Large Australian Group Joins Traditional Anglican Communion
The Christian Challenge

Citing pastoral and other problems within the Anglican Church of Australia (ACA), some 5,000 orthodox Anglicans have left the ACA for the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), an international association of Continuing Churches. Following a conference November 22-25, clerical and lay representatives of the large group – all Melanesians from the Torres Strait Islands situated between the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea – voted to petition TAC for admission. By deadline, the group had been received as the Church of the Torres Strait (Traditional Anglican Communion). The indigenous, multi-lingual church – which will exist alongside TAC's already-established Anglican Catholic Church in Australia (ACCA) – includes many Islanders living and working on the Australian mainland.

"Delighted" and "thrilled" was TAC Primate Louis Falk, speaking for himself and TAC's 20 bishops. The prelates shepherd a communion with some 60,000 adherents – in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, England, Ireland, India, Pakistan, and South Africa – as well as Australia, where TAC's original province has grown to 40 parishes and established a school. TAC is in formal communion with the Church of England's traditionalist Forward in Faith group and has expressed its continuing communion with all faithful parts of establishment Anglicanism.