Category: Biblical Theology

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The Future of Anglicanism is Here

2018 GAFCON Assembly in Jerusalem.

“The future has arrived.” — GAFCON Primates’ Council, October 16, 2025

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) has declared that the long-awaited reformation of worldwide Anglicanism is now complete.

This isn’t a small breakaway faction. The churches represented by GAFCON — together with the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) — account for roughly 85 percent of Anglicans worldwide .

In other words, the center of gravity has shifted. What began as a reform movement is now the mainstream of global Anglicanism.

A Communion at the Crossroads

For decades, the Anglican Communion has struggled to maintain unity in the face of theological drift.

At the heart of the dispute lies a question as old as the Reformation: Is the Church ultimately governed by Scripture or by institutional authority?

When certain Western provinces — notably The Episcopal Church (USA), the Anglican Church of Canada, and, more recently, the Church of England — endorsed or blessed same-sex relationships, they crossed a clear biblical and confessional line.

GAFCON’s 2008 Jerusalem Statement described this as “the acceptance and promotion…of a different gospel…which undermines the authority of God’s Word written” .

That compromise, the statement warned, “tore the fabric of the Communion in such a way that it cannot simply be patched back together” .

What GAFCON’s 2025 Statement Declares

The latest communiqué, “The Future Has Arrived,” announces a decisive re-ordering of the Anglican world.

A. One Foundation of Communion

“The Anglican Communion will be reordered, with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible…translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense.” 

Unity, therefore, is defined not by institutional recognition but by obedience to Scripture.

B. Rejection of Failed Instruments

The statement rejects the four traditional Instruments of Communion — Canterbury, Lambeth, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting — citing their “failure to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion.”

The 2008 and 2018 conference documents chronicle years of pleas and ignored warnings. Bishops who defied biblical teaching on sexuality were welcomed at Lambeth, while those who upheld Scripture were marginalized.

C. A Return to Anglicanism’s Original Shape

GAFCON affirms that it has not abandoned Anglicanism; rather, it has reclaimed it:

“We have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion.” 

The movement restores the pattern of autonomous provinces bound by the Reformation formularies — the Thirty-Nine Articles, Book of Common Prayer, and Ordinal — governed by a new Council of Primates.

The Crux of the Problem

The issue is not simply moral or political. It’s theological — a crisis of authority and repentance.

From the beginning, GAFCON identified a “false gospel” being preached within the Communion — one that:

  • Denies the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life.”
  • Redefines sin, blessing same-sex unions “over against the biblical teaching on holy matrimony.”
  • Treats sexual immorality as a human right rather than rebellion against God .

At the 2023 Kigali Conference, GAFCON condemned the Church of England’s decision to bless same-sex couples, calling it “pastorally deceptive and blasphemous to craft prayers that invoke blessing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

It also noted that “public statements by the Archbishop of Canterbury … in support of same-sex blessings are a betrayal of their vows to uphold Scripture.” 

In short, this is not about politics — it’s about whether Christ’s Church will call sin what Scripture calls sin, and whether grace still means repentance and transformation.

A Global Majority Standing Firm

What makes this moment unprecedented is scale and maturity.

The GAFCON-GSFA alliance represents tens of millions of believers across Africa, Asia, South America, and Oceania — the true heartland of the Anglican faith.

“Together, these Primates represent the overwhelming majority (estimated at 85%) of Anglicans worldwide.” 

These provinces have grown precisely because they have refused to dilute the gospel.

In places like Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Sudan, Anglicanism is vibrant, missionary, and thoroughly biblical. The “old center” in the West may be collapsing, but the faith itself is flourishing.

A Model for Christian Faithfulness

Even for non-Anglicans, GAFCON offers a compelling model:

Reformation, Not Rebellion

When human institutions compromise truth, reform is not division — it’s obedience.

As the apostles said in Acts 5:29: “We must obey God rather than men.”

The Courage of Global South Christians

These churches have demonstrated what fidelity looks like under pressure — rejecting Western funding rather than accepting moral revisionism.

They show that global Christianity’s future lies not in appeasement but in conviction.

Scripture as the Sole Foundation

GAFCON’s stance reminds us that Christian unity must be confessional, not sentimental. There is no communion without truth.

For Anglicans Still Within Compromised Provinces

For believers in provinces still aligned with Canterbury, the path forward is clear.

Local GAFCON branches provide fellowship and recognition without requiring institutional permission.

The Jerusalem Declaration (2008) remains the touchstone of authentic Anglican identity — Scripture first, mission always.

“Every person is loved by God, and we are determined to love as God loves… yet appropriate pastoral care does not include pretending that God blesses sin.” 

The Future of the Faith

The GAFCON statement concludes with a simple, gospel-shaped refrain:

“To whom shall we go? We go to Christ who alone has the words of eternal life — and then we go with Christ to the whole world.” 

The re-ordered Communion now called the Global Anglican Communion embodies that mission. It has reclaimed historic orthodoxy and the missionary heart that once defined Anglicanism.

For Christians everywhere, this moment asks hard but hopeful questions:

  • Are we willing to lose institutions in order to keep the gospel?
  • Can we learn from the Global South’s courage?
  • Will we measure unity by shared truth rather than shared bureaucracy?

The future of Anglicanism — and perhaps the future of orthodox Christianity in the West — will depend on how we answer.

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Grace and Truth

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The Promise of Disembodiment? A Big Lie!

Modern culture is haunted by a fantasy: that our bodies don’t matter, that they are clay to be reshaped at will, or husks to be cast aside when they no longer serve us. Liel Leibovitz, in a striking First Things essay, names this trend “the promise of disembodiment”—and shows how dangerous it truly is.

“Those of us who know that we were created in God’s image have no choice but to acknowledge our bodies, those awkward earthly vessels that matter and cannot be manipulated as if they were raw material for our disembodied wills.”

From abortion to assisted suicide, from the sexual revolution to today’s transgender movement, the same underlying assumption appears again and again: the body is not sacred. It is merely a tool, an accident, or worse—a hindrance.

Leibovitz observes:

“Take away this belief in the sacred character of the body and it becomes not a temple but a speed bump.”

And once our bodies are seen as speed bumps, it becomes easier to justify all kinds of destruction. Babies in the womb are “clumps of cells.” The elderly and the sick become “burdens.” Male and female cease to be God-given realities and are recast as fluid “identities” invented in the imagination.

Why the Lie Is So Appealing

The disembodiment lie seduces because it offers a counterfeit freedom. If my body is irrelevant, then I can define myself however I wish. I can erase biological sex, evade the natural consequences of sex, or reject life itself when it no longer feels worth living.

But this “freedom” comes at a terrible cost. As Leibovitz warns, it is really an escape from reality itself:

“When you do away with the sanctity of the body, you invite tyranny, because you are no longer bound to acknowledge what is real, only what is willed.”

This is not just a philosophical mistake. It is a spiritual rebellion. To reject the body is to reject the Creator who formed us from the dust and breathed into us the breath of life (Gen. 2:7).

The Christian Response

The Christian worldview stands in radical opposition to this false promise. Scripture declares:

  • “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27).
  • Jesus himself affirms this when he says, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female” (Matt. 19:4).
  • St. Paul reminds us, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you…? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Cor. 6:19–20).

In other words: the body is not an afterthought. It is sacred. It is integral to our personhood. It is destined for resurrection glory.

Why This Matters Now

We live in a culture where disembodiment is the new orthodoxy. Children are taught they can “change” their sex. Courts and legislatures increasingly normalize euthanasia. The abortion industry insists that unborn life is expendable. And technologies—from artificial wombs to digital fantasies of “uploading consciousness”—offer new variations of the same old lie: that we can escape the body.

But Christians must speak clearly: these are not paths to freedom. They are forms of bondage. To despise the body is to despise the very goodness of creation. To mutilate the body is to mutilate the image of God.

As Leibovitz writes:

“The rejection of the body is the rejection of limits, and the rejection of limits is the rejection of responsibility. And where responsibility vanishes, so does love.”

This last point is crucial. A world that despises the body cannot sustain love, because love, as humans, requires embodiment. It requires showing up in the flesh, bearing burdens, honoring the vulnerable, cherishing the other as they are given to us.

The True Promise: Resurrection

The gospel gives us not the false promise of disembodiment, but the true promise of resurrection. Christ himself was raised bodily from the grave. His glorified flesh is the guarantee of our future. The destiny of the Christian is not escape from the body, but the redemption of the body (Rom. 8:23).

The big lie of disembodiment ends in alienation, confusion, and death. You won’t find love there. The truth of the gospel ends in communion, clarity, and eternal life.

So let us reject the false prophets of disembodiment. Let us instead proclaim and live the truth: our bodies matter, because God made them, Christ redeemed them, and the Spirit indwells them.

SOURCE: Radical Disembodiment by Liel Leibovitz

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Don’t Believe the Lies

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The Gospel of Love: For Family and Friends

Dear Family and Friends,

This post has been on my heart for a while now. It comes with some weight—and I don’t post it lightly. But I also don’t post it in anger or bitterness. I write out of love—for my family and friends, for the Church, for the truth. I hope it will be received that way.

Over the past few years, you’ve probably noticed how much I’ve written about human sexuality—issues like gender identity, same-sex parenting, and transgenderism.

These are hard topics. They touch real people. They touch us. And because they do, I haven’t wanted to treat them casually or toss out slogans from a distance. But I’ve felt more and more compelled to speak clearly—especially because these ideas have not only infiltrated our cultural institutions, but have taken root in the Church itself.

The final turning point for me was personal. For several years, I had been attending a congregation that was a blend of Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and Episcopal USA traditions. I loved the people. I still do. It was a generous, open-hearted community. But over time, I began to sense that the gospel being proclaimed there was subtly—sometimes not so subtly—drifting from the one I knew. The Bible’s authority and Church Tradition was increasingly treated as optional. Christian sexual ethics were reimagined to align with the culture. And then came the moment I could no longer ignore.

One Sunday morning, a woman ordained by one of those denominations—an openly practicing lesbian, whose “wife” was present in the congregation—stood before us and preached as a representative of Christ’s Church. That was the moment for me. I sat there grieving—not out of personal offense, but because something precious was being lost.

This wasn’t merely a difference of opinion. It pointed to a deeper divergence—a fundamentally different understanding of what the Church is, what the gospel proclaims (ie. that Jesus is Lord of creation), and who Jesus calls us to be.

The gospel is not merely a message of inclusion or affirmation. It is the announcement that Jesus Christ is Lord of all—that through Him all things were made, and in Him all things hold together. As Paul writes in Colossians:

"For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:16–17).

This is the gospel: not a validation of our desires, but a call to live in joyful submission to the One through whom the cosmos was made.

After that Sunday, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore—not in good conscience. I couldn’t keep contributing my time and treasure to a church whose leadership had embraced a theological trajectory that I believe is deeply harmful. So I stepped away. And that decision still breaks my heart. I loved those people. I still do.

Love and truth cannot be separated. In the years since, I’ve come to believe that many parts of the Church have failed to speak the truth—especially about the body, about male and female, about marriage and children—and that failure has had devastating consequences. The cultural winds are strong. But the Church was never called to drift with the wind. We are called to be rooted.

I’ve written several blog posts recently, and I want you to know why.

The first was about gay parenting and the Regnerus Study—a work that dared to ask what’s best for children and found answers that challenge the prevailing narrative. It’s not enough to say children are “loved.” They also need a father and a mother. Our policies—and our churches—ought to reflect that truth.

The second addressed the ELCA’s 2025 Reconsideration of Human Sexuality—a document that appears to codify the denomination’s full embrace of sexual revisionism. The very truths that once shaped Christian witness on marriage, the body, and the created order are now treated as “harmful” or “exclusionary.” I couldn’t remain silent.

The third examined the ELCA’s doctrine of “Bound Conscience”—a concept I once thought might preserve theological diversity, but which has become a theological escape hatch. It allows the Church to affirm contradictory truths in the name of unity, while quietly discarding the authority of Scripture. That’s not unity—it’s institutionalized confusion.

I don’t write these things to score points or “win” debates. I write them because someone needs to say what so many faithful Christians—especially in more progressive circles—are afraid to say out loud. I write them because I fear that silence now will only mean deeper compromise later.

I believe the Triune God made us male and female—not as an accident of biology, but as a reflection of something sacred. I believe our bodies matter. I believe Christian love includes a call to repentance. And I believe that our first obligation of love is not to ourselves or one another, but to our Creator.

To affirm someone’s identity apart from the Lordship of Christ is not compassion—it is a tragic abandonment to a path that cannot yield life. And I believe the Church must have the courage to say so, even when it costs something very dear.

With love always,
d