The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) Primates’ Council has announced a reordering of the worldwide Anglican body today, declaring itself the “Global Anglican Communion” while rejecting the authority of the traditional Instruments of Communion, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The statement, issued by The Most Revd Dr Laurent Mbanda, Chairman of the Gafcon Primates’ Council and Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, coincided with the Commemoration of the martyrdom of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley.
Archbishop Mbanda asserted that the future for faithful Anglicans, anticipated since the first GAFCON gathering in Jerusalem in 2008, has now “arrived.”
The GAFCON Primates’ resolution, framed as a fulfilment of their 2008 mandate to reform the Communion, immediately established the following eight-point structure for the newly declared body:
1. We declare that the Anglican Communion will be reordered,with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible, “translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading” (Jerusalem Declaration, Article II), which reflects Article VI of the 39 Articles of Religion.
2. We reject the so-called Instruments of Communion,namely the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), and the Primates Meeting, which have failed to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion.
3. We cannot continue to have communion with those who advocate the revisionist agenda, which has abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority and overturned Resolution I.10, of the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
4. Therefore, Gafcon has re-ordered the Anglican Communion by restoring its original structure as a fellowship of autonomous provinces bound together by the Formularies of the Reformation, as reflected at the first Lambeth Conference in 1867, and we are now the Global Anglican Communion.
5. Provinces of the Global Anglican Communion shall not participate in meetingscalled by the Archbishop of Canterbury, including the ACC, and shall not make any monetary contribution to the ACC, nor receive any monetary contribution from the ACC or its networks.
6. Provinces, which have yet to do so, are encouraged to amend their constitution to remove any reference to being in communionwith the See of Canterbury and the Church of England.
7. To be a member of the Global Anglican Communion, a province or a diocese must assent to the Jerusalem Declarationof 2008, the contemporary standard for Anglican identity.
8. We shall form a Council of Primates of all member provinces to elect a Chairman, asprimus inter pares(‘first amongst equals’), to preside over the Council as it continues “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
Archbishop Mbanda concluded the statement by affirming, “the reset of our beloved Communion is now uniquely in the hands of Gafcon, and we are ready to take the lead,” and insisted, “we have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion.”
The Global Anglican Communion will hold its G26 Bishops Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, from March 3 to 6, 2026, to “confer and celebrate” the new order.
The statement calls for prayer that the new leadership will proceed “in prayerful submission to the Holy Spirit as we hear the voice of Jesus in his wondrous Scriptures, to the glory of God.”
Comments
Post a Comment