It is now accepted in geophysics that our continents have been formed over many millions of years through the very gradual but relentless movement of great tectonic plates. Though the movement is so slight, typically about an inch per year, it is part of a process that also gives us volcanoes and earthquakes as huge pressures and stresses build up in the earth’s crust.
This is a helpful metaphor for understanding what is happening in the worldwide Anglican Communion. Slogans like ‘walking together’ and ‘good disagreement’, so beloved by the Archbishop of Canterbury and revisionists anxious to retain his recognition, are desperately superficial. The deep reality is a tectonic movement which cannot be stopped by even the most resourceful ecclesiastical politics.
GAFCON and Brazil
As the GAFCON movement meets again in Jerusalem, the last ten years have demonstrated that its Jerusalem Statement and Declaration of 2008 was correct. It diagnosed the cause of the Communion’s ills to be the rise and toleration of a false gospel: is Christianity a revealed religion or is it merely some kind of quasi-mystical human exploration? It cannot be both and these profoundly different understandings of Christianity will inevitably move in different directions.
The most recent demonstration of this spiritual continental drift has been in the South American continent. The Anglican Diocese of Recife was forced out of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil (IEAB) in 2005 because of its refusal to compromise the biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality affirmed by the 1998 Lambeth Conference and then, in 2008, the Diocese was recognized by GAFCON.
After ten years of steady growth, on 12 May 2018 it became the Anglican Church in Brazil and a new Province of the Anglican Communion, recognised as such by the leadership of GAFCON and the Anglican Global South, notwithstanding the protestations of Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council.
New Province
This new Province is small, but it is a missionary Province and, like the Diocese from which it has been formed, it will certainly grow. If there were orthodox Anglicans who had misgivings, these should have been dispelled just three weeks later when the General Synod of the IEAB unintentionally demonstrated the need for this initiative by following the example of The Episcopal Church in the USA, the Anglican Church of Canada and the Scottish Episcopal Church in passing a resolution to change its canons to allow the ‘marriage’ of people of the same gender.
Such points are the seismic tremors of the Anglican realignment, as underlying realities take structural shape, both for better and for worse. However, GAFCON does not set out to create such moments. Its commitment is first and foremost to the gospel, not to church politics. So it is in this spirit that another new province is being founded in the South American continent. The Diocese of Chile is currently part of the Anglican Province of South America, but has seen significant growth and is seeking to become a Province in its own right.
Similar growth in Chile
Chile is experiencing the same growth and shares the same spiritual life as orthodox Anglicans in Brazil, but here the Province of South America is aligned with GAFCON under the leadership of Archbishop Greg Venables. The Diocese of Recife suffered rejection and litigation, but here there is a better story to tell as the parent Province prepares to graciously release the Diocese of Chile to begin a new chapter under the leadership of Bishop Tito Zavala as its first Primate.
The Anglican experience in South America demonstrates that critics of GAFCON who describe it as divisive are looking merely on the surface of things. GAFCON does not cause division, but has had the courage to recognise a division that is already well under way and prepare for the future.
