GAFCON is “now the Global Anglican Communion”, the chairman of the group’s Primates Council, the Archbishop of Rwanda, Dr Laurent Mbanda, has declared.
In a letter to supporters on Thursday, Dr Mbanda wrote that the Gafcon Primates Council had met “to fulfil our mandate to reform the Anglican Communion, as expressed in the Jerusalem Statement of 2008”.
The Primates had decided that “the Anglican Communion will be reordered, with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible”; that they would “reject the so-called Instruments of Communion, namely the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), and the Primates’ Meeting, which have failed to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion”; and that they “cannot continue to have communion with those who advocate a revisionist agenda. . .
“Therefore, Gafcon has re-ordered the Anglican Communion by restoring its original structure as a fellowship of autonomous provinces bound together by the Formularies of the Reformation, as reflected at the first Lambeth Conference in 1867, and we are now the Global Anglican Communion.”
To be a member of “the Global Anglican Communion”, “a province or a diocese must assent to the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008”, he said. They would not be permitted to participate in meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, including the ACC, “and shall not make any monetary contribution to the ACC, nor receive any monetary contribution from the ACC or its networks”.
Provinces were encouraged “to amend their constitution to remove any reference to being in communion with the See of Canterbury and the Church of England”, he said.
The Primates had decided to “form a Council of Primates of all member provinces to elect a Chairman, as primus inter pares (‘first amongst equals’), to preside over the Council”.
Dr Mbanda concluded: “Today, Gafcon is leading the Global Anglican Communion. As has been the case from the very beginning, we have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion.”
At the “G26 Bishops Conference” in Abuja, Nigeria, from 3 to 6 March, “we will confer and celebrate the Global Anglican Communion”, he said.