Servants of all?
from Anglican Futures:
Next week, Anglicans from around the world will be gathering for the fourth Global Anglican Futures Conference (Gafcon).
After Jerusalem in 2008, Nairobi in 2013, Jerusalem again in 2018, this time Kigali, Rwanda is the venue.
When he was last in the UK the Primate of Rwanda, The Most Reverend Laurent Mbanda, described his nation as, “a small country of tall people”. Archbishop Mbanda, host of Gafcon 2023 is himself a towering example of his peoples’ physical stature. But not only that, Rwanda, a place that has experienced great trauma and then a process of reconciliation and rebuilding is also a towering spiritual example: by membership, the fourth largest Province in the Anglican Communion.
From its inception Gafcon has been to an extent “political”. It was born out of the boycott by many bishops of the 2008 Lambeth Conference and that first meeting produced the Jerusalem Declaration and Statement. The former sets out what are the widest possible bounds of legitimate diversity within Anglican orthodoxy, and the latter helps that to land in practice. They may well prove some of the most important documents ever written in Anglicanism.
During each subsequent conference some type of statement to the global Anglican church has been produced – Gafcon is many things, perhaps most of all a fellowship of the faithful, including those struggling in revisionist contexts, but there is always, quite rightly, that political edge.
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