The communique issued by the GAFCON Primates Council following its meeting in Sydney 30 April – 2 May shows what a vital role GAFCON is now playing in the Anglican Communion.
With the addition of a network for the suffering church, GAFCON now has ten networks which are increasingly catalysts for what a global Communion should be doing – equipping its members to fulfil the Great Commission and share one another’s burdens.
New structures are also appearing as GAFCON acts creatively to keep faithful Anglicans in the Communion. The Primates welcomed and recognised a new extra-provincial diocese in New Zealand following the decision of the Province to allow the blessing of same-sex marriages, with the GAFCON Lawyers Network playing an important advisory role in the development of its Constitution and Canons.
Addressing incoherence
The Primates are also addressing the incoherence of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s invitation policy for Lambeth 2020 noting that: ‘the conference is to include provinces who continue to violate Lambeth Resolution I.10, thereby putting the conference itself in violation of its own resolution: failing to uphold faithfulness in marriage and legitimising practices incompatible with scripture.’
They have, therefore, announced a conference of Anglican Communion bishops for June 2020 meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, which is designed for those who will not be attending Lambeth 2020.
However, perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Sydney meeting, described prosaically as ‘leadership transition’ in the communiqué, was the installation of Archbishop Foley Beach of North America as the Chairman of the Primates Council. He and the recently appointed General Secretary, Archbishop Ben Kwashi, then embarked on a tour together of major Australian cities, symbolising in their partnership the truly global nature of the GAFCON movement.
More than 50million
Archbishop Beach is regarded by the Archbishop of Canterbury as someone who has left the Communion and qualifies for an invitation to Lambeth 2020 merely as an ecumenical observer (an invitation he has rejected) despite the fact that he leads a Primates Council of ten Primates, who between them represent 50million of the world’s 70million practicing Anglicans.
The claim of the Archbishop of Canterbury that relationship with Canterbury is essential to Anglican identity, repeated frequently through Dr Josiah Idowu Fearon, who has assumed the title of Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, is therefore increasingly implausible. It was always a convenient oversimplification, but now Canterbury has strayed so far into the shallows of compromise that the sound of the keel grinding on the rocks below is unmistakable.
For example, in an address to the recent meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council Dr Idowu-Fearon roundly criticised GAFCON and accused some leaders of behaving so autocratically that ‘you would think we are a Roman Church’, a remark for which he later apologised to the Vatican representative, and his attempt to claim a split between GAFCON and EFAC was swiftly and publicly rebutted by the latter.
Resolution confusion
It is also surely a desperate move on the part of the Archbishop of Canterbury to exclude spouses of bishops in same sex marriages from Lambeth 2020 on the basis of Lambeth Resolution I.10 of 1998, while still inviting the bishops themselves who have rejected that teaching of the Lambeth Conference so profoundly.
GAFCON’s alternative conference for Anglican Communion bishops is the true continuation of Lambeth 1998 because it will be solidly committed to the scriptural authority and teaching affirmed by that conference. Being held in Africa, it is indicative of the fact that the vast majority of Anglicans are to be found in the majority world. Furthermore, those Anglicans who will stay afloat in an increasingly secularised West are those like the Anglican Church in North America which are firmly in convoy with their African and Asian sister churches.
