The primates of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) reaffirmed their commitment to the Anglican Communion and worked on a strategic plan to become “an increasingly effective instrument for the reform of the Communion.” They met in Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles, on January 14-17.
The communiqué said Archbishop Titre Ande of Congo chose John 6:68—“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”—as the sermon text for the gathering’s opening service.
“This question comes to the Church today; are we leaving or are we staying? GSFA is staying within the Anglican Communion, but more importantly, we are staying with Jesus to bear witness that we must choose life rather than death and light rather than darkness,” they said.
The primates said they “lamented the departure from historic Anglican teaching which is now becoming entrenched in the senior leadership of the Church of England.” This was an indirect reference to Archbishop of Canterbury-elect Sarah Mullally’s support for same sex-blessings, a fact highlighted in their October response in response to news of her appointment.
At the same time, they expressed support for fellow conservatives within the Church of England, and in other parts of the Communion, who have been encouraged by the recent House of Bishops’ decision to effectively table Living in Love and Faith.
“We recognise that there are many in the Church of England, united in ‘The Alliance,’ who have remained faithful and are offering an increasingly effective resistance to the revisionist agenda,” they wrote. “It was a privilege for some of us to be present with over three hundred orthodox leaders in July last year and we assure them of our continued solidarity as they contend for the faith.”
They added that GSFA is “working to truly be a home for all orthodox Anglicans,” and that they “continue to engage for the time being with the IASCUFO Nairobi-Cairo proposals.”
Three of the six primates present—Titre Ande, Samy Shehata of Alexandria, and Titus Chung of South East Asia—are members of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order, which developed the proposals.
The proposals seek to create space for unity and common mission amid theological disagreement by revising the Anglican Communion’s classic definition and decentering the Archbishop of Canterbury’s role in its Instruments. The GSFA submitted an as-yet unpublished response to the proposals during the summer.
Notably absent from the GSFA communiqué was any reference to the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans’ October announcement of launching the Global Anglican Communion.
GAFCON has invited all Anglican churches that accept the 2008 Jerusalem Declaration to cut all ties with the Canterbury-centered Anglican Communion. GAFCON plans to gather its primates in Abuja in March to elect a new leader they say will take the Archbishop of Canterbury’s place as the “first among equals leader” of worldwide Anglicanism.
Six of the nine GSFA primates who signed the January communiqué also are listed as members of GAFCON’s Primates’ Council. One of them, Archbishop Miguel Uchoa of the GAFCON-founded Anglican Church of Brazil, was among the drafters of the vision for the Global Anglican Communion.
Uchoa told The Living Church that the GAFCON communiqué did not appear on the meeting’s agenda and a decision was made, because several primates were absent, “that no issues outside the agenda would be discussed. The proposed agenda was to present a strategic plan for the GSFA.”
He added that eight provinces are affiliated with both the GSFA and GAFCON (Alexandria, Brazil, Chile, Congo, Myanmar, North America, South Sudan, and Uganda), though he acknowledged that several of these are not now active in GAFCON. “Some officially remain in GAFCON, but the reality is that, so far, their withdrawal has never been requested,” he said.
Titre Ande, who is listed as both a GSFA and GAFCON primate, has critiqued GAFCON’s plan, wrting in late October that the Anglican Church of Congo has “no intention to leave the Anglican Communion, rather to keep working with brothers and sisters of the GSFA to accomplish our common goal: to reform, heal and revitalize the Anglican Communion without leaving it.”
Several GSFA primates have indicated separately to TLC that they do not plan to attend GAFCON’s Abuja gathering.
Some commentators have suggested a pending rupture between the two groups, which had announced a strategic alliance at GAFCON’s 2023 gathering in Kigali. GAFCON then committed to serve the cause of Anglican orthodoxy through spiritual renewal and church planting, while GSFA would focus on faith and order. GAFCON’s decision to announce plans for the Global Anglican Communion—a faith and order matter—without consulting with GSFA has clearly been a concern to some GSFA leaders.
Uchoa told TLC that he sees such a rupture as unlikely.
“It is necessary to remember that all the members of GAFCON, as well as the GFSA, have always stated that ‘we are not leaving the Anglican Communion,’” he said. “In our understanding, those who left the Anglican Communion were the provinces of revisionist theology that abandoned the ‘Cranmerian’ principles that gave rise to this Communion since the 16th century, namely: the 39 Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal. Besides the Bible, which is intrinsic.”
He added: “I believe that GAFCON and GSFA can and should coexist with common purposes and different strategies; each of these organizations has a unique calling, but GAFCON, since 2008, has already declared its goal to be the resettlement of the Anglican Communion.”
The communiqué mentioned significant development of the GSFA’s three activity tracks: Leadership and Ministerial Formation, Economic Empowerment, and Mission Partnerships. It celebrated that six in-person conferences have met under its auspices in different parts of the world since its first assembly in the summer of 2023.
It announced plans for a second assembly, to be held in Uganda in April 2027.
The communiqué said the gathering ended with a word of encouragement from Archbishop Chung “to be resolute in bearing witness to Jesus Christ as the light of the world.”
“When we mirror the culture of our society, as has happened too often in the modern West, the light fades and is lost, but our great calling, as the GSFA, is to a life of faithfulness which mirrors the glory of the incarnate Word, full of grace and truth,” the primates wrote.
The meeting’s communiqué, released January 21, was signed by nine primates, representing the Anglican Communion’s provinces of Alexandria, Congo, the Indian Ocean, Myanmar, South East Asia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda, as well as the Anglican Church of Brazil.
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.
