“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3)
We, the Gafcon Primates, meeting in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, to celebrate the investiture of Archbishop Steve Wood as the third Primate of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and to welcome him as a Primate of the Anglican Communion, send greetings to the faithful.
We wish we could write to you about our great joy for mission, evangelism, and church planting, but recent statements by the Archbishop of Canterbury require us to yet again address an urgent matter surrounding biblical ethics confronting our beloved Anglican church.
The recent actions of the General Synod of the Church of England, where Archbishop Justin Welby has championed the introduction of same-sex blessings into the life of the Church of England, has galvanised the Gafcon movement in the ongoing reset of the Anglican Communion. However, Archbishop Welby’s recent explicit repudiation of Christian doctrine in his interview on Britain’s podcast, ‘The Rest is Politics,’ has brought us to repeat our serious call for his personal repentance.
In this interview, he publicly states that:
“all sexual activity should be within a committed relationship and whether it’s straight or gay. In other words, we’re not giving up on the idea that sex is within marriage or civil partnership. We’ve put forward a proposal that where people have been through a civil partnership or a same-sex marriage, equal marriage under the 2014 Act, they should be able to come along to their local, to a church, and have a service of prayer and blessing for them in their lives together.”
While he may claim not to have changed the doctrine of marriage, the Archbishop of Canterbury has demonstrably changed the doctrine of sin, by promoting the sanctification of sin by means of a divine blessing.
This is in clear breach of Holy Scripture, which unequivocally teaches that the only proper context for sexual intimacy is in the relationship of a man and woman who have been joined together in marriage. All forms of sexual intimacy outside of this context are condemned as immorality and are behaviors from which the people of God are regularly called to repent (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
It is also in clear breach of Resolution I.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which rejected, “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture,” and which the Archbishop as recently as 2022 declared to be the teaching of the Anglican Communion, including the Church of England.
We are guided by Jesus’ solemn words of warning to the Church of Thyatira, because, “they tolerate the teaching of Jezebel,” which endorses sexual immorality. Only judgment awaits Jezebel and all who follow her, unless they repent (Revelation 2:21-22; 22:15). Any toleration, let alone endorsement, of immorality is liable to God’s judgment.
For this reason, in response to his public comments, we solemnly repeat our call for Archbishop Justin Welby to personally and publicly repent of this denial of his ordination and consecration vows, where he promised to, “teach the doctrine of Christ as the Church of England has received it.”
Gafcon supports all faithful Anglicans, both those who have chosen to leave established provinces where the authority of Scripture has been compromised, as well as those who choose to remain as they seek to reform their province from within.
Therefore, we continue to champion The Anglican Network in Europe (ANiE) as Gafcon’s authentically-Anglican structural provision for those who cannot by conscience remain within the historic, revisionist structures.
Additionally, we express our support for The Alliance as they seek to stand firm in defense of biblical marriage within the Church of England, and we stand ready to defend, authenticate, and support them.
Finally, we declare afresh to all those in England who, “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to all the saints,” that you are not alone.
Gafcon Primates’ Council.
Reformation Day,
31 October 2024.
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