Anglican Mainstream

By Chris Sugden in Evangelicals Now

At the end of August, at the request of the Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem, leaders of over half the world’s church-going Anglicans, the Archbishops of Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and the Southern Cone of Latin America formed a Primates Council and issued a communiqué. This can be read at www.gafcon.org.

The GAFCON primates are dealing with a new phenomenon. Earlier statements of Anglican Identity were produced when people could make the same assumptions about the faith and working together.  The world has changed. People no longer allow their identities to be defined by others.  We live in a world not of empires as in the 1860’s but sovereign nation states and individual autonomy. 

In sovereign nation states, the will of the people is supreme. (But a church cannot have its doctrines determined by its members in the same way). Thus much is made in contemporary Anglican-speak of ‘provincial autonomy’ in decision-making and of not crossing provincial boundaries.  So the Lambeth Conference stressed community and fellowship over law and governance.  In forming a council the GAFCON primates took a step towards governance.  They distinguish the work of developing the movement from the work of governance thus:

"The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans will function as a means of sharing in this great task [of defending and promoting the biblical gospel]. We invite individuals, churches, dioceses, provinces and parachurch organisations who assent to the Jerusalem Declaration to signify their desire to become members of the Fellowship via the GAFCON web-site or written communication with the Secretariat. The Fellowship will develop networks, commissions and publications intended to defend and promote the biblical gospel in ways which support one another.

At the same time, the Council and its Advisory Board will seek to deal with the problems of those who have confessed the biblical faith in the face of hostility and found the need on grounds of conscience and in matters of great significance to break the normal bonds of fellowship in the name of the gospel. For the sake of the Anglican Communion this is an effort to bring order out of the chaos of the present time and to make sure as far as possible that some of the most faithful Anglican Christians are not lost to the Communion. It is expected that priority will be given to the possible formation of a province in North America for the Common Cause Partnership."

The Jerusalem Declaration will act rather like the Lausanne Covenant. The Lausanne Covenant was a statement of faith by which people identified themselves, their ministries and organizations: people were "Lausanne evangelicals".  The Primates invite people to identify with the Jerusalem Declaration as a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. Finding their identity in the faith rather than in the organization, they can move forward together in their orthodox ministries; ‘develop networks, commissions publications’. 

The GAFCON movement will be like a starfish – with no head to be cut off or paralysed. It can grow in many directions and yet, to the apparent surprise of the liberal establishment, so far remain united.  The organization (the Anglican Communion) it seeks to reform, is currently run as a centralized institution.  Those who identify with the institution and its head can only move as the head moves. If the head is paralysed between personal convictions contrary to the teaching of the church and his job description to maintain the doctrine of the church, then they are paralysed also.  The looseness of structure and focus on the Jerusalem Declaration envisaged in the Primates’ Communique is the strength of the movement.
 

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