What Does Work: The Example of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and the Future of Christianity
by Kurt Monroe
In his new series, Aaron Vriesman is showing us what does not work. He is focusing specifically on the way “legitimizing alternative sexualities” in the church does not work. The past few decades have given us abundant examples of the destructive power of progressive, liberal theology, the most visible symptom of which is the celebration of unbiblical sexual expressions and practice. The past few weeks, however, gave us an example of what does work and a vision of the future of Christianity.
From April 17 through 21, representatives from theologically orthodox churches, dioceses, and provinces within the Anglican communion (the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans) gathered in Kigali, Rwanda for the fourth meeting of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON). Those present at the conference represented roughly 85% of Anglicans around the world, which itself is the third largest communion of Christians in the world, behind only the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communions. Though it made few headlines and didn’t trend on social media, what happened in Kigali will likely prove a seismic event in the history of the church. In the statement that the representatives approved (called “The Kigali Commitment,”¹ which I encourage you to read in full), the confessing Anglicans unwaveringly committed themselves to a future of faithful adherence to the authority of Scripture and the historic, orthodox faith that was entrusted to the apostles and has been guarded by the bride of Christ over these many centuries. In a beautiful display of unity that crossed the boundaries of continents, tribes, tongues, and nations, the orthodox Anglican church spoke with one voice of their affirmation of, and commitment to, the historic Christian faith. Praise and thanks be to God!
However, the recent history of Anglicanism demanded that this statement not be only an affirmation; the reality of rampant heresy and apostasy by church leadership within the Anglican communion meant that it must also be a rejection. After decades of battle with theological liberalism and all of its symptoms, the confessing Anglicans in essence said to the liberal revisionists within the Anglican communion, including the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury: The fight is over, and your days are done. We reject your theological innovations and “departures from the authority of God’s word [that] have torn the fabric of the Communion.” You errant archbishops, bishops, priests, and deacons have failed the God who called you to your office, the church who you were called to shepherd, and the world to whom you were called to proclaim the gospel of Christ. We are moving forward in faithfulness to God and his Word to shepherd his flock and proclaim the gospel to the world without you.
In essence, after the Church of England’s bishops and archbishop voted to bless same-sex unions earlier this year, the confessing Anglicans of GAFCON urged them to repent saying, “we call upon those provinces, dioceses and leaders who have departed from biblical orthodoxy to repent of their failure to uphold the Bible’s teaching… We long for this repentance but until they repent, our communion with them remains broken. We consider that those who refuse to repent have abdicated their right to leadership within the Anglican Communion…” The Archbishop of Canterbury is no longer recognized as the first among equals because he has abdicated the responsibilities of his office. In fact, unless he repents, he is simply not recognized at all. The historic seat of Saint Augustine of Canterbury is, to put it bluntly, vacant. The Anglican communion will be reset, and because of her apostasy, the mother church of England (and those provinces who remain in error) will not be present as the communion moves forward. To be clear, the confessing Anglicans have not made themselves schismatic; they have now officially recognized that the Church of England and other errant Western provinces (such as the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada) have severed themselves, through their unrepentant and blasphemous error, not only from the Anglican communion but from the catholic and apostolic church. (For a more in-depth account of the GAFCON conference and some of the details of Anglican polity, see Anglican Rector Rev. Barton J. Gingerich’s article at World News here).
Why should members and officebearers in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) care what is going on in the Anglican communion? First, a strong Anglican communion that is committed to the authority of Scripture in its life and doctrine strengthens the church catholic and apostolic. We should rejoice at what has happened because it will mean a renewed energy, strength, and focus on gospel proclamation and discipleship from our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Anglican church, and that’s always a good thing. Whenever we see the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of our brothers and sisters, producing good fruit of righteous obedience and the proclamation of the true gospel of Christ, we should give thanks, no matter what the context or denomination.
However, we should also care because our Anglican brothers and sisters in Christ have shown us what works in the fight against institutional heresy, and they have given us a glimpse of the future of Christianity. I would like to suggest that there are (at least) five things that we in the CRC can learn from our brothers and sisters in the orthodox Anglican communion:
Rejecting a shared cultural history as the source of ecclesial identity and affirming that ecclesial identity and unity are derived from doctrinal agreement and submission to biblical authority works.
Numerous people noted that the location of GAFCON 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda pretty well summed up the situation: the center of life, energy, and identity of Anglicanism is no longer in Canterbury, England. It is in Africa. It has been all too easy for the Anglican communion to find its identity and unity in its cultural trappings—in its historic, beautiful, and stately buildings, its choral tradition, its prayer book, and all things English. Perhaps it would have been easy to make all things African the center of their new life together, but GAFCON 2023 didn’t take that bait. Perhaps it would have been tempting to throw all of their Anglican cultural heritage in the trash, but they didn’t take that bait either. The words of the Book of Common Prayer were woven through their worship and the bishops from around the globe were arrayed in their historical Anglican garb. Rather than trading one cultural identity for another or throwing their heritage in the trash, they committed themselves to a unity founded on the Triune God and his Word and shared doctrinal commitments.
The Christian Reformed Church stands at a similar crossroads. Will the CRC be a denomination that is united predominantly by a common Dutch history and its cultural trappings, or will it be a denomination that finds its unity in the Triune God and his Word and in shared doctrinal commitments? Will the fact that Opa was a Minister of the Word in the CRC, that Dad was on the Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations Committee, that you haven’t missed a Calvin v. Hope basketball game since 1975, or that your kids were raised on the grey Psalter Hymnal matter more than what we believe about God and his creation? Or will the CRCNA be a denomination that honors its heritage but finds its ecclesial identity and its unity in a shared faith in God that lead to specific doctrinal commitments? The Anglicans have shown us that the former does not work, but the latter most certainly does.
2. True communion and cooperation with the global church works.
The church in the West is dying. The global church is alive and growing. The Anglican communion showed us that Christ’s Body is at its best when we in the west lay down our selfish ambitions in order to truly listen to and learn from the global church, “considering others better than ourselves.” The church is at her glorious best when she is united across countries and cultures by a common commitment to faithfulness to God and his Word. It should be noted that the confessing Anglicans were not pursuing diversity or even the witness of global unity as ends in themselves. Rather, they were pursuing an ecclesial life of faithfulness that would glorify God by submitting to his Word, and they showed us that global cooperation helps achieve that end far better than regional isolation. As the whole world experiences the tectonic shifts of the late modern age, the Reformed churches of the globe need the witness and cooperation of one another more than ever before.
3. Using biblical language and categories in obedience to Scripture to talk about difficult things works.
Prior to the conference, some of the representatives to GAFCON voiced concerns that they were afraid that they would walk away from the conference with a statement that would amount to what they called “Anglican Fudge,” a statement that was soft and squishy and too sickly sweet when what was needed was honest, bracing medicine. The Anglicans don’t have a corner on the fudge market, however, and there are some who might argue that the CRC can make fudge just as squishy and just as sickly sweet. In a world full of leaders without conviction who deal in fudge-making, the “Kigali Commitment” is startling, bracing, and wholesome. It uses honest, straightforward biblical language and categories to speak of the reality of the Anglican communion’s errant provinces, dioceses, and leaders. It says things like
“The current divisions in the Anglican Communion have been caused by radical departures from the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some within the Communion have been taken captive by hollow and deceptive philosophies of the world (Colossians 2:8). Such a failure to hear and heed God’s Word undermines the mission of the church as a whole.”
“repeated departures from the authority of God’s Word have torn the fabric of the Communion”
“Since the Lord does not bless same-sex unions, it is pastorally deceptive and blasphemous to craft prayers that invoke blessing in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”
“Public statements by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders of the Church of England in support of same-sex blessings are a betrayal of their ordination and consecration vows to banish error and to uphold and defend the truth taught in Scripture.”
“We call upon those provinces, dioceses, and leaders who have departed from biblical orthodoxy to repent of their failure to uphold the Bible’s teaching. This includes matters such as human sexuality and marriage, the uniqueness and divinity of Christ, his bodily resurrection, his promised return, the summons to faith and repentance and the final judgment.”
“We long for this repentance but until they repent, our communion with them remains broken.”
“We consider that those who refuse to repent have abdicated their right to leadership within the Anglican Communion, and we commit ourselves to working with orthodox Primates and other leaders to reset the Communion on its biblical foundations.”
(emphasis mine throughout the above)
To be sure, the goal of the confessing Anglicans was not to make a statement that merely “worked.” Their goal was certainly to see things truthfully and to speak about them truthfully in love. While we might look at those words and wonder how loving they are, we must remember that they follow decades of more gentle attempts to bring those in error back into the orthodox faith. As the statement put it, “Despite 25 years of persistent warnings by most Anglican Primates, repeated departures from the authority of God’s Word have torn the fabric of the Communion.” Though progressives often argue that that church has not “dialogued” enough about matters of human sexuality, the church as a whole has been speaking about sexuality since its beginning, and we in the CRC have been discussing the specific issue of homosexuality since 1973. For the last fifty years, our denomination has spoken clearly, consistently, and persistently about this issue and has called members and officebearers to faithfulness to God’s Word about sexuality and marriage. However, within the CRC, repeated, stubborn, and unrepentant “departures from the authority of God’s Word have torn the fabric of [our own] communion” and are undermining the “mission of the church as a whole.” It is time for leaders with conviction to speak the truth about what has happened and what must happen. We must not live by lies or squishy half-truths but fully in the truth, and we must speak the truth. It works because it is true.
4. The rejection of a supposed “third way” works.
One of our greatest temptations comes in the form of calls to what must, by necessity, amount to false unity—calls to some supposed third way that will keep us all happily together. The Anglicans have shown us that it works to reject such calls because they are calls not only to what is unprofitable and unwise but to what is impossible. For years, the Archbishop of Canterbury and his fellow bishops have called the Anglican communion to “learn to walk together in ‘good disagreement.’” In other words, confessing Anglicans were asked to tolerate the blasphemy of the errant provinces, dioceses, and leaders while the revisionist progressives were asked to tolerate what was, in their minds at least, the bigotry of the confessing Anglicans. No one was happy. Nor should they have been, for such is the logical end of both positions. Regarding the call to false unity, the “The Kigali Commitment” says, “we reject the claim that two contradictory positions can both be valid in matters affecting salvation. We cannot ‘walk together’ in good disagreement with those who have deliberately chosen to walk away from the ‘faith once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3). The people of God ‘walk in his ways,’ ‘walk in the truth,’ and ‘walk in the light,’ all of which require that we do not walk in Christian fellowship with those in darkness (Deuteronomy 8:6; 2 John 4:1; 1 John 1:7).”
The synods of the CRC have a history of attempting to get the denomination to “walk together in ‘good disagreement’” about a wide variety of things (some of them possible and some of them impossible). The Sirens’ call to the false unity of “good disagreement” will reverberate off the walls of Calvin University’s auditorium this June. The delegates to synod must plug their ears, for they are the calls of the Sirens, not the call of God and his Word. The fact that some have declared human sexuality adiaphora (a disputable issue) does not, simply because they have said so, make it so. Sex outside of a marriage between one man and one woman is either sin or it is not. The denial of, and rebellion against, the body in which we are born and its meaning is either proud rebellion against the Creator or it is not. These things either separate us from God, one another, and even ourselves, or these things don’t matter so much. But you can’t have it both ways. Those of us who believe that these things are of eternal significance simply cannot “agree to disagree” with those who believe that they are “merely temporal arguments.” Therefore, we must reject the calls to “walk together in ‘good disagreement’.”
5. Refusing to be afraid works.
There are many temptations to fear and cowardice, perhaps none stronger right now than the fear of being accused of “loveless orthodoxy,” bigotry, or hate. The Anglicans reminded us, first of all, that only orthodoxy can actually be loving. Heresy and false teaching are never loving and never can be. Orthodoxy itself is never unloving. An orthodox Christian or an orthodox institution might behave in unloving ways, but it will not be because of their orthodoxy. In fact, such behavior would be a denial and betrayal of their doctrine. At present, though, the mere accusation of holding a “loveless orthodoxy” is enough to make some cower in fear. In this regard, the Anglicans were above reproach. GAFCON 2023 was defined by a spirit of joy and love. Many participants spoke of the joy of being in communion with the global church, worshiping and celebrating God’s faithfulness together. This gathering was also marked by love, not only love for those who were present and the churches they represented (some of them marginalized, persecuted, enduring harsh poverty and opposition), but also love for the lost in the world, including those struggling with sexual temptation. It is love that compelled them to confront the leaders of the Church of England who have aided and abetted those who struggle in their sin, propagating lies and leaving their sheep vulnerable to attack by the wolves who would consume them. “The Kigali Commitment” acknowledged that “It is not appropriate pastoral care to mislead people, by pretending that God blesses sexually active relationships between two people of the same sex. This is unloving as it leads them into error and places a stumbling block in the way of their inheriting the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).” GAFCON 2023 was not an example of “loveless orthodoxy,” but rather a clear picture of the costly love that orthodoxy requires, even if it leaves believers open to accusations of hatred and bigotry.
I said above that the Anglicans not only showed us what works, but they also gave us a glimpse of the future of Christianity. The future of Christianity is orthodox, global, repentant, and submitted to God’s Word. The future of the Reformed communion will be comprised of a global community of churches that stand together to claim the best of our varied cultural heritages and a shared belief in the beauty of our orthodoxy. Imagine with me the Global Fellowship of Confessing Reformed Churches (GFCRC), a communion of Reformed denominations and congregations who share our doctrinal commitments to the continental forms of unity and a passion for fidelity to God’s Word and gospel proclamation. Out of this communion could arise the very first GRFCON (the Global Reformed Future Conference), a meeting that should probably take place in Nigeria or the Philippines within the next few years, and at which we will “commit ourselves afresh to the gospel mission of proclaiming the crucified, risen and ascended Christ, calling on all to acknowledge him as Lord in repentance and faith, and living out a joyful, faithful obedience to his Word in all areas of our lives.” Amen, and amen.
1 “The Kigali Commitment” followed (in both chronology and spirit) the “Ash Wednesday Statement of GSFA [the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches] Primates on the Church of England’s Decision Regarding the Blessing of Same Sex Union,” which I also encourage you to read.