On Thursday, the spokesperson for GAFCON, Rwandan Primate Laurent Mbanda, announced that the organisation now sees itself as the true Anglican Communion.
"As from the beginning, we have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion," the statement said. The background to this is the appointment of Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury. Mullally is the first woman to hold this office.
In its statement, GAFCON says that the Anglican Communion will be reorganised by her on the sole basis of the Bible. This is a return to the original structure as a communion of autonomous church provinces based on the faith set out in the Anglican Formularies of Reformation and the GAFCON Declaration of Principles, the Jerusalem Declaration, adopted in 2008.
Complete withdrawal from the previous communion
"We reject the so-called Instruments of Communion, namely the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) and the Primates' Meeting, which have failed to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion," the statement reads.
The member churches of GAFCON will therefore no longer participate in consultations and committees convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Financially, they are separating from the previous structures and will neither make contributions nor accept grants.
Member churches will be encouraged to remove references in their statutes to church communion with the See of Canterbury and the Church of England.
The existing church bodies will be replaced by a new Primates' Meeting, which will elect a chairperson as "primus inter pares".
GAFCON expressed its outrage at Mullally's appointment. The appointment means a turning away of believers worldwide.
The Church of England had chosen a leader who would further exacerbate the division in the already divided community.
A large part of the Anglican Communion holds that the Bible demands an all-male episcopate.
"Her appointment therefore means that it is impossible for the Archbishop of Canterbury to act as the centre of unity within the Communion," GAFCON said.
Previously, it had already clearly criticised the election of a lesbian bishop in Wales.
Discussion forum develops into a church community
The "Global Anglican Future Conference" (GAFCON) was initially a dialogue format for Anglican churches that do not agree with the liberal course of Western Anglican churches in particular.
The first conference took place in Jerusalem in 2008 and adopted a confessional document that emphasised the Anglican liturgical heritage as well as the traditional doctrine of ministry and sexuality.
In particular, the ordination of women and the openness to same-sex relationships were criticised by GAFCON.
The organisation mainly represents Anglican provinces in Latin America, Africa and Asia, but also European and North American Anglicans.
The organisation developed from a series of conferences further and further in the direction of a separate church community.
The high point to date was the 2023 meeting.
At that time, following the Church of England's authorisation of blessings for same-sex couples, the conference declared that the communion structure had been torn apart by "repeated departures from the Word of God".
The next conference will take place in Nigeria in March 2023.