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GAFCON takes off!

It began early in the pilgrimage. People began referring to the miracle of GAFCON, the Global Anglican Future Conference.

GAFCON was called in December 2007 by a leadership team of primates and bishops chaired by the Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola.

It followed appeals from primates from Africa to the Archbishop of Canterbury to postpone the Lambeth Conference because their provinces were out of communion with North American Anglican bishops who had consecrated Gene Robinson, a practising homosexual. When these appeals were turned down, the primates decided to provide their bishops with a global gathering to renew their vision and inspire their ministry.

Within six months over 1,100 bishops, clergy and lay people had accepted their invitation to meet in Jerusalem; secure visas and travel safely there. A miracle.

Costs transferred

A preparatory conference for 140 was held in Jordan from June 17. However on June 18, the Jordanian authorities announced that sufficient high-level permission had not been granted for the conference to take place. The conference hall was shut and no meetings allowed. At the same time Archbishop Peter Akinola, travelling on his diplomatic passport, was denied entry to Jordan.

So, on June 19, the 140 people relocated early to Jerusalem. The hotels concerned, in the same chain, transferred the costs. A miracle.

The gospel

At the opening session, the chairman Archbishop Peter Akinola announced that it looked as though GAFCON would meet all its expenses. The Nigerian contingent of 330 had raised all their costs within Nigeria. A miracle.

The first event on Monday June 23 was pilgrimage to the Mount of Olives. In a special service, pilgrims lamented the state of their cities and societies as Jesus had wept over Jerusalem. Pilgrims walked down the Mount to the Garden of Gethsemane.

There were presentations by Os Guinness on ‘The Gospel in Secular Society’, an evening symposium on ‘The Gospel and Religion’ with a convert from Islam, Professor Lamin Sanneh, and a Palestinian Christian and Messianic Jew. Bishop Michael Nazir Ali of Rochester spoke of the Global Anglican Future. Others spoke on HIV/AIDS ministries and enterprise solutions to poverty.

Worship and workshops

Days began with worship led by the Anglican Youth Choir from Uganda and the Mothers Union Choir from Nigeria. Pilgrims met and prayed in small groups after the morning Bible expositions from David Short, Vaughan Roberts, Archbishop Yong Ping Chung and expositors from Ghana and Nigeria.

There were workshops on Anglican Identity, Church Planting, and Gospel in Culture. Bishops’ wives heard from a holocaust survivor, and were unable to speak after hearing the testimony of the suffering of fellow Anglicans in Nigeria.

On the southern steps of the Temple, where Peter preached at Pentecost, representatives of 27 nations were welcomed by the Deputy Director General of Tourism for Israel as the first global Anglican Conference to meet in Israel. Earlier in the week the rector of Christ Church Jerusalem, the oldest Protestant Church in the Middle East, told the Anglican pilgrims that Christ Church, a ministry of the Churches’ Ministry to the Jews, had waited 160 years for them to come.

Finding God’s will

Throughout the week, participants went through a listening process to discern God’s will for their future in the Anglican Communion. On Friday lunchtime a four-page statement and declaration was greeted with a standing ovation, rapturous applause, cheers and singing. Everyone present acclaimed the statement as affirming their classical Anglican beliefs and charting an acceptable way forward.

After a few minor amendments, it was presented again on the final Sunday, again to applause. It was formally signed by seven primates of the Anglican Communion representing over 40 million of the 55 million church-going Anglicans worldwide.

The editor of the Church Times, Paul Handley, was amazed at an Anglican gathering where the final statement was completed before everyone had to leave. A miracle. Another senior religious correspondent called the statement a work of genius, for achieving what orthodox Anglicans wanted while remaining in the Anglican Communion.

The Jerusalem Statement

The Jerusalem Statement on the Global Anglican Future proclaims GAFCON to be a spiritual movement to preserve and promote the truth and the power of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ as Anglicans have received it. The movement is global, including 291 bishops, and declares that they have no intention of leaving the Anglican Communion.

They launched the GAFCON movement as a fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and published the Jerusalem Declaration as a basis of the fellowship.

Restoring authentic Christianity

They declared that the Anglican Communion, present in all six continents, was well placed to plant new churches and restore authentic Christianity to compromised churches, but was divided and distracted due to three facts: the promotion of a different gospel contrary to the apostolic gospel; the declaration by provincial bodies in the Global South that they are out of communion with bishops and churches that promote this false gospel; and the manifest failure of the Communion to exercise discipline in the face of overt heterodoxy.

The participants declared that they were a Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans whose identity was expressed not in institutional form but in a faith confession: ‘The doctrine of the Church is grounded in the Holy Scriptures and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, The Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal.’

They spelt out the significance of this statement of their identity: ‘While acknowledging the nature of Canterbury as an historic see, we do not accept that Anglican identity is determined necessarily through recognition by the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

Recognising the unrecognised

The conference will seek to expand this fellowship, which already embraces many churches and bishops not recognised by the Archbishop of Canterbury as Anglican. The Church of England in South Africa (CESA), the oldest Anglican entity in South Africa, was present with members of the Church of the Province of South Africa. The presiding bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Synod, which left the North American Anglican Church in the 19th century, said that, for him and his church, GAFCON had provided a family.

The conference encouraged the primates to form a Council. They urged this Council to authenticate and recognise confessing Anglican jurisdictions, clergy and congregations. They thanked God for the Primates’ courageous action in offering oversight to churches under false leadership. They urged them to assist in the formation of and recognise a new province in North America for the federation currently known as the Common Cause Partnership.

The Primates of Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, West Africa and Southern Cone signed that they accepted these responsibilities and challenges.

London All Souls meeting

Two days after GAFCON in Jerusalem, 750 church leaders, many in their 30s and 40s, crammed All Souls, Langham Place in London, to hear Archbishop Orombi of Uganda, Presiding Bishop Venables of the Southern Cone, and Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney report. Archbishop Jensen challenged his hearers as follows: ‘The Bible is clear: sexual immorality leads you outside the kingdom of God, just as does greed. It is not a second-order issue. If you continue in fellowship you are endorsing the lie and are complicit in it; persecution and vilification is part of the gospel.

This is the choice that has been landed on your plate. If you will not stand on this issue you will never stand. You may have preferred to do it on the Trinity, but this is what incarnates the theology that lies behind the action. We would not have chosen to fight on this ground, but that is often the way. This may not be where you are up to yet in England, but you do not live in a time of peace.’

Presentations from GAFCON can be viewed on http://www.gafcon.org.

Summaries of the All Souls meeting can be viewed on http://www.anglican-mainstream.net.

Chris Sugden,
Anglican Mainstream