Conservative Anglicans break with Church of England

The Global Anglican Future Conference on Thursday said its member churches would no longer participate in Anglican organizations and meetings headed by the Church of England. The group’s leadership council, made up of the heads of regional Anglican churches from 12 countries, also said they were rebranding the worldwide Anglican Communion umbrella group as the Global Anglican Communion. They planned to form a new worldwide Anglican bishops’ council and elect a chairman to replace the Archbishop of Canterbury. Anglicans in the new conference would stop contributing to or receiving funding from the current governing Anglican council, the conference said.

Any province or diocese wanting to be part of the Global Anglican Communion would need to agree to the 2008 Jerusalem Declaration, which affirmed Biblical marriage and Scriptural inerrancy, the group said.

Several of the regional Anglican churches represented in the group have rejected the Church of England’s leadership for years over doctrinal concerns. But the statement marks the first time that Alexandria, Chile, Congo, Kenya, Myanmar, and South Sudan have done so, according to Episcopal publication The Living Church. It’s also the first time that some Anglicans are planning to give the Archbishop of Canterbury’s traditional title of “the first among equals” to someone else.

What authority does the Global Anglican Future Conference have? The group says it represents the majority of Anglicans. The Secretary General of the Anglican Communion didn’t directly contest the group’s claims in a letter responding to the Thursday declaration. But he urged them to send representatives to next year’s council meeting called by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Only those present would make decisions shaping the future of Anglicans, he said. 

Dig deeper: Read my report on Nigerian Anglicans’ earlier rejection of the new female Archbishop of Canterbury.