North African Anglican Bishop: The Jerusalem Declaration Is Our Confession

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

March 12, 2026

The Rt. Rev. Ashley Null, Anglican Bishop of North Africa and a leading Cranmer scholar, addressed more than 400 conferees at GAFCON (G26) in Abuja, arguing that assent to the Jerusalem Declaration is a return to the ancient truths Anglicans have always held. At the heart of that return, he contended, lies the foundational Reformation principle of the pervasive nature of human sinfulness—and with it, the hope of the gospel for personal transformation.

Cranmer’s Diagnosis of the Human Condition

A fundamental principle of Reformation Anglicanism is that human sinfulness is the greatest hindrance to human flourishing—and to God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. Thomas Cranmer’s General Confession, prayed at every daily office, gives this principle its most enduring liturgical expression:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways, like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us.

Each phrase repays careful attention:

• Almighty and most merciful Father— God is all-powerful, yet his redeeming love has the last word. Because he is so abundantly merciful, he works even our sinfulness toward his good purposes in his good time.

• We have erred and strayed from thy ways, like lost sheep— As Isaiah 53:6 teaches, every one of us has gone our own way.

• We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts— We have served the false gods of our own imagination, chasing what we wrongly believed would make us happy.

• We have offended against thy holy laws— The result is that we have wronged God, one another, and ourselves.

• We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and done those things which we ought not to have done— Our lives are filled with activity, yet that activity only keeps us running in place—a hamster wheel of effort without effectiveness, wrong choices leading nowhere we wish to go.

• And there is no health in us— Cut off from God and our true selves, the soul is sick unto death. Humanity does not need a teacher to show us how to make better choices; we need a Redeemer to deliver us from the numbing guilt and destructive power of our bondage to sin.

The Comfortable Words: Scripture’s Answer to Human Need

To this searching diagnosis of the human condition, Cranmer appended the Comfortable Words—four promises from Scripture that answer each element of our need:

• Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you— Wearied by our endless, misdirected efforts, we are invited to rest.

• So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son— In his great love, God takes the initiative to solve the problem we have created but cannot fix.

• This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners— He came to reveal our sins and to be the way, the truth, and the life that restores us to God’s presence now and forever.

• If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins— In the glorious exchange of the cross, the immortal One dies so that mortal humanity might live forever.

“This, then, is the Gospel on which Anglicanism was founded. Because of our sinfulness, we cannot find our own way home to God. He must come to us. He must rescue us from ourselves,” said Null.

The Reformers’ Return to Scripture

“At this conference we have heard repeatedly that Christian unity is not rooted in shared human values, inherited institutions, or a common commitment to mission. Worthy as those things are, they are the fruit of Christian unity, not its source.”

“Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, and their colleagues understood that the Gospel revealed in Scripture is the source of the church’s life now and of our eternal life together in the age to come. They looked afresh at the Bible and found much to cherish in the inherited tradition: the ancient creeds accurately summarized biblical truth, and Augustine’s sober view of human nature matched what Scripture taught.”

Null explained that the reformers adopted Augustine’s hermeneutical principle that Scripture interprets Scripture, with clearer passages illuminating more obscure ones. Mindful of the sin principle, they were suspicious of novelty and always read the Bible in conversation with the generations who had gone before. Cranmer, Jewel, and Hooker consistently tested their sola Scriptura conclusions against patristic precedent.

The reformers identified doctrines and practices contrary to Scripture when they saw the church drifting toward relying on human good intentions rather than divine revelation. “The medieval insistence that perfect, personal righteousness was required for salvation struck them as a supreme example of such error—and an utter pastoral disaster.”

“Their response was thoroughgoing reform. The Articles of Religion enshrined biblical authority as Anglicanism’s doctrinal plumb line. The Book of Common Prayer restored the systematic, congregational reading of Scripture and wove its very words into the fabric of corporate prayer. The Book of Homilies proclaimed salvation and discipleship from its pages. The result was a church that was, at one and the same time, authentically catholic and biblically reformed.”

The Anglican Communion Today

Null observed that by the twenty-first century a growing number of Anglican churches had severed their values, structures, and mission from their Scriptural roots. Human good intentions had displaced divine Gospel revelation, and cultural capitulation began to masquerade as cultural accommodation. Predictably, the true knowledge of God eroded, and Anglican unity fractured as a result. The Jerusalem Declaration was written to address this pastoral and missional crisis.

The logic is inexorable, he argued: “If Anglicans cannot agree about the human condition, they cannot agree about salvation. If they cannot agree about salvation, they cannot agree about pastoral care. If they cannot agree about pastoral care, they cannot agree about the church’s mission. And if they cannot agree about pastoral care and mission, genuine communion becomes impossible.”

The Jerusalem Declaration therefore calls Anglicans back to their first love—to historic faith and morals, to founding formularies and ancient creeds, to the only enduring basis for Anglican identity.

“We have come full circle. We began with the Reformation Anglican conviction that human sinfulness pervades all of life and that only God can rescue us from it. We end with the hope of Philippians 1:6—that he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion.”

copyright 2026 John Ashley Null, used by permission for educational purposes only.

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