SEARCH Journal

GAFCON’s challenge - and the test of Scripture, Tradition and Reason

GAFCON was recently described by the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, as “not a movement of the Holy Spirit, because it is divisive”. The statement must prompt those attracted by the movement to some careful consideration, despite the strong rebuttal from the Secretary General of GAFCON, Australia’s Peter Jensen. GAFCON – the Global Anglican Future Conference – first met in Jerusalem in 2008 where it became the focus for those seeking the exclusion of The Episcopal Church from the Lambeth Conference and hence from the Anglican Communion. It portrays itself as a renewal movement within Anglicanism; but recently it has ordered itself as an alternative way of being an Anglican church. The Conference believes that “serious disagreement over core doctrines is not good diversity which can be managed by institutional control and re-organization, but a sign of serious sickness in the body.” The GAFCON vision is of a church united around a confession with a Council holding all to account.

* Full article available in printed copies.

Philip Groves

after 10 years as director of the Anglican Communion’s Continuing Indaba Project is currently associate rector in the Wychert Vale Benefice in Buckinghamshire.