| What would it actually look like for biblically faithful Anglicans all over the world to be in full relationship or “communion” with each other? Further, in keeping with the principles by which Anglicans make decisions together, what structures would we need at the global level among Anglican churches and their leaders to effect such “communion”?
These are exactly the questions I raised three years ago in the video above, and here are the structures I proposed then:
- A Global Council of Bishops from all dioceses in all churches in the Anglican Communion with the well-established role of guarding the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church including the acceptable biblical and theological limits of Anglicanism
- A Global Synod of Anglicans—Bishops, clergy, and laity meeting regularly as the highest legislative body governing the relationships between the churches of the Anglican Communion
- A Standing Committee of the Global Synod with defined, limited, and delegated powers and authority to carry on the work of the Global Anglican Synod between its regular meetings
- A Global Council of Primates meeting regularly to oversee these structures and their work, to take actions and make recommendations to preserve the unity of these communion structures, and to serve as a focus of unity with one who is elected for a specific term as “first-among-equals” for set term
- A Global Anglican Missions Conference to keep the churches of the Anglican Communion focused on fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:16-20) bringing the whole gospel to the whole person for the whole world, making disciples of all nations.
Through the Cairo Covenant (2019) [https://www.thegsfa.org/_files/ugd/6e992c_49081e3f1d214530871259ddbbbb191f.pdf], the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans has created a “covenanted communion” within the current Communion based on a common confession of faith (Doctrinal Foundation/Fundamental Declarations) and conciliar structures. Through its every five year global meetings, GAFCON has provided a global Anglican missions conference for all Anglicans consciously including, authenticating, and recognizing those biblically faithful Anglicans (like our own ACNA) who have had to form churches out of the increasingly heterodox Churches of the Canterbury-TEC led Communion.
With all due respect, little has changed since 2019 when we made these videos Questions for Global Anglicans [https://americananglican.org/video_series/global-anglican-communion/]. In fact, things have deteriorated within the Canterbury-TEC driven Communion. The conclusion of Lambeth Conference 2022 in July saw a public “reset” of the Lambeth Conference of Bishops, the oldest “Instrument of Unity,” from a gathering of bishops restating the mind of the Church on matters of faith and order into a forum where the bishops will no longer declare the mind of the church but will rather “walk together” on anything but doctrine. We saw the ABC publicly refuse to assume responsibility for disciplining any Anglican churches or their leaders and to embrace “pluriform truth” on the basis of “pluriform interpretations” of the Bible that give more weight to cultural context than the plain and grammatical reading of the scriptures. We have been reading preliminary reports from leading bishops of the Church of England and others suggesting that the Mother Church will soon change its traditional biblical teaching on gender, human sexuality, and marriage. We have again heard the ABC, who also leads the Mother Church, refuse to take any stand on the issues while he is in office—ostensibly to remain as a focus of unity as he leads a church that will be out of step biblically and theologically with the majority of Anglicans in the Global South and GAFCON.
Recently, the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda (CoU), the second largest Church in the Anglican Communion, warned that the CoU is prepared to break communion with the Mother Church, the Church of England. Uganda recognizes the inevitable trajectory that the Church of England is following in the footsteps of TEC and others. They are demonstrating the same courage of their convictions when they declared broken communion with TEC in the wake of the election and consecration of a same-sex partnered bishop in New Hampshire in 2003.
There is now an alternative. It is the GSFA covenantal structures provided in the Cairo Covenant (2019) that biblically faithful Anglicans can join as dioceses (or other ecclesial bodies as provided). It is what Andrew Goddard and others have noted as the way forward to recover “communion catholicity” on the basis of a shared confession of faith and classically conciliar structures of governance. These structures will promote interdependence among the churches of the Anglican Communion in contrast to the radical autonomy of the churches of the Canterbury-TEC driven communion. It is a “communion within the communion,” and as I noted in the video above three years ago, this robust GSFA covenanted communion “might even cause the Canterbury-TEC driven communion to repent and return to the LORD.” We can only pray!
To that end, please pray that GAFCON and GSFA will find ways to collaborate in such a covenanted communion. Imagine what a Global Anglican gathering would look like if it combined the global mission conference that GAFCON provides with the biblically faithful, conciliar decision-making that the GSFA Cairo Covenant provides!
Finally, may we ask your prayers for the AAC as we have been invited by the leadership of the Church of Uganda to consult with them in the days ahead on the way forward for Anglicans in Uganda.
|
