Archbishop Georges Titre Ande, primate of the Anglican Church of Congo, has become the first member of the GAFCON Primates’ Council to affirm his church’s intention to remain part of the Anglican Communion.
The statement, released October 30, does not mention the communiqué issued by GAFCON on October 16, which calls on its members of its movement to decisively break their ties with the Instruments of Communion and the See of Canterbury and to enter a Global Anglican Communion. But it directly repudiates the summons.
“The Anglican Church of Congo has no intention to leave the Anglican Communion, rather to keep working with brothers and sisters of the GSFA [Global South Fellowship of Anglicans] to accomplish our common goal: to reform, heal and revitalize the Anglican Communion without leaving it. We remain committed to our fellowship in Christ with all orthodox/evangelical brothers and sisters in the Anglican Communion. They are our partners in mission.”
He added: “Any disengagement of the Anglican Church of Congo from the Anglican Communion needs, not only to be made collegially through respectful debate, but crucially can only be decided by our Provincial Synod.”
The Congolese statement affirms the founding vision of both GAFCON and GSFA as groups that “stand for biblical gospel mission” in response to “moral compromise, doctrinal error and the collapse of biblical witness in parts of the Anglican Communion,” a reference to changed teaching and practice about human sexuality and marriage, as well as universalism.
It also celebrates the church’s continued role in both groups. Titre Ande is one of six Global South primates to serve on both the GAFCON Primates’ Council and the GSFA Primates’ Steering Committee.
But Titre Ande’s emphasis on GSFA as the group responsible for working “to reform, heal, and revitalize the Anglican Communion” is significant. It references a division of labor within the Anglican realignment agreed upon by the leaders both GAFCON and GSFA in a joint meeting at Kigali, Rwanda in April 2023.
The Kigali Commitment, issued at the close of the meeting, described the two bodies as having “complementary roles”:
“Gafcon is a movement focused on evangelism and mission, church planting and providing support and a home for faithful Anglicans who are pressured by or alienated from revisionist dioceses and provinces. GSFA, on the other hand, is focused on establishing doctrinally based structures within the Communion.”
The Congolese statement recognizes that forming “doctrinally based structures,” like the proposed Global Anglican Communion would properly be GSFA’s role, not GAFCON’s. Yet a senior GSFA leader told The Living Church last week that GAFCON had not consulted with them before issuing the communiqué.
Titre Ande’s assertion that any decision about leaving the Anglican Communion would need to be made “collegially through respectful debate,” and that it “crucially can only be decided by our Provincial Synod,” echoes emphases from the statement issued by major GSFA leader Titus Chung, primate of the Province of the Anglican Church of South East Asia, on October 28.
Chung’s statement described GAFCON’s communiqué as raising “significant existential, structural, and ecclesiological questions” which require “careful study and prayerful discernment,” an indication that hasty action to meet GAFCON’s deadline of early March for a decision on joining the Global Anglican Communion is unrealistic.
Chung’s statement also said that the Instruments of Communion are being reformed, a reference to the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, which seek to decenter the Archbishop of Canterbury’s role in the Communion to deescalate tensions resulting from the Church of England’s steps toward permitting same-sex blessings. Chung and Titre Ande both serve on the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order, which prepared the proposals that are to be considered for adoption by the Anglican Consultative Council next summer in Northern Ireland.
The Congolese statement also notably quotes from Article 12 of the 2008 Jerusalem Declaration, Anglican realignment’s foundational text: “The Anglican Church of Congo, as other orthodox Christians in these two groups, recognizes the God-given diversity among us which enriches our global fellowship, and acknowledges freedom in secondary matters. It has always pledged to work together to seek the mind of Christ on issues that divide us.”
The statement suggests unease with the GAFCON communiqué’s declaration that important matters like communion with the See of Canterbury and the Church of England, participation in the Instruments of Communion, and forswearing donations from Communion-aligned churches—all previously secondary matters on which GAFCON members were free to disagree—have been elevated to issues of primary importance.
This decision, notably, was made by a bare quorum of seven of GAFCON’s twelve primates in a late-night online meeting that lasted less than an hour.
GAFCON’s General Secretary, Bishop Paul Donison, declined to comment directly on the Congolese statement, but told The Living Church,
“GAFCON is a servant to all of the Biblically orthodox within Anglicanism, who would gather together seeking the mind of Christ for our generation to reach the lost.”
“All Biblically orthodox believers within the Anglican Communion are considering what this statement means for them, their dioceses, and their provinces,” he continued.
Donison also clarified that GAFCON’s October 16 communique “has not laid any kind of timeline or specific process” from provinces to become part of the Global Anglican Communion. “The decision has to be left on timing and process, and – frankly –interpretation, [to] a local province or diocese.”
The Anglican Church of Congo, formally Province de l’Église Anglicane du Congo, is a predominantly Francophone church of 14 dioceses and about 500,000 members in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo (also known as Congo-Brazzaville). The church became autonomous in 1992, when the Province of Rwanda, Burundi, and Zaire was divided into three. Titre Ande became its fifth primate in 2021.
Message from the Anglican Church of Congo
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and also writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.
