Orienting Toward Jerusalem (Preamble)
A Global Anglican Commentary
The Feast of St. James of Jerusalem, 2025
“Grant, we beseech thee, O God, that after the example of thy apostle James the Just, kinsman of our Lord, thy Church may give itself continually unto prayer and to the reconciliation of all who are set at variance and enmity; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen." (Book of Common Prayer, 2019 revision, p. 633)
In his Oxford Martyrs’ Day Communique on October 16th, 2025, Archbishop Mbanda, chair of the Global Anglican Future Conference, declared, “The future has arrived.”
We well know the status quo this future supplants:
Over the past several decades, significant portions of the Anglican Communion have succumbed to a hermeneutic that trades the revelation of the Holy Spirit for the Spirit of the Age.
Faithful churchmen throughout the Communion attempted to stop the capitulation to this new and revolutionary spirit, but were ignored or evaded with deceptive phrases like “walking together,” “unity amidst difference,” and “humble listening.” Concrete action to repent and change course never once occurred. Instead of truly walking together, revisionist provinces have walked away from the common doctrine and discipline of the Church. The presenting issues for this departure from the faith and practice of the Church were matters of human sexuality and anthropology, but these were merely symptoms. The root disease is a hermeneutic which is faithless to the traditional understanding of Holy Scripture.
Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ (Jeremiah 6:16)
This doctrinal crisis has led to an ecclesial crisis. How can we walk together when we are on two separate paths? How do we know which path is true, which is the ancient and good way where we may find rest for our souls?
In 2008, members of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) produced the Jerusalem Declaration, which establishes sign posts to mark this way. Over the past two decades, GAFCON has established faithful pilgrim communities on that path while calling others out of the ditches on either side. Rather than heed the call to repent, however, apostate churches have continued to abandon the doctrine and discipline of the Church. What was once impaired has now been broken. The Instruments of Communion, which since their inception in 1988 have defined the Anglican Communion, are dead and no longer recognized by a significant number of provinces. Instead, the future has arrived: the Global Anglican Communion, which continues in faithful pilgrimage on the ancient path of faith.
We, in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), are fellow pilgrims with GAFCON on this path. And we desire to be a Church that is shaped, pruned, and directed by the Scriptures interpreted in a “plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading” (Jerusalem Declaration, Article 2).
But what exactly does that mean? What does it look like? What are its implications? Answering these questions is the aim of this new series: “Orienting Toward Jerusalem.”
These questions cannot only be directed outward. We must level the challenge of the Scriptures to ourselves—to examine our own provinces, dioceses, and churches according to this rule of “the plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.” How can we better walk the path established by Holy Scripture?
The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:12-13)
The Gospel calls each of us to repentance and renewal. May the purifying and cleansing Word of God expose anything within us that is hidden or concealed so that only faithfulness to Christ and his Church remains.
We believe our foundation is secure upon Jesus Christ, in pilgrimage on the same ancient path where saints have trod before us. This ancient path is demarcated by the Global Anglican Communion through the Jerusalem Declaration, and our hope is that through these commentaries we will be edified by the faith that has been entrusted to us through our tradition, repent wherever we have strayed from it, and be emboldened to give thanks—once again—for the faithfulness of our Anglican heritage.
We invite you to walk with us on these ancient paths.
- The Ven. Andrew Brashier
- The Rev. Matthew Brench
- The Rev. Kyle Clark
- The Rev. Ben Jefferies
- The Rev. Jonah Kelman
- The Rev. Brandon LeTourneau
- The Rev. Ron Offringa
- Mrs. Emelie Thomas
- The Rev. Canon Jay Thomas
- The Rev. Hunter Van Wagenen