The Church of England is dealing with a seismic schism, with the conservative World Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Gafcon), representing practically 40 million members—ten instances the UK’s Anglican inhabitants—declaring itself the genuine Anglican Communion.
Gafcon introduced it has severed ties with progressive factions, accusing them of abandoning biblical authority and pursuing a “revisionist agenda.”
The group said, “We can not stay in communion with those that forsake the inerrant phrase of God.”
Over the previous 20 years, the denomination has continued a leftward drift.
In early October 2025, The Gateway Pundit reported that far-left Sarah Mullally was introduced as the subsequent Archbishop of Canterbury, marking the primary time a girl has been chosen for the place.
Her election by the Faculty of Canons was formally confirmed by King Charles III, and Mullally might be formally put in at Canterbury Cathedral in March 2026. Her appointment could have served as a tipping level for the conservative majority.
A self-described feminist, she can also be an open advocate of abortion and has supported initiatives resembling LGBT+ Historical past Month.
When Sarah Mullally was questioned on how the Church would shield youngsters from sexualisation & “queer concept”, she remained silent.
As we speak, she was appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury pic.twitter.com/Ek0k4XAAkv
— Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) October 3, 2025
The World Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Gafcon), which represents the conservative department of the denomination, primarily within the creating world and Africa, has seen the writing on the wall and has been pushing again towards the denomination, routinely castigating them for his or her abandonment of the scriptures and historic Anglican instructing.
Anglicans have 4 Devices of Communion: the Archbishop of Canterbury, (somebody first amongst equals) the Lambeth Convention (a gathering of bishops all over the world that gathers as soon as a decade), the Primates’ Assembly (a gathering of the bishops and archbishops of every of the church’s 41 provinces, with the final one held in 2020), and the Anglican Consultative Council, which incorporates everybody from bishops to deacons to laity and meets each three years.
Gafcon shared the following statement:
To our pricey Anglican brothers and sisters in Christ.
Grace and peace to you within the identify of our risen Lord Jesus Christ, on the Commemoration of the martyrdom of Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley.
The primary World Anglican Future Convention (GAFCON) gathered in 2008 in Jerusalem to prayerfully reply to the abandonment of the Scriptures by a number of the most senior leaders of the Anglican Communion, and to hunt their repentance.
Within the absence of such repentance, we now have been prayerfully advancing in direction of a future for trustworthy Anglicans, the place the Bible is restored to the guts of the Communion.
As we speak, that future has arrived.
Our Gafcon Primates gathered this hour to fulfil our mandate to reform the Anglican Communion, as expressed within the Jerusalem Assertion of 2008.
We resolved to reorder the Anglican Communion as follows:
1. We declare that the Anglican Communion might be reordered, with just one basis of communion, particularly the Holy Bible, “translated, learn, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual studying” (Jerusalem Declaration, Article II), which displays Article VI of the 39 Articles of Faith.
2. We reject the so-called Devices of Communion, particularly the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Convention, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), and the Primates Assembly, which have did not uphold the doctrine and self-discipline of the Anglican Communion.
3. We can not proceed to have communion with those that advocate the revisionist agenda, which has deserted the inerrant phrase of God as the ultimate authority and overturned Decision I.10, of the 1998 Lambeth Convention.
4. Subsequently, Gafcon has re-ordered the Anglican Communion by restoring its unique construction as a fellowship of autonomous provinces certain collectively by the Formularies of the Reformation, as mirrored on the first Lambeth Convention in 1867, and we at the moment are the World Anglican Communion.
5. Provinces of the World Anglican Communion shall not take part in conferences referred to as by the Archbishop of Canterbury, together with the ACC, and shall not make any financial contribution to the ACC, nor obtain any financial contribution from the ACC or its networks.
6. Provinces, which have but to take action, are inspired to amend their structure to take away any reference to being in communion with the See of Canterbury and the Church of England.
7. To be a member of the World Anglican Communion, a province or a diocese should assent to the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008, the up to date customary for Anglican identification.
8. We will kind a Council of Primates of all member provinces to elect a Chairman, as primus inter pares (‘first amongst equals’), to preside over the Council because it continues “to contend for the religion that was as soon as for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
As I declared in my assertion two weeks in the past,“the reset of our beloved Communion is now uniquely within the arms of Gafcon, and we’re able to take the lead.”
As we speak, Gafcon is main the World Anglican Communion.
As has been the case from the very starting, we now have not left the Anglican Communion; we’re the Anglican Communion.
At our upcoming G26 Bishops Convention in Abuja, Nigeria from 3 to six March 2026, we’ll confer and have a good time the World Anglican Communion.
Please pray that we’ll lead our Communion in prayerful submission to the Holy Spirit as we hear the voice of Jesus in his wondrous Scriptures, to the glory of God.
Yours in Christ,
The Most Revd Dr Laurent Mbanda
Chairman, Gafcon Primates’ Council
Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church of Rwanda
Thursday sixteenth October, 2025
