Dear Editor,
While David Baker (Evangelical Options, reference to July en) makes a passing GAFCON’s appointment of Andy Lines as a missionary bishop for Europe, he devotes most of his attention to what he sees as its Anglo-Catholic leanings, with the clear implication that it is better to ‘remain and resist’ in the Church of England than to be a GAFCON ‘refugee’.
This is superficial. Even a cursory reading of GAFCON’s 2008 Jerusalem Statement and Declaration reveals that this is the missionary Anglicanism of the Global South which owes much to John Stott and J. I. Packer. GAFCON is recovering what in practice the Church of England has lost, namely the fundamental conviction that Christianity is a revealed religion, a faith we confess rather than a shifting consensus.