The Truth Shall Set You Free: Global Anglicans in the 21st Century

Jesus' words 'The Truth Shall Set You Free' (John 8:32) are the motto text of the Canterbury Compass Rose, a design set in the floor of the nave of Canterbury Cathedral in 1988 and subsequently adopted as the symbol of the Anglican Communion. The irony of the Compass Rose is that the Communion it denotes is increasingly without direction and has no agreement on the truth it holds to. It was in response to this confusion that the first Global Anglican Future Conference was convened in 2008 and delegates affirmed in the closing paragraph of the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration that 'The primary reason we have come to Jerusalem and issued this declaration is to free our churches to give clear and certain witness to Jesus Christ'. Just as the Compass Rose can be recovered as a powerful symbol of revealed truth once the magnetic north of Scripture is restored, so GAFCON and its Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans seeks, under God and as a movement of the Spirit, to make a major course correction for the twenty-first century by recovering our Anglican heritage of biblical and gospel centred ecclesiology. So this compilation is offered as a resource for delegates to the second Global Anglican Future Conference of 2013 and for all who long to see the Anglican Communion emerge from its present crisis with a new confidence in the inspired Scriptures and the mission of God to which they bear witness. Apart from the contributions of Stephen Noll and Colin Reed, this material originated in addresses and seminars given at the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans Leaders' Conference held in London at St Mark's Battersea Rise in London in April 2012.