This week the leaders of GAFCON –  the Global Anglican Future Conference– declared their organization to be the Anglican Communion. Severing the historic ties to Canterbury and the Church of England, the leaders of GAFCON have declared that they have not “left the Anglican Communion” instead they ARE the Anglican Communion.

What is GAFCON? It began in 2008 as a series of conferences called by mostly Evangelical low church Anglicans in the global South in response to the growing liberalism and moral decay within the historic Anglican communion. GAFCON gathered steam through alliances with the increasing number of Anglican schismatic groups in North America. Theologically, GAFCON is conservative and mostly low-church i.e. Protestant in theology. The claim to uphold Biblical theology and moral teaching.

This, of course, is the proposal of all schismatic groups: “You’re not the REAL church. We are!” It is a historic move, but knowing the elitist and racist attitude of Anglicans in the North (British and Canadian Anglicans and Episcopalians) they will simply ignore the declaration and pretend it never happened. The Africans will no longer turn up at the International Gatherings of Anglican bishops and (from my experience of the Church of England) most of the British Anglicans [this would be the Anglican churches of Scotland, Wales, Ireland and England] and American Episcopalians will breathe a sigh of relief. They will no longer have to pretend to respect their brothers from the global South nor give them a place at the table. Their departure will liberate the British and American Anglican elite from being harangued by men they regard as ignorant, fundamentalist blacks.

An anecdote will make my point: I can remember in my Anglican days a story that filtered down from one of the Lambeth Conferences. [the Lambeth Conference is a once a decade gathering in Canterbury of all the Anglican Bishops] An African bishop was berating an American Episcoplian for his acceptance of homosexuality. The American explained condescendingly, “Eventually you Africans will also come to a more complete understanding of human sexuality…” The African said, “You are racist!” This, of course, was an accusation too far for the proud American prelate. When he demurred the African said, “You assume we are uneducated and uniformed, but I too have studied theology at Oxford. I too have a PhD from Cambridge. I and my fellow bishops are not uneducated and uninformed.”

These sort of tensions have been stewing in the Anglican Communion now for decades, and at last they have reached boiling point.

The fly in the ointment, however, is the nature of GAFCON’s disagreement with Canterbury. It would be easy to think that they are fed up with the fact that the new Archbishop of Canterbury is a woman. Not so. Many, if not most, of the dioceses aligned with GAFCON have accepted women’s ordination to the priesthood and episcopate. They object not to Sarah Mullaly’s gender, but to her support for same sex unions and abortion. While they may disagree with her on these points, it could be argued that they are simply her personal opinions and she will not attempt to make them official policy. Underlying this disagreement is a deeper problem. GAFCON does not really have any source of authority by which to make their claims. Yes, yes, they have “Biblical authority” but as anyone familiar with apologetics knows, “Biblical authority” has no weight without an authoritative interpretive authority.

In other words, Sarah Mullaly may interpret her Bible one way and the bishops of GAFCON interpret it their way. “You say PO-TAY-TO and I say PO-TAH-TO.” This essential Anglican problem is highlighted by another anecdote from my Anglican days. The dolt-ish Archbishop of Canterbury at the time – George Carey- was famously in favor of women’s ordination. When he was confronted with the verses from the New Testament in which St Paul forbids women teaching in the church, Carey said, “We understand more about the role and ministry of women now than St Paul did in his day.” But a few years later Carey (as a good “Bible believing” Evangelical) was confronted with homosexual activists who were pushing their agenda. In opposition, Carey quoted the verses from the New Testament condemning. homosexual activity, but the activists said, “But we understand more about the fullness of human sexuality than Paul did back then.”

This, then is the essential Anglican difficulty. Personally, I am on the side of the GAFCON bishops, but I don’t think their schism will make much difference. All it does is highlight what is not only an Anglican difficulty, but the Protestant problem: “What do you do when good, sincere Christian folk disagree? You either say, ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll agree to disagree’ or you say ‘It does matter, we’re going to start our own church.”

Without an agreed, infallible authority there can never be unity in Christ’s church.

Now I know what some might say in response: “But you Catholics have just as much disagreement and dissent!” True, we disagree and argue bitterly, but at the end of the day we know there is the magisterium and the successor of Peter. There is a rock on which to stand–even if the tempest is blowing fiercely.