For many orthodox Anglicans, it is.
Returning to Truro Church in Fairfax to preach this past Sunday was former rector, or senior pastor, the Rt Rev Martyn Minns who has been leading some 80 breakaway congregations in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) as missionary bishop.
It has been nearly two years since several prominent congregations in Virginia voted to sever ties with The Episcopal Church, which conservatives say has departed from Christian orthodoxy as well as Anglican tradition.
Membership at Truro Church has not been affected much by the disaffiliation and services on Sunday showed the congregation's mission has not been deterred as 16 people were confirmed for membership.
As such breakaway congregations move forward and like-minded Anglicans are uniting efforts, Bishop Minns acknowledged to the hundreds of congregants that the new North American province is forming "far more quickly" than he had expected.
Expediting the establishment of the new body were the votes of now four regional dioceses to leave The Episcopal Church and this past summer's conference in Jerusalem where conservative bishops, many from the Global South, told those in North America to get organised and "get on with it", as Bishop Minns noted.
With that, the new structure, which is seen as a rival body to The Episcopal Church – the US arm of Anglicanism – and the Anglican Church of Canada, has drawn criticism, with some saying it will be a cause for more division in the already splintering global Anglican Communion.
But Bishop Minns argues that the creation of the new province is in efforts to overcome division – division that is already there, he told The Christian Post.
"Division has been there since 2003," he said, referring to the consecration of The Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop. There is a division in the [Anglican] Communion," Bishop Minns said. "We're trying to find a way to overcome that and become less divided."
The Very Rev Robert S Munday, a priest within The Episcopal Church who has friends in breakaway groups, says the best way to preserve unity "is to allow the American church to divide - which is happening anyway, whether anyone likes it or not - and to recognise two North American provinces," according to his blog. Otherwise, the Communion will be lost, he says.
There are several different breakaway and conservative Anglican groups, representing 100,000 Anglicans, that are coming together to comprise the new province, which may be officially established in the middle of next year.
