A New and Hopeful Future: Anglicans and the Kigali Statement [Fireband Big Read]

Photo by Arpit Rastogi on Unsplash

“Let me help you,” a fellow Anglican from East Africa—I never had a chance to catch her name—said as she pulled my slipping infant up onto my back so I could tie my wrap more firmly. She patted my arm and told me I was doing a good job. It was 2008. My husband and I were in Jerusalem, he in the conference hall listening, enthralled, to Church of Nigeria Bishop Ben Kwashi, and I, outside, bouncing my fussy baby. We had kissed our other three young children goodbye two days before, entrusting them to our friends in New York, and boarded two separate flights to the same destination. Were we mad? Perhaps, but there we were, surrounded by Anglicans from around the world for the first-ever Global Anglican Futures Conference (GAFCON). It seemed, then, an odd name. Did Anglicanism have a future? 

For a one-time event, the word “conference” as part of the acronym made sense. In the intervening fifteen years, while the ‘con’ part of Gafcon is there still, it has two implications. When the name is capitalized—GAFCON—it means a conference is in session. When it is lowercase—Gafcon—it means the work of the movement continues apace. For that is what Gafcon has been, a worldwide movement compassing Anglicans both within the recognized Communion of Canterbury, and those Anglicans who have left the formal structures of the Communion to form parallel jurisdictions wherever official Anglican bodies have apostatized.

Few American Christians, if they know anything more about Anglicanism other than that Henry VIII had six wives and beheaded the best one, have heard about “the gay bishop.” That is how many people still refer to one of the most significant episodes of American Anglicanism, an event that led to what is affectionately known by Anglicans themselves as the Anglican Wars. In 2003 the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire elected Gene Robinson, a partnered gay man, to be their diocesan bishop. We were not residents of New Hampshire, so why did it matter to us, two states over, in our tiny Anglican parish?

Within Anglican polity, a bishop is consecrated for the whole church. His life and doctrine are meant to represent the life and doctrine of every Anglican congregation, diocese, and province. Our bishop was asked to give his assent to that consecration a few months later at the General Convention. This he did, along with a majority of his colleagues in the House of Bishops. The House of Deputies followed suit. Their assent constituted an official act by the governing body of The Episcopal Church (TEC). In the eyes of the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide, including those, like us, who eventually left, Gene Robinson’s consecration represented TEC’s departure from Christian orthodoxy. The global Anglican Communion was in peril. 

Robinson’s consecration was not a sudden, out-of-the-blue, provocative act. In 1998, just five years earlier, the Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) had invited all the bishops of the worldwide Anglican Communion to Lambeth Palace for the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference. The first Lambeth Conference was called in 1867 when the British Empire was nearing its height. In the intervening century, each successive ABC called the Lambeth Conference once each decade. As the empire receded, the various churches English people had established for themselves, now filled with indigenous worshipers, were given local governance. Thus, a hundred and fifty years later, when English, American, Australian, Canadian, and Irish Bishops gathered, they were joined by bishops and primates from India, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Singapore, Argentina, and more. (The list of countries where an established Anglican church resides would take too long to list here.) These so-called “Global South” Anglicans are now the majority of Anglicans in the world. 

While it is hard to compare statistics across provinces and years, by a rough reckoning, at least 85% of the world’s Anglicans live and worship in the Global South. The World Council of Churches reports that Nigeria alone has more than 17 million Anglicans. How many Nigerian Anglicans attend services on a given Sunday has not been reported, but it is safe to say that their average Sunday attendance is greater than that of The Church of England, which reports that roughly 900,000 people out of 19 million official members attended at least once a month before the COVID Pandemic. TEC’s own numbers, post-Pandemic, reflect a 47% drop in average Sunday attendance over five years. Now, on any given Sunday, less than 300,000 Episcopalians go to church. 

Though Lambeth meets every ten years regardless of what might be happening theologically around the Communion, the 1998 meeting found itself called upon to address TEC’s growing practice of ordaining practicing same-sex-oriented people to the priesthood. This, and other heterodox theological trends, meant that the global meeting of Anglicans in 1998 was strained. Western churches, expecting to have their progressive theological agenda accepted with very little debate, instead found themselves routed by Resolution 1.10, which condemns homosexual relationships as sinful and promises pastoral care for those enduring same-sex attractions. After a century and a half of cups of tea, of Choral Evensong, and of polite conversation, a great reversal had taken place. The precious heritage of faith the West had bestowed on the Global South, whatever the motivations and intentions of the British Empire at the time, in the intervening decades was quietly, with barely anyone noticing, abandoned by the West. At the same time, the Global South, through the tumult of poverty, economic corruption, and political upheaval, guarded the Christian faith as they first received it, resisting Western deconstruction of biblical revelation and theology.

One might see, then, how the consecration of Gene Robinson, in defiance of both the plain meaning of the scriptures and the expressed will of the Communion at Lambeth in 1998, would be perceived by non-Western churches. The Global South demanded that Canterbury discipline TEC. It would be an easy matter. All the ABC (then Rowan Williams) needed to do was disinvite all Episcopal bishops and other representatives in TEC from participating in the Communion’s “Instruments of Communion,” which would include removing Episcopalian representatives from the Anglican Consultative Counsel, forbear from inviting TEC’s Presiding Bishop (then Katherine Jefferts Schori) from the Primates’ Meeting, and exclude Episcopalian bishops from the next Lambeth Conference. 

Instead, for five interminable years, Canterbury wrung its hands while TEC and other Western provinces pursued a campaign to subvert the Global South financially and theologically. Finally, in 2008, just as our small parish in New York had begun formal proceedings to leave TEC, the most vocal Global South primates issued a call to the first GAFCON meeting in Jerusalem. At that first GAFCON it was decided that a new province would be formed in North America for orthodox Anglicans leaving TEC. The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) was officially founded in 2009 a few months after our congregation lost its building and assets to TEC. 

The GAFCON primates also ratified the Jerusalem Declaration, the doctrinal and spiritual anchor of the movement. In twelve brief points, the Declaration rearticulates the Gospel, reasserts the doctrine of marriage, reaffirms classical Anglican formularies, and identifies and condemns heretical teachings regarding sexuality. These last are named as first-order Communion dividing departures from the faith. Since 2008, membership in Gafcon requires that all member provinces, dioceses, or single parishes subscribe to the Jerusalem Declaration in full.

Over the next 15 years and two subsequent GAFCON meetings—Nairobi in 2012 and Jerusalem in 2018—the Communion continued to sicken. More Western provinces followed TEC’s steps into apostasy. Australia fell away, then New Zealand, then Wales and Scotland. In a final, tragic blow, in February 2023 the Mother Church, the Church of England, fell away. When all but six bishops—four voting against and two abstaining—approved prayers of blessing for people in same-sex relationships, the ABC, Justin Welby, personally promoted these prayers and spoke in favor of same-sex blessings. 

The failures of the Church of England and the ABC to remain faithful are not simply a matter of sentimentality or nostalgia. The ABC stands at the center of the Communion. He calls the Communion meetings. He issues the invitations. He is the first among equals and the hinge upon which the four Instruments of Unity turn. To be “in Communion” with Canterbury and the Church of England is to be in the Anglican Communion. The English fall into heresy is the most significant event in the Anglican family since the Reformation. And it took place only two months before the next scheduled GAFCON meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. 

In Kigali, the stage was brightly lit, the semi-circular auditorium warm and comfortable. It was easy to spot people across the way, to make eye contact and wave. When asked, mid-week, to stand based on how many GAFCONs we had attended, a minority stood. Of those attending for the first time, most were under 35. It was a little bit unnerving to contemplate a room full of so many people who needed to be told the story of Gafcon’s birth. But its success points to potential pitfalls facing Anglicans in the future. The great conflict waged over sexuality within the Anglican Communion is a microcosm, at least in the West, of greater cultural upheaval. A hostile pro-LGBTQ West is daily winning the narrative on what the word “love” means and how to be a “good” person. Already some younger Anglican clergy, raised breathing this air, have begun to wonder what the big deal is. 

Usually, official gatherings of Anglican prelates (a high-ranking member of Anglican clergy) conclude with the issuing of a communique, a report describing the meeting and the sentiments of the participants about a particular issue. The eleven Kigali primates did not issue the expected communique. Instead, they signed and published a Commitment. Moreover, the fall of Canterbury brought the more institutionally minded, but solidly orthodox, Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) to Kigali. Formerly, this larger group had been content to express disagreement with the direction of Western churches while still attending the Communion events and meetings that the Gafcon primates had largely abandoned. The GSFA is not so much a movement as it is an institution with ecclesial structures and 25 Anglican provinces that resemble a Communion within a Communion. The Kigali Commitment reflects the agreement between Gafcon and GSFA to work more closely together. The Kigali Commitment did not just have to pass muster with GAFCON and GSFA Primates, however. The whole conference offered three rounds of feedback on the draft. Each province was able to spend time on the language, and then the Primates themselves had a final review. The Commitment sets out at least five essential actions and declarations that make it a foundational document for Anglicans around the world. 

First, it articulates the extent to which the ABC and the Instruments led by him have failed in their most essential form. Being called to defend and uphold the faith once delivered to the saints, the ABC, instead, promoted a heretical view of sexuality and the person. When the Bishops of his church put forward prayers to bless those inside same-sex relationships, he did nothing to stand in their way. Instead, he approved that action. The decades of unwillingness to uphold not only the will of the Communion but the very Bible itself makes his personal position, in the words of the Commitment, “indefensible.”  Worse, he has rendered the See of Canterbury itself as the center of the Communion, a hindrance to true Anglican communion.

Second, the Commitment calls on the Church of England, and all apostate Provinces, to repent. This call has been made before but is ever more urgent, as those who commit to such a destructive path will find it harder and harder to turn around. 

Third, the Commitment rejects the ABC’s claim that it is possible for us to “walk together in good disagreement,” a very English way of insisting that the question of sexuality is adiaphora, or non-essential. Those who lead the Lord’s little ones into sin will be judged more strictly. It is impossible to “walk together” in Christian fellowship with bishops and archbishops who are leading those whom God loves into perdition.

Fourth, the Commitment declares that the leadership role of the Archbishop of Canterbury has become indefensible. It de-recognizes the authority of the Instruments of Unity. 

Fifth, the Commitment resets the Anglican Communion by establishing new Communion structures faithful to the scriptures. Gafcon and GSFA will work together to establish structures for orthodox Anglicans separating from erring provinces. They will continue to support orthodox Anglicans who, for a variety of reasons, choose to remain within apostate Provinces. 

All told, the Kigali Commitment marks the beginning of a new and hopeful future for orthodox Anglicans around the world. In North America, there has grown up a small contingent of clergy who do not remember the spiritual stakes involved, favor rapprochement with TEC, and wonder why the ACNA cannot just be friends with affirming Episcopalians. At Kigali, this contingent was answered definitively. There is no common ground between orthodox Christians and those who purport to be Christian while blessing sin. In England, those who have worn down pews and kneelers by their faithful prayers are facing a hard and painful choice of whether to remain or leave. In Australia and New Zealand, church planting and evangelism to the lost are flourishing.  And across Africa, Anglicans are looking thoughtfully at the West, counting the cost of every Anglican dollar. By the next GAFCON, my children will be grown and might be bouncing their own fussy babies. For now, at least, there is a place for them to answer the call of Christ to serve the world as Anglicans. Maybe next time they will be the ones to go and I will be the one to stay home.

Anne Kennedy is the author of Nailed It: 365 Readings for Angry or Worn-Out People, rev. ed. (Square Halo Books, 2020). She blogs about current events and theological trends at Standfirminfaith.com and on her Substack, Demotivations with Anne.