On 16 October, GAFCON (the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans) announced that it is severing ties with the rest of the Anglican Communion. Their communique is unequivocal that this is schism: ‘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.’ As far as they are concerned, they are now the Anglican Communion and will henceforth be known as ‘the Global Anglican Communion’.
Based on the membership figures given in Wikipedia, this suggests that Anglicanism has now split into two communions of roughly equal size. The bulk of GAFCON’s strength lies in the Global South though, if I remember correctly, several dioceses in the predominantly white parts of the world are affiliated to it.
Locally, I will be interested to see what will happen at the parish level. For example, here in Glasgow, St Silas’s website is clear that it adheres to the Jerusalem Statement, which is the foundational document of GAFCON. Will parishes like it follow their conscience and GAFCON or will they find some form of words that allows them to remain part of their current dioceses?
Personally, I am very disappointed to see the emergence of yet another church. If the leaders of this nascent Global Anglican Communion really want to make a positive contribution to the future of global Christianity, they should seriously consider entering into dialogue with Orthodoxy with a view to restoring communion between them and us.
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