Anglican Apostolic Succession

of the ACNA and the wider Global Anglican Communion (GAC)

Search a dioceseโ€™s line of succession

An independent chart of the historic episcopate

A line of hands laid on hands, from the Apostles to a bishop serving today.

Pick any of 455 dioceses and see its actual chain: who consecrated whom, on what date, back twenty centuries.

What is apostolic succession?

Find a diocese

Show the line

Or start with the default line, the Diocese of Fort Worth.

1,429names
455dioceses
21countries
346in the shared trunk

New here? Three questions

What is apostolic succession?

The unbroken chain of bishops consecrating bishops, reaching back to Christโ€™s own apostles.

Read on โ†’

What makes it Anglican?

The same chain, routed through Canterbury, and it did not break at the Reformation.

See the trunk โ†’

Who is in communion with whom?

21 churches on three continents, 10 of them provinces of the Global Anglican Communion (GAC).

See the branches โ†’

The line of a diocese

Pick a country and a diocese, and the whole chain loads, from the Apostles to today.

455 dioceses

Branch Timeline

Twenty centuries on one chart. Every split marked, dated and tappable.

21 churches

Family Tree

How each diocese descends from the one that gave it its first bishop.

United States: 27

Browse every line

All of them in one list, country by country, each its own page.

455 pages

FAQ & About

What the tradition is, what the titles mean, and how to read the chart.

12 questions

21 churches, three continents

One trunk. Many branches.

Every church on this site descends from the same succession. Each split below is a real consecration, on a real date, by a bishop you can name.

19228312017201920091780s1945184118642005201818691877668194319381899188419921533Church of SwedenA.D. 33RomeThe Episcopal ChurchCanterburyLatvia3Europe3New Zealand1ACNA27South Sudan61Egypt4Nigeria180Brazil2Chile4South America6Myanmar9South Africa1Ghana12 Kenya43Uganda38Rwanda13Congo15Tanzania30

Swipe the diagram to follow it across โ†’

A gold dot marks a province of the Global Anglican Communion (GAC), the fellowship GAFCON's provinces reorganized into in March 2026. The green line is the Lutheran one, which reaches back to Rome without ever passing through Canterbury. A dashed line is one this chart stops following at that point, which is not the same as one that ended. Numbers are the dioceses traced here.

Open the full Branch Timeline โ†’
How complete is this?

Every bishop here is either fully researched and sourced, or shown plainly as a name-only placeholder still awaiting research. A gap in the record is treated as a gap, not quietly filled in. How this is researched โ†’