LATROBE, Pa. – A southern cleric has been picked as the new archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America.
The bishops of the conservative denomination voted Sunday to elevate the Rev. Foley Beach to the position at a conclave in Pennsylvania.
Beach has been bishop of the church’s Diocese of the South, which includes 42 parishes in 10 Southern states. As archbishop, Beach will lead more than 112,000 Anglicans in nearly 1,000 congregations in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Beach succeeds Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, who became the church’s first archbishop in 2009, a year after the Anglican Church in North America broke away from the Episcopal Church. The denominations parted ways amid disagreements over the authority of the Bible, the nature and divinity of Jesus Christ and other differences that came to a head after the 2003 ordination of the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop.
