“UNASHAMED OF BEING A GLOBAL ANGLICAN”: A Contention for Martyrs’ Day
by Stephen Noll, Contending Anglican:
This past week I received an email and video from Archbishops Ben Kwashi and Foley Beach, commending the observance of “Gafcon Sunday” on 30 June. I hope many bishops and parish leaders will act on this request.
I want to go farther and contend that every church within the Gafcon fellowship should recognize Gafcon and support its work. Or may I put it this way: Every member of a Gafcon church should be unashamed of being known as a Global Anglican. (Note: I am choosing “Global Anglican” to best describe the new entity and identity that has emerged in the Anglican Communion since Lambeth 1998 and GAFCON 2008.)
Why would someone NOT want to be known as a Global Anglican? I see two reasons: the first reason is reluctance to step apart from the “historic” Anglican Communion. The second and far more common reason is lack of knowledge and opportunity to do so.
The first reason is most often a problem for church leaders. The Anglican Communion has a heritage, much of it commendable. The Jerusalem Declaration of 2008 lists important pieces of this heritage: the sovereignty of Christ, the authority of Scripture, the wisdom of early church creeds and councils, Prayer Book worship, the historic episcopate, the mission to the nations. Many of the Global Anglican churches were founded by missionaries from England, who wisely promoted self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation.
The crisis of the “historic” Anglican identity results from the fact that the daughter churches have grown up and realized to their dismay that the mother church has failed to uphold that heritage by accepting and promoting a false Gospel of sexuality and marriage. For twenty years since the 1998 Lambeth Conference, Global Anglicans have been calling on the official “Instruments of Communion” to turn back, and for twenty years they have refused to do so. The upcoming Lambeth Conference will continue this strategy of compromise, under the guise of “walking together” and “good disagreement.”
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