A simple rewrite of the Australian unofficial national anthem (I am Australian / We are one) explains what is going on with Gafcon.
Ready, choir….
We are one but we are many
and from all the ecclesial strands we come..
We share a confession and sing with one voice:
I am, you are, we are Global Anglicans
I am, you are, we are Global Anglicans.
Gafcon – formed as the Global Anglican Futures Conference has come up with a formula to include people from across the world, and in all sorts of church (which has been called “eccelsial strands”) into a reset Anglican Communion.
The secret sauce in the Jerusalem Declaration, a confession of faith, that national Churches, Dioceses. local Churches and individuals are invited to sign on to, and which brings them into the reset Global Anglican Communion.
A Gafcon meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, this week has affirmed the Jerusalem declaration and the mission of Gafcon not to leave the Anglican Communion but to reform it and return it to its Biblical roots. The statement from the meeting is here https://gafcon.org/communique-updates/the-abuja-affirmation/
The Jerusalem Declaration upholds the Lordship of Christ, the gospel of salvation, and the authority of the bible together with affirming man-woman marriage and denying the authority of church leaders “who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed.”
It sets one boundary of the Global Anglican Communion as rejecting same sex marriage, which is the position of the vast majority, perhaps 95%, of the world’s Anglicans, and calls the progressive provinces such as the US, Canada, Aotearoa NZ, England, Scotland, and Wales to repentance.
A second major decision from Abuja, which took many pundits who thought they knew what was going on by surprise, is morphing the leadership body of Gafcon into a Global Anglican Council with clergy and laypeople involved. Rather than elect a rival to the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, they have decided on a council to lead the reset communion.
“This expanded Council reflects the willingness of the Primates to share their authority with a wider group of Global Anglican leaders, both lay and clergy,” a statement by Paul Donison, the Gafcon General Secretary, said. “While the Chairman of the Council will be a Primate, he will not be primus inter pares. Believing that the current instruments of communion no longer meet the needs of the majority of Anglicans around the world, the Global Anglican Communion is to be led by a conciliar structure. The Global Anglican Council has discerned that if we are to move past old structures, we must leave behind old titles as well.“
This moves Gafcon into a more recognisable Anglican shape – Anglicans commonly are governed by synods or church parliaments that bring Bishops, Clergy, and lay delegates together.
Resisting the urge to appoint a global leader to rival Mullally, which had been widely briefed to secular and some Christian media, can (should) be seen as both prudent and a sign of humility.
And an admirable step back from Gafcon’s past tinge of triumphalism.
The decision was made after consultation at the gathering, and according to reports, after phone and video calls to those outside. Here, The Other Cheek speculates – calls with Singapore and elements of the other international body of conservative Anglicans, the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churchs, whose leaders overlap significantly with Gafcon’s.
Another explanation for not proceeding to elect a figurehead is that G26 (as the Abuja meeting is called) is a smaller Gafcon gathering. The next big one is in Athens in 2028, and the new Global Anglican Council has been announced as a temporary lineup of leaders to serve until the Athens meet. It makes sense if Gafcon/ Global Anglican Communion will eventually elect a global leader to hasten slowly and do it with a much larger gathering. Maybe jointly with the Asian based GSFA
The Abuja agenda has coincided with changes in plans by the old London-based (traditional) Anglican Communion, whose “Nairobi-Cairo Proposals.” have been updated to remove the proposed election of a “president” of the Anglican Communion bodies that would counterbalance the Archbishop of Canterbury.
In an eerie parallel to the latest Gafcon developments, they too have opted for a council rather than a new figurehead.
Both the reset Global Anglican Communion and the old Communion can be seen to have proposals for change that seek to gain the allegiance of some conservative Anglican provinces (National Churches) that have not quite signed up to the the Gafcon vision of a reset Anglican Communion. Both to varying extents decentre the Church of England, although the old communion seems to have watered down its plans, leaving the Archbishop of Canterbury as the leader. There is still a battle for the middle ground of Anglicanism. Athens in 2028 could be the real decisive meeting.
Image: The logo of Gafcon and the Global Anglican Communion on the left, and the Compass Rose, the logo of the old Anglican Communion, on the right