To my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ in GAFCON:
You have broken my heart.
I will soon celebrate 20 years of ordained ministry. One of the things that has most sustained me, and what drew me into the Anglican tradition, was the reality of a global communion, catholic in order and evangelical in orientation, in continuity with the Great Tradition going back to apostolic times.
Your Communiqué of October 16 sounds as though you are rejecting all of us who confess the apostolic faith and are committed to a traditional witness within the Episcopal Church and in provinces throughout the Communion—my heart is crushed. We have need of you, my brothers and sisters in the Lord. With you, we strive “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
As I read and re-read your Communiqué, a few questions came to mind that I hope we can explore together.
Question 1: Resolution 4 of the 1867 Lambeth Conference commends this: “That, in the opinion of this Conference, unity in faith and discipline will be best maintained among the several branches of the Anglican Communion by due and canonical subordination of the synods of the several branches to the higher authority of a synod or synods above them.”
I noticed that the Communiqué did not have any signatures at the conclusion. I’m wondering about the process by which this statement came to speak for all the provinces connected with GAFCON. I would love to know more about how the bishops and synods of those provinces prayed through these proposals, debated them, and voted on them.
Question 2: Section 1 of the Communiqué reads, “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. As much as I see the importance of the centrality of Scripture and our faithfulness to it, I also think this claim is a profound divergence from how the sweep of the Anglican tradition, and the Great Tradition of which it is an inheritance, has conceived of the foundation and theological center of Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.
The Holy Scriptures teach that Jesus Christ, not the Scriptures, is the Church’s one foundation: “So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:19-22).
The formularies of the Church of England and her divines never expressed the heart of the Church’s teaching as “the Holy Bible, ‘translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading,’” with all due respect to the Jerusalem Declaration. At least in this case, it seems that the way the Jerusalem Declaration frames Scripture is a radical innovation of theological grounding and ecclesiology, and does not articulate the Anglican tradition in a way that our forebears would recognize (whether Cranmer, Jewel, Hooker, Laud, Cosin, or Andrewes).
The Articles do not declare themselves to be a comprehensive expression of the Christian faith, but more modestly to “contain the true Doctrine of the Church of England agreeable to God’s Word.” They do not begin with a confession in the Scriptures, but in the Trinity, the person and work of Christ, and the person of the Holy Spirit. Only then do the Articles turn to Scripture, and with this rather modest claim: that it “containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation” (Article VI).
The Anglican tradition sets Scripture within the wider constellation of God’s saving economy: “the faith which is revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds and to which the historic formularies of the Church of England bear witness.” Those formularies are, of course, the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles of Religion, and the Ordinal. Are these “the Formularies of the Reformation” referenced in Section 2 of the Communiqué?
Question 3: When you claim in section 7 of the Communiqué that “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,” a few more questions come to mind.
On what grounds does some of the Communion declare to the rest what is required of the whole? Isn’t the key principle “What touches all, should be approved of all (Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbari debet)”?
Why is the standard for global Anglicanism a statement that is less than 20 years old? This sounds not like a return to an ancient or traditional standard, but an innovation. As Cranmer wisely noted in his essay “On Ceremonies” in the first Prayer Book of 1549, “if they will declare themselves to be more studious of unity and concord,” we must remember that “innovations and new-fangleness, which (as much as may be with the true setting forth of Christ’s Religion) is always to be eschewed.”
Question 4: Section 2 of the Communiqué declares that you “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 then in Section 4, the Communiqué reads, “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.”
This seems to assume that the Communion is something other than an autonomous fellowship. When, in the period since 1867, did the Anglican Communion cease to be “a fellowship of autonomous provinces”? Furthermore, there has never been a time when any part of the Communion or any of its Instruments have forced, or have been able to force, any province to teach anything contrary to the doctrine and discipline received by the Church of England. That’s because each remains an autonomous province. If each province is autonomous, how could the Instruments of Communion have enforced “the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion”? The only way this can happen is if the whole of the Communion’s leadership makes use of the Instruments at its disposal.
But Section 5 of Communiqué rejects all the Instruments of Communion.
Section 8 makes a claim that sounds quite familiar: “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.” This is precisely one of the central features of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals of the Inter-Anglican Standing Committee on Unity, Faith, and Order. And one of its authors is a member of the GAFCON Primates Council. The heart of this proposal is to “renew the Instruments of Communion.” The Communion seems to want the reforms that GAFCON also desires. So does the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA). The energy for reform is quite strong at this time and it has the backing of a great portion of the Anglican Communion and groups like GAFCON and GSFA. We need your voices.
Bishop Anthony Poggo, the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, has just written a pastoral letter to the Communion. In it, he reminds us that all Anglican churches are “invited to shape the Instruments of Communion, which rightly evolve over time, as those gathered seek to discern what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” Like him, I pray that you will reconsider and send your “representatives to the 19th meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council next year in Belfast, so everyone can participate in the decision-making. Those who are present are the ones who shape the outcomes and resolutions of meetings.”
Question 5: Maybe the most painful part of the letter was Section 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.” I’m not totally sure how to understand this, so I ask for your help.
Are you saying that there is ruptured communion with every Anglican province that is not part of GAFCON? Or is your claim more limited, namely, an impaired communion “with those who advocate the revisionist agenda”? Are you in full communion with those who have stood publicly, like Communion Partners in the Episcopal Church and Communion Partners Canada, the Alliance in the Church of England, and the Anglican Community of St. Mark in New Zealand? Part of the very reason for their existence is to stand with the Anglican Communion in their witness to historic faith.
The Scriptures are clear: Christians cannot be out of communion with each other. Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. All those who have put on Christ and are in Christ are also united in him to each other. Full stop.
There can, of course, be wounded communion, degrees of communion, and impairments to full communion. These impediments have wrought great violence upon the Communion shared by Anglicans.
But the solution is never to un-Church each other, to seek more distance, greater enmity, and further division.
The Apostle Paul tells us that our ministry in crystalline form is “the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18). Your brothers and sisters throughout the Anglican Communion long to be fully reconciled to all of you as we respond faithfully to Paul’s admonition, “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”
Those of us in other parts of the Anglican Communion cannot walk alone, for without you, we cannot come to the perfection God intends for us. Can we come together and pray and seek God’s wisdom for the healing of our divisions and the faithfulness of our witness? Together, we all long for the fulfillment of the prayer of our Lord for us: “they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21).
“May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. 5:23).
Your brother in Christ,
The Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D.
Executive Director and Publisher, The Living Church Foundation
The Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D., is the Executive Director and Publisher of the Living Church Foundation, Senior Lecturer in Liturgics at Nashotah House Theological Seminary, and a scholar of early Christian liturgy.
