GAFCON DECLARES FORMAL SEPARATION FROM THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION
- Charles Perez
- Oct 16
- 2 min read
Anglican communion will be reformed and reordered. We are now the Global Anglican Communion, says GAFCON chairman Archbishop Laurent Mbanda
By David W. Virtue, DD
October 16, 2025
The future has arrived, declared GAFCON chairman Archbishop Laurent Mbanda. “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,” he declared.
“Our Gafcon Primates gathered this hour to fulfil our mandate to reform the Anglican Communion, as expressed in the Jerusalem Statement of 2008.”
We resolved to reorder the Anglican Communion as follows:
1. We declare that the Anglican Communion will be reordered, with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible, “translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading” (Jerusalem Declaration, Article II), which reflects Article VI of the 39 Articles of Religion.
2. We 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.
3. We cannot continue to have communion with those who advocate the revisionist agenda, which has abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority and overturned Resolution I.10, of the 1998 Lambeth Conference.
4. 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.
5. Provinces of the Global Anglican Communion shall not 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.
6. Provinces, which have yet to do so, are encouraged to amend their constitution to remove any reference to being in communion with the See of Canterbury and the Church of England.
7. To be a member of the Global Anglican Communion, a province or a diocese must assent to the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008, the contemporary standard for Anglican identity.
8. We shall 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 as it continues “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
The Rwanda Archbishop said the absence of repentance by the mostly Global North meant the need to advance a future for faithful Anglicans, where the Bible is restored to the heart of the Communion. Today, that future has arrived, he said.
“At our upcoming G26 Bishops Conference in Abuja, Nigeria from 3 to 6 March 2026, we will confer and celebrate the Global Anglican Communion.”
END
This basically is a partisan statement from one wing of the church, a combination of Reformation Anglicanism and East African Revival, but missing other legitamate expressions of our Anglican tradition and worship, actually making Anglicanism a confessional church by requiring subscription to the Jerusalem Delcaration...and not really restoration as much as revolution. Restoration would be of the actual church that has long existed, whereas this is really creating a new church, with a limited identity, totally new and disconnected from the Anglican Church of our ancestors.
In this cultural moment to ignore to western civilization's crisis and flee to the ever more problematic global south seems to be neglecting where God has planted us, and going to a place where…
Seems to me to be something of Corporate Identity Theft to claim the name Global Anglican Communion. All three words seem to be untrue. GAFCON is primarily a southern hemisphere operation, it has departed the defined membership in the Anglican Church, and certainly there is not now another Communion, a status of historic designation.
It is so important that the GAC continues to frame it in this way. The GAC are NOT the schismatics. The schismatics, those who are apostate from the historic Christian faith, are those of the Canterbury party, including the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the most of the English bishops, and even the King. They are the ones who have departed from the Anglican Communion due to their apostasy and are in schism.
Well, it's taken long enough. No one can accuse Gafcon of not being patient! But they had to know from the beginning that the the Canterbury party would never repent and turn back to God and the Bible, despite all the calls to do so by the faithful church.
I'm glad the GAC have finally taken the step to claim that they are the rightful heirs of the English Reformation, the custodian of the Prayer Book and the Articles of Religion. Whatever future Anglicanism has, it lies with them.
And I wonder how many of the largest Anglican churches in England, like St. Helen's Bishopgate, and many other strong churches in London especially, will now seek to separate from Canterbury…
Interesting that the new structure is to be "a fellowship of autonomous provinces". I wonder what that says about GAFCON's understanding of catholicity. Does the Vincentian Canon (with all its inherent ambiguity) still hold sway or is the 'new' Communion to be expressly Reformed? And, if so, where stand the West Indies or the Congo? All rhetorical questions (ones first raised at ACNA's birth) but still salient today. Sixteen years on, it almost feels more like a whimper than a bang.