Archbishop Shane Parker has released a statement claiming that, whereas GAFCON has left the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Church of Canada will stay.
Whether that is accurate or not depends on how you define “Anglican Communion”. Here is a brief definition from Britannica:
Anglican Communion, religious body of national, independent, and autonomous churches throughout the world that adheres to the teachings of Anglicanism and that evolved from the Church of England. The Anglican Communion is united by a common loyalty to the archbishop of Canterbury in England as its senior bishop and titular leader and by a general agreement with the doctrines and practices defined since the 16th century in The Book of Common Prayer.
It’s true that Parker is holding to one part – “loyalty to the archbishop of Canterbury” – but not true that he is holding to the rest: “the teachings of Anglicanism” and “a general agreement with the doctrines and practices defined since the 16th century in The Book of Common Prayer.” He, the ACoC, the Church of England and TEC have departed from those practices.
Who, then, has really left the Anglican Communion: the vast majority of Anglicans who value biblical truth or an ever diminishing rump that loves the institution?
From here:
Pastoral statement from the Primate and Metropolitans of the Anglican Church of Canada concerning the Anglican Communion
By Archbishop Shane Parker on October 18, 2025
In recent days, primates of the Global Anglican Future Conference announced their decisions to leave the Anglican Communion. In response to this, we, the Primate and the Metropolitans of the Anglican Church of Canada, reaffirm the Solemn Declaration of 1893 found in the (Canadian) Book of Common Prayer:
We declare this Church to be, and desire that it shall continue, in full communion with the Church of England throughout the world, as an integral portion of the One Body of Christ composed of Churches which, united under the One Divine Head and in the fellowship of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, hold the One Faith revealed in Holy Writ, and defined in the Creeds. (BCP 1959/1962, viii)
We reaffirm the four Instruments of Communion: the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, the Primates’ Meeting, and the primatial See of Canterbury with its people, clergy, and its Archbishop.
We reaffirm the historic Anglican appeal to Scripture, Reason, and Tradition.
The practical and theological question before us is this: Can communion with the Risen Christ contain conflict, so that conflict and disagreement lose their power to divide? We believe the answer to this question is a resounding “YES” because this has been borne out many times in Anglican experience and intuition from the Reformation to the present time.
The Anglican Church of Canada looks forward to participating in the next gathering of the Primates’ Meeting, the next meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, and the next Lambeth Conference. We rejoice in the appointment of Bishop Sarah Mullally as the next Archbishop of Canterbury and will warmly welcome her to Canada after she is installed in 2026.
With steadfast faith and joyful hope,
The Most Reverend Shane Parker, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada
The Most Reverend David Edwards, Metropolitan of Canada
The Most Reverend Anne Germond, Metropolitan of Ontario
The Most Reverend Gregory Kerr-Wilson, Metropolitan of Northern Lights
The Most Reverend John Stephens, Metropolitan of British Columbia and Yukon
We have to let the Anglican Church of Canada drift off wrapped in their delusions. It has been a long time coming. We need to have quite a lot of humility ourselves. I hope we will proceed with courage and enterprise and not let ourselves marinate in alternative delusions..
I find this statement by the Primate and Metroploitans to be disingenuous at best, and outright deceitful at worst.
How can ‘…we…reaffirm the Solemn Declaration of 1893…’ which states in part that we, ‘…receive the same Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as containing all things necessary to salvation;…’ and ‘…teach the same Word of God;…’ when meanwhile many Canadian Bishops authorize and/or promote teachings contrary to the clear ‘salvation’ (soteriological) doctrines of the Bible? (For example: 1 Corinthians 6)
It seems obvious to me that many clergy in the ACoC have been deceived generation after generation and now are unable or unwilling to accept the consequences.
Lord have mercy!
I merely noted the irony of a church leader having to quote the BCP which he and all leaders for 50 years have attempted to suppress if not remove.
As long ago as 1998 the Rector, Wardens, Parish Council and general membership of the Parish of Holy Trinity Vancouver sent this letter to Bishop Michael Ingham, after the first Synod vote asking him to authorise the blessing of same-sex ‘unions’.
It is the second item in the book Holy Homosex?: This and That (CreateSpace) A set of theological papers, including one by James I. Packer, presented in original chronological order, a thorough technical discussion
SC 5.5×8.5: ISBN 9781482347869
HC 6×9: ISBN 9798872407768
Ebook: ASIN B07HXV8DFK
Not at this time nor subsequently has there been the smallest sign that anybody at Synod Office had read it, or anything else on the subject. GIft copies have been sent to several bishops including our current diocesan at our expense with polite letters, but there is never any response. As though they had never learned to read. “When the blind lead the blind …” Or is it rather a case of “None so blind …”
Trinity III, 1998
Dear Bishop Michael,
Resolution #9 at Synod 1998
We, the undersigned members of Holy Trinity, Vancouver, wish first of all to commend you for your statesman-like action in withholding episcopal consent from the implementation of this resolution. This will help us all to heal, and will unite us in prayer for you as diocesan and for one another. We are thankful that the tone of the discussion was indeed for the most part both rational and irenical. This said, however, we must go on to express our very deep disquiet, not only that the motion was passed, but that it ever came to the vote in an Anglican diocese. In the first place, it was passed after the briefest and most superficial arguments had been heard on either side, whereas it would have been reasonable for Synod to have received detailed position papers for study beforehand, and failing that to have listened to two weighty presentations, each of at least an hour in length. In the second place, Synod ought not to have been debating a motion whose implementation would almost certainly have been illegal in Anglicanism. Yet a trained bishop and a trained lawyer permitted this flawed proceeding to take place.
That the argumentation was superficial and led to an un-Anglican conclusion may be seen from the following facts:–
i. The meaning of the resolution was never elucidated. One of our delegates sought an answer as to the connotation of the terms “bless” (a theological question) and “union” (a biological and legal one). An answer was promised, but no answer was forthcoming. As a result Synod lacked important factual information before the vote.
ii. The nature and source of authority in Anglicanism, and that there is a hierarchy of our sources of authority, was not stated by anyone more senior than an ordinary parochial clergy-man. Nobody pointed out that we grant to no bishop, not even to a majority of bishops, and to no Synod, any independent magisterium.
iii. The relation of the authority of experience to that of our other sources was not clearly stated by you or anyone senior. As a result Synod spent a great deal of time listening to personal opinions based on anecdotal evidence, nor did anyone intervene to remind us that all laws make hard cases, but are not invalidated thereby.
iv. Several speakers put forward the view that God could not have been expected to foresee our contemporary dilemmas and that we must in effect tailor the Faith and Christian ethics to our times. This profoundly anti-supernaturalist view went uncorrected by you, though it is un-Anglican and un-Catholic.
v. The exegesis of Scripture was for the most part sloppy and unprofessional. We may well agree that “His whole meaning is love”; but the meaning of love, the relation of one part of God’s revelation to another, and in particular the meaning of love in relation to law, has been the subject of nearly 20 centuries of intelligent and reverent study in Judaism and the Church Catholic. Some speakers, again uncorrected by you, confused taking the plain sense of Scripture seriously with taking it literally, nor was there any acknowledgement of the fact that literalism is sometimes appropriate. Some favoured an attitude to the moral law which sets Scripture against Scripture.
vi. Naive opinions were voiced about the ancient world in general and the biblical writers in particular. The impression was given that nothing old could possibly be new again.
vii. It was assumed that the aetiology of the homosexual condition is simple and well-under-stood. In fact it is highly complex even in the given individual, and is still poorly understood.
viii. It was further assumed that a supposed genetic predisposition renders the individual no longer free or responsible. This is to infantilise the homosexual person in relation to all other mentally competent adults.
ix. A parallel was drawn with the debate over the ordination of women. It was not pointed out that that debate was about admitting women to a kind of priesthood about which the New Testament is silent.
x. There was an implicit doctrinal clash, con-nected with the argument about love, about the nature of the Christian life. Some implied that personal fulfilment is a Christian ideal, others emphasised discipline, obedience and sacrifice. It would have been good if you as our leader had discerned the old quarrel between legalism and antinomianism behind much that was said, and that we were indeed debating a doctrinal question. Gal. 5 might have figured.
xi. There was a failure to think in an Anglican and Catholic way about the past as well as the present. If we are Catholic in terms of time as well as space, we will seek to honour, not discount, the struggles of those who have given up satisfactions of all kinds, legitimate or illegitimate, for Jesus Christ.
Several years before your election as bishop, the Annual Vestry of Holy Trinity Vancouver passed an unanimous motion to the effect that we were committed to what we believe to be a scriptural and Anglican position in this matter, in accordance with the ’79 episcopal guidelines. Old or new, we are striving to believe and behave as classical Anglicans here. To sum up the position of this parish, we are not prepared to move in the direction of Resolution #9. It seems to us that that same Scripture, and that same Lord, that call us to love our neighbours by just conduct, call us to love our neighbours by sexual restraint and purity. We oppose the pretence that same-sex ‘union’ exists, let alone is capable of being blessed by Anglicanism in the name of our Creator and Redeemer. Homosexual persons who press for blessing on their relationships have at bottom a quarrel, not with church and society, but with the Author both of our biology and of heterosexual passion and response as the Great Metaphor for His love and ours. If we involved ourselves in that, we could not hold our people, still less grow. We think it more consistent that the Diocese should institute a Day of Celebration, to uphold those who seek to live, often at great personal cost, in accordance with what we believe to be Christian sex-ethics in this sphere.
Yours in Christ,
Copy: His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.
10 Downing Street has really and truly involved the C of E in a terrible evil this time. Church ‘leaders’ who want to promote same-sex ‘unions’ do not need to be themselves predators in order to become effectively pimps/procurers for those that are.
Not for nothing did I say to Hugh Dempster, “Some people have an entirely principled objection to a situation in which their growing children may be encouraged to think of this kind of relating as being on all fours with heterosexual relations, or to come to their local parish church and be ‘turned’ by their friendly neighbourhood Anglican priest.” [Holy Homosex? p. 62]
Rome seems to be having the same difficulty, bishops who are enablers of predatory priests.
It is perhaps not so astonishing that a UK Labour govt., which has sought to minimise the horror of the systematic rape & victimisation of little English girls by gangs of M*sl*m immigrants, should happily nominate a Cantuar who supposes that opening up every C of E parish as a happy hunting ground to predators is a marvellously progressive idea.
It was the Tories who brought in same-sex ‘marriage’, apparently just to stay in power; but a Christian leader should never have thought this terrible evil good, beautiful or pleasing to God.
October 31st 1517+ 2025 November1st All saints +2025
When His Majesty King Charles III both vowed and signed the Act of Accession on Saturday, September 8, 2022, at St. James Palace, London, UK, whereby he vowed to uphold “the Protestant Reformed faith”, his recent and welcome decision to address the ongoing and systemic sexual abuse both within the Realm as well as within the global Communion merits another equally imperative act: addressing the failed response of “I Resist” by the then Bishop of London to the pleas of the abuse victims gathered at the same Synod seeking both mercy and justice. We, each one, must exercise due care any time that we wield The Sword of The Spirit + Ephesians 6 + Hebrews 4. Amen.
Well said indeed. Can HM seriously allow this outrageous Cantuar appointment? It puts the C of E so utterly in the wrong, and breaks up the Anglican Communion further into the bargain, just when the Monarchy has shown itself with respect to membership in the Royal Family to be up to speed about predation.
The poet, the oilman and the nurse, all enablers. Three times unlucky.
African Anglicans are already suing the C of E for frightful homosexual abuse of their people.
My errant diocese in the Anglican Church of Canada bears the heavy responsibility of sending an enabling bishop plus a predatory layman gyrating about Africa trying to market homosex, the team then finishing up making propaganda for gross sin in the English Church.
Our King Charles is dying of cancer, and it seems is concerned for his legacy. We should pray for him as he comes up for judgement, and not just in general. Personally, I’m thinking especially about his power over the C of E, the Mother Church of our worldwide Communion, and the Church of my birth, baptism & adult conversion. The new Cantuar has, tragically, learnt from both the Episcopal Church of the USA and the Anglican Church of Canada how to be a bishop that teaches immorality, and as a consequence speedily empties out most of the parishes. How to destroy an Anglican diocese, or a whole national Church, in one easy lesson!
In my experience, if you send a gift of a good book to the Palace, using amazon.co.uk, and accompany it with a respectful note, you get back a beautiful thankyou. At least this happened to me with HM Elizabeth II, who had an excellent office staff.