By Paul Donison, TGC.
Since Gafcon—the Global Anglican Future Conference—released its Martyrs’ Day statement on October 16, 2025, the same question has followed me from Belfast to Sydney to Dallas: Have we just witnessed the birth of a new Anglican Communion?
It’s understandable. The statement was bold—speaking of a “reordering of the Anglican Communion” and introducing the phrase “Global Anglican Communion” (GAC). For some, that sounded like a split. But it wasn’t a Declaration of Independence; it was a confession of Anglicanism’s ongoing dependence on the unchanging Word of God.
As Isaiah 40:8 reminds us, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”
Continuity, Not Creation
The GAC isn’t something new—it’s the same Anglican family renewed around its original center: the authority of Scripture, read and lived out through the theological vision of the English Reformation.
From the beginning, Anglicanism was defined not by loyalty to one office but by a shared confession expressed in the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal—anchors of biblical unity long before anyone spoke of the Instruments of Communion (the archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting).
When Gafcon leaders wrote, “We are now no longer a fellowship within the Anglican Communion—for as those who maintain historical Anglican doctrine, we are the Anglican Communion,” they weren’t founding a rival church but affirming continuity with the reformers who, under Scripture, restored the English church to the faith of the fathers.
Real Problem: Instruments Have Failed
Many assume the archbishop of Canterbury or the Lambeth Conference has always defined Anglican unity. In truth, these are relatively recent inventions. The first Lambeth Conference met in 1867. The archbishop’s global role emerged only as the British Empire gave way to independent national churches. When I served in Canada, some parishes still bore signs reading “The Church of England in Canada”—a reminder of that colonial era. As those churches became autonomous, Canterbury’s function as convener, not governor, gradually took shape.
The Anglican Consultative Council began in 1971 and the Primates’ Meeting in 1979. Although originally designed to coordinate fellowship, over time they came to function as institutions wielding ambiguous and unwritten constitutional authority that could somehow settle serious division and doctrinal dispute.
But these instruments have utterly failed to correct provinces that deny biblical truth. When early churches “[turned] to a different gospel” (Gal. 1:6), the apostle Paul confronted them directly, but the instruments have proven unable to confront and reject the false gospels that have arisen among us. The Martyrs’ Day statement exposes that drift and restores the true foundation: God’s Word—preached, taught, and obeyed.