Anthony Forbes Moreton Clavier

Anthony Forbes Moreton Clavier (born 19 April 1940) was one of the leading figures in independent Catholicism in Britain, albeit he has spent much of his life in the United States. He was the Archbishop of the American Episcopal Church. He was born in Yorkshire, England.

Clavier entered the Bernard Gilpin Society, Sands House in Durham in 1958, leaving a year later to take a job as a teacher. In 1961, he was ordained a minister of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. He then became involved in a number of independent Episcopal churches. He was ordained by Francis Everden Glenn to the Catholic Episcopal Church in 1962. In April 1963 he was ordained by Charles Dennis Boltwood of the Free Protestant Episcopal Church. In May 1963 he was ordained by Charles Leslie Saul of the English Episcopal Church. In 1965 he associated himself with Archbishop Gerard George Shelley of the Old Roman Catholic Church, only to leave and be ordained again by Hugh George de Willmott Newman of the Catholic Apostolic Church. He remained with that church until 1967 when he left for America.

Upon arriving in America, Clavier joined the American Orthodox Church, staying with it until he returned to England and the Catholic Episcopal Church there.

In 1969 Clavier returned to the United States once again, seemingly to stay. He became a priest under James Hardin George of the American Episcopal Church. On 11 February 1970, George consecrated Clavier as a bishop and appointed him as a suffragan. Later that year, George resigned and Clavier served as primate for the next six years. Harold L. Trott became primate in 1976, only to leave office in 1981 with Clavier once again taking the position as primate.

In 1976 the Anglican Catholic Church was formed when several thousand conservative Anglicans left the Episcopal Church in protest against the ordination of homosexuals and women. Francisco Pagtakhan, a bishop of the Philippine Independent Church, assisted in the ordination of several of the new church's bishops. As the new church started to split into factions, Pagtakhan worked to reunite the new churches. In the process of doing so he consecrated Clavier as a bishop and thus passed his lines of succession to him.

Since then, the Anglican Catholic Church and Anglican Episcopal Church have become the largest of the several new churches. In the formation of the Anglican Church in America.

Clavier is now the rector of St. Paul's in LaPorte, Indiana, which is in the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana.

Published works

• Why a New Church?, 1964.
• False Motives, 1964.
• English Old Catholicism, 1965.

References

• Anthony Forbes Moreton Clavier, Religious Leaders of America, 2nd Ed., Gale Group, 1999.