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Not a New Communion: Anglican Reformers Are Always Called Schismatic
Since Gafcon—the Global Anglican Future Conference—released its Martyrs’ Day statement on October 16, 2025, the same question has followed me from Belfast to Sydney to Dallas: Have we just witnessed the birth of a new Anglican Communion?
It’s understandable. The statement was bold—speaking of a “reordering of the Anglican Communion” and introducing the phrase “Global Anglican Communion” (GAC). For some, that sounded like a split. But it wasn’t a Declaration of Independence; it was a confession of Anglicanism’s ongoing dependence on the unchanging Word of God.
As Isaiah 40:8 reminds us, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”
Continuity, Not Creation
The GAC isn’t something new—it’s the same Anglican family renewed around its original center: the authority of Scripture, read and lived out through the theological vision of the English Reformation.
From the beginning, Anglicanism was defined not by loyalty to one office but by a shared confession expressed in the Thirty-nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Ordinal—anchors of biblical unity long before anyone spoke of the Instruments of Communion (the archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting).
When Gafcon leaders wrote, “We are now no longer a fellowship within the Anglican Communion—for as those who maintain historical Anglican doctrine, we are the Anglican Communion,” they weren’t founding a rival church but affirming continuity with the reformers who, under Scripture, restored the English church to the faith of the fathers.
Real Problem: Instruments Have Failed
Many assume the archbishop of Canterbury or the Lambeth Conference has always defined Anglican unity. In truth, these are relatively recent inventions.
The statement wasn’t a Declaration of Independence; it was a confession of Anglicanism’s ongoing dependence on the unchanging Word of God.
The first Lambeth Conference met in 1867. The archbishop’s global role emerged only as the British Empire gave way to independent national churches. When I served in Canada, some parishes still bore signs reading “The Church of England in Canada”—a reminder of that colonial era. As those churches became autonomous, Canterbury’s function as convener, not governor, gradually took shape.
The Anglican Consultative Council began in 1971 and the Primates’ Meeting in 1979. Although originally designed to coordinate fellowship, over time they came to function as institutions wielding ambiguous and unwritten constitutional authority that could somehow settle serious division and doctrinal dispute.
But these instruments have utterly failed to correct provinces that deny biblical truth. When early churches “[turned] to a different gospel” (Gal. 1:6), the apostle Paul confronted them directly, but the instruments have proven unable to confront and reject the false gospels that have arisen among us. The Martyrs’ Day statement exposes that drift and restores the true foundation: God’s Word—preached, taught, and obeyed.
From Colonial Relic to Global Fellowship
In England, bishops are still appointed by the Crown—a reminder that the Church of England remains established by the state. That may suit a Primate of All England; it cannot define a global church.
Elsewhere, bishops are elected by synods of clergy and laity. The GAC’s Council of Primates follows that biblical principle of shared discernment. It’s conciliar, not colonial—an international fellowship bound by confession, not by empire.
This is vital. Those who would serve as church overseers should be selected by God’s people under the guidance of the Holy Spirit according to God’s Word. “For an overseer . . . must be above reproach. . . . He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction” (Titus 1:7, 9), not someone whose fluency in politics and polite society might make him attractive to a committee of governing elites. After all, the question isn’t whether a bishop can impress those in power but whether he knows how to preach the gospel in season and out (2 Tim. 4:2).
Communion of Conscience
At the heart of this renewal stands the Jerusalem Statement of 2008, which affirms that “the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments [are] the Word of God written and . . . contain all things necessary for salvation.” It calls for Scripture to be “translated, read, preached, taught, and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading” (Article 2).
This is the Anglican way of reading the Bible—faithful to its plain meaning and formed by the church’s historic witness. It also shapes the conscience. Article 13 declares, “We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed.” Some have misunderstood this to require separation from every diocese or province that has been compromised by these doctrinal revisions. In truth, it calls us to reject false authority; whether such a rejection requires one to depart a compromised province is a matter of conscience.
From the beginning, Gafcon has honored both leavers and stayers—those who, by conscience, contend within compromised church structures and those who, by conscience, contend outside them. For Anglicans still constitutionally tied to Canterbury or the Church of England, the language of “affiliation” (rather than “membership”) provides a faithful way to stand in fellowship with the orthodox majority while remaining under local constraint.
As Luther said at Worms, “My conscience is captive to the Word of God. . . . It is neither right nor safe to go against conscience.” We honor such conscience as a Reformation principle: unity arises from conviction, not coercion—anchored in Scripture and expressed through fellowship rather than institutional allegiance.
Reformation, Not Schism
Critics often label this moment “schismatic.” Yet every genuine reform has carried that false charge. Cranmer and Jewel heard it in the 16th century, John Wesley in the 18th.
The difference between schism and reformation lies in the cause. Division for pride is sin, division over secondary matters is simply unnecessary, but separation for the sake of gospel truth is faithfulness. J. I. Packer said in a 2007 conference address, “Withdrawal from a unitary set-up that has become unorthodox and distorts the gospel . . . should be called not schism but realignment.”
That is what the Martyrs’ Day statement declares: realignment for the gospel’s sake.
Division for pride is sin; separation for truth is faithfulness.
This reordering isn’t only an Anglican story. It’s part of a wider renewal across global Christianity. In many denominations, evangelicals are recognizing that when institutions drift from Scripture, faithfulness sometimes requires courageous reformation. The GAC offers a living example: a worldwide fellowship that refuses to trade biblical truth for cultural approval.
Whether in Anglican, Methodist, or independent congregations, the challenge is the same: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).
Path Ahead
The statement acknowledges that more work lies ahead. Many details will be prayerfully discussed at Gafcon’s G26 Bishops’ Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, next March—hundreds of bishops gathered to discern how we organize, welcome members, and mobilize our communion for mission for our ongoing work for contending “for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).
Since the statement’s release, most criticism so far has come from the West, but across the Majority World, the prevailing response has been one word: “Finally.” Finally, the supermajority of Anglicans has spoken with clarity, declaring our fellowship rests not on colonial instruments but on the unchanging Word of God—on shared confession rather than inherited control, on gospel conviction rather than institutional convenience.
From the Martyrs to the Multitudes
It’s fitting that this moment came on Martyrs’ Day. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley died for the conviction that salvation and authority rest in Jesus Christ alone. Their candle still burns—not only in Africa, Asia, and South America but even among a faithful remnant in the West.
The GAC stands in that same light. It isn’t a new flame but the same gospel fire, carried by a global church that still believes what Latimer and Ridley believed: that “the word of God is not bound” (2 Tim. 2:9).
This isn’t a new communion. It’s the same church—reformed yet again by God’s Word.
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