about Holy Communion, and because they're more likely to be doctrinally on track than most other options listed (in my neck of the country, anyway)
Assuming that's an honest interpretation of that priests opinions, I can appreciate the discomfort - but that wasn't my point. I'm not saying every TEC priest will hold opinions closer to your own when compared against every methodist priest, nor that every parish in TEC will be closer to your church than every parish in the RC church. Rather, my point was that on aggreggate TEC appears to be the most visibly proximate church to ACNA than any other major church in the US. I'll also bow out though, because to be honest I don't really know what I'm talking about. I don't know anyone, and have never spoken to anyone who has any knowledge or any real experiences in TEC or the ACNA, I'm just going off what I could best guess from my own experiences of the proliferation of priests using the church as a vehicle for secular progressive politics in the Anglican Church of Australia.
I've actually been in situations where I'm traveling through a small town in the American South or Midwest and do not have my preferred denomination of church available. In the old days this usually meant just going to whatever Christian church was nearest the hotel: I've been to Primitive Baptist, Holiness, Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, PCA, Foursquare Gospel, Dutch Reformed, Episcopal, and United Methodist services at various times when I was traveling. I would probably be more discerning now -- I'd look for an ACNA-affiliated Anglican church first, then a PCA church, then some sort of non-denominational Evangelical church. I would attend an RC church for weddings, christenings, ordinations, and other special occasions, but I would not attend the Sunday service unless there was absolutely no Protestant option available (which in the USA is very unlikely). I would probably not go to a TEC service, male priest or no. I would go to an RC service before I'd attend a TEC service. (Or I'd just use Zoom or Youtube to attend an ACNA service remotely.) Only if I were attending an ACNA Anglican service would I take Communion. The internet makes researching the options much easier than it used to be, when attending a local non-denominational church was something of a roll of the dice. I've also noticed that the web sites of various churches often don't give you any real clue as to what goes on inside. I've been to some pretty weird "Protestant" churches before, and most of them belong to mainline denominations whose leadership would no doubt be horrified by what was going on if they knew. This is, in fact, why I have come to prefer an Episcopal rather than a Congregational form of church government. There's a cliche in American life that small-town Protestant churches are full of ultra-orthodox bible-thumping fundamentalists; but in my experience the wildest, most heretical stuff you can imagine takes root in small-town congregations much more easily than it does in the big city (mainly due to lack of oversight and the inability to attract competent clergy to these remote locations).
I would attend a continuuing and ACNA Anglican Church. I would not attend a TEC church. Just to much bad there. I grew up Methodist and was a Methodist for near 30 years. I have found feelings there. I would not receive the sacraments from a woman minister but I do believe that Catholics have valid sacraments but I know I can't partake of them. I would prefer an OO or EO church over a Catholic church.
My first Lutheran pastor told me, "My sermon could be horrible but at least the people have the liturgy to give them God's word. The liturgy holds the service together." It has now been a decade since he said that to me and I remember it right well. Using that approach, I would go to Roman Catholic mass. Only perhaps 1 in 10 Roman Catholic priests is a competent homilist but the liturgy holds the service together. I might go to Roman Catholic mass this Sunday. I've just moved and my belongings -pro gear as the movers labeled my church accoutrements- have not arrived yet.