Explaining Abuja: What Is the Global Anglican Communion?
On March 7, 2026, Gafcon’s G26 Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, concluded with the release of The Abuja Affirmation. This lengthy communiqué declared the failure of the Anglican Communion’s existing instruments of unity and outlined a proposed remedy: a communion grounded in shared doctrine, as articulated in the Jerusalem Declaration, and governed by a newly established Global Anglican Council.
For readers unfamiliar with Anglican terminology, the statement can be difficult to follow. What is Gafcon? What was G26? Perhaps most pressing, what are the instruments of communion, and how could a meeting in Nigeria replace them? This article addresses those questions. Before turning to the details, one point is essential: a majority of Anglicans worldwide have concluded that the structures created in 1867 no longer sustain unity around the church’s primary purpose—shared belief.
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What Is Gafcon?
Gafcon, the Global Anglican Future Conference, began in 2008 as a gathering of Anglican churches committed to fidelity to Scripture and the Anglican formularies. Centered largely in the Global South, Gafcon represents the majority of Anglicans worldwide, with estimates as high as 85 percent. Organizers convened the first conference in response to developments in Western Anglican provinces—particularly in the United Kingdom and North America—that tolerated or promoted doctrinal error. While debates over human sexuality have drawn the most public attention, some bishops also questioned foundational Christian doctrines such as the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, often without consequence.
Gafcon emerged as a reform movement aimed at uniting Anglicans around shared belief and the authority of Scripture. The first conference produced The Jerusalem Declaration, a concise summary of historic Anglican doctrine affirming the authority of Scripture, the ecumenical councils, and the Anglican formularies, with additional clarity on biblical teaching regarding human sexuality. Bishops, clergy, and laypeople could affirm the declaration as a sign of doctrinal unity. In subsequent years, Gafcon continued to convene conferences, call errant churches to repentance, and provide episcopal oversight in regions where existing provinces had departed from orthodox teaching. These efforts contributed to the formation of new Anglican bodies, including the Anglican Church in North America.
A Timeline Leading to G26
On September 14, 2025, Gafcon issued a statement titled Solemn Summons to Global Bishops, inviting “all orthodox Anglican bishops” to attend the G26 Conference in Abuja, Nigeria, scheduled for March 2026. The statement suggested that the gathering could become the most significant Anglican assembly since the first Gafcon conference in Jerusalem in 2008.
Greater clarity followed on October 16, 2025, when Gafcon released The Future Has Arrived. In this statement, Gafcon rejected the four traditional instruments of communion centered on Canterbury—the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting—on the grounds that they had failed to uphold Anglican doctrine and discipline. In their place, Gafcon proposed a new instrument of unity based on shared doctrine, with the Jerusalem Declaration serving as the communion’s doctrinal standard. The statement also called member churches to sever ties with the Canterbury-centered structures.
Poised to Divide
At this point, the Anglican Communion appeared poised to divide: one body organized around shared doctrine, the other around shared history. Gafcon announced that it would formally “confer” the Global Anglican Communion at the upcoming G26 Conference in Abuja.
In subsequent interviews, Gafcon’s General Secretary, Bishop Paul Donison, introduced important nuance. He explained that some provinces might remain in communion with Canterbury while also participating in the new communion, since constitutional changes often require extended processes. What initially appeared as a clean institutional break began to look more complex. Questions arose about whether churches could belong to both communions simultaneously.
On December 15, 2025, Gafcon released another communiqué, Support This Historic Gathering, which promoted G26 as the first official meeting of the Global Anglican Communion. Similar statements followed. In February 2026, Bishop Donison released a video urging bishops to attend G26 and participate in what he described as a “global, conciliar movement.” For the first time, Gafcon referred to the gathering as a council, signaling that its decisions would carry binding authority. He also reiterated a longstanding Gafcon claim: “We are not leaving the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion.”
What Is the Anglican Communion?
This claim raises an obvious question. How can Gafcon insist that it has not left the Anglican Communion while rejecting its existing structures and establishing new ones? The answer requires historical context.
The Anglican Communion formally emerged in 1867, uniting Anglican churches that had developed throughout the British Empire. From the outset, however, the communion lacked conciliar authority. The Lambeth Conference, the first instrument of communion, explicitly did not function as a council. Bishops gathered for consultation and discussion, but their resolutions carried no binding authority. In 1930, communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury became another instrument of unity, though the Archbishop likewise exercised no authority over churches outside England.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting joined the existing instruments. Although these bodies appeared to offer greater coordination, they suffered from the same fundamental limitation: none possessed authority to govern the global church. As doctrinal liberalism spread in Western provinces, these structures proved incapable of preserving unity in faith and practice.
Who Is in Charge of the Anglican Communion?
These developments prompted a persistent question: who governs the Anglican Communion, and what defines its boundaries? Rome has the Pope and magisterium. The Orthodox have the seven ecumenical councils and active governing bodies. Presbyterians, local presbyteries, the Westminster Catechism, and so on. But what defines the Anglican communion, and who (or what) is in charge? Here lies the root of the problem: the answer is nobody. No person or structure actually has any authority at all in the Anglican Communion. That is, until Gafcon created the Global Anglican Council in Abuja.
This absence of conciliar leadership conflicted with Anglican self-understanding. The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion affirm episcopal governance through councils, yet the communion lacked any mechanism to convene such councils with binding authority. Lambeth, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Primates’ Meeting, and the Archbishop of Canterbury could only offer recommendations. Although these structures emerged with good intentions, their failure now appears unavoidable.
Gafcon summarized the significance of Abuja succinctly:
The Abuja Affirmation announced the establishment of the Global Anglican Council to provide conciliar leadership for the Global Anglican Communion.
Prior to March 2026, the Anglican Communion functioned as a loose association of autonomous churches recognized by Canterbury but united by no shared doctrinal authority. By 2003, these weaknesses had become apparent; by 2026, they had become untenable.
What Happened in Abuja? A New Instrument of Unity
At G26, bishops representing more than 40 percent of the Anglican episcopate acknowledged that the existing instruments of communion had failed. In response, they established a new conciliar body: the Global Anglican Council. This council aims to unite Anglican churches around shared doctrine and shared history, with defined mechanisms for discipline.
Churches that affirm the Jerusalem Declaration and submit to the council’s leadership may enter the Global Anglican Communion. Churches unable to sever all ties with Canterbury may still participate, though those seeking leadership roles within the council must fully disengage from the former structures. The similarity between the names “Global Anglican Communion” and “Global Anglican Council,” along with the council’s inclusion of clergy and lay leaders alongside bishops, initially caused confusion. Gafcon had previously considered governance by a primus inter pares (first among equals) but ultimately concluded that a conciliar structure better reflected historic Anglican practice ( some have since criticized this “council” formation as moving away from traditional episcopal authority structures).
The bishops in Abuja did not abandon the Anglican Communion; they reordered it by supplying the structures necessary for conciliar governance grounded in shared faith. Participation in this communion remains voluntary, but churches that reject the Jerusalem Declaration and refuse to recognize the Global Anglican Council cannot claim membership. Regardless of how one assigns responsibility, this development represents a real and consequential schism.
A Word of Encouragement
Gafcon describes the Global Anglican Communion as both confessional and conciliar. These terms merit clarification, particularly for those who worry that this structure resembles Presbyterianism more than Anglicanism.
The communion is confessional in that it affirms the Jerusalem Declaration as its doctrinal standard. This declaration introduces no doctrinal innovations. It affirms the ecumenical councils and creeds as expressions of the rule of faith, upholds the historic episcopate, and recognizes Scripture as the church’s final authority as read within the church’s historic consensus. It also affirms the Thirty-Nine Articles—a requirement long upheld in the Church of England itself, including by figures associated with the Oxford Movement. The Global Anglican Communion, therefore, remains faithful to both catholic Christianity and the Anglican tradition.
The communion is also conciliar. Bishops lead the church through councils, following the pattern established in Acts 15, the ecumenical councils, and the formation of the Anglican formularies. Although the Global Anglican Council includes clergy and lay representatives, its authority derives from the episcopate. In this respect, the council restores a form of governance long affirmed in Anglican theology but never fully realized in Anglican practice.
The Global Anglican Communion: A Conciliar Structure for a Conciliar Church
Anglican bishops and primates concluded that the existing instruments of communion failed to provide meaningful governance. To address this failure, they established the Global Anglican Council, a conciliar body capable of issuing binding doctrinal statements and exercising discipline. This council now serves as the governing structure of the Global Anglican Communion, whose faith and practice the Jerusalem Declaration summarizes.
The Global Anglican Council seeks to become the first governing body with genuine authority over the Anglican Communion since its inception. Effective conciliarism requires both the ability to define doctrine and the means to enforce it. Until Abuja, the communion lacked both. For this reason, Gafcon leaders insist that they have not left the Anglican Communion but have instead brought it into alignment with its stated commitment to conciliar governance under Scripture and the formularies.
Evangelical and Reformed Anglicans can welcome this development for its clear affirmation of biblical authority and the formularies. High church and Anglo-Catholic Anglicans can take heart in its explicit embrace of conciliarism, episcopal leadership, and the ecumenical councils.
Image: Photo courtesy of Gafcon. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
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