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Dear GSFA Family and Friends,
I am writing this letter during the Second Week of Lent, and I am reminded of the words of this week’s collect in which we pray ‘grant to all those who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, that they may reject those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same.’
This is a prayer that we may be able to discern Christ’s truth from error and on a visit to Oxford, England in January I realised our Anglican Communion has its origins in the witness of brave men who were willing to give their lives for the truth of God’s Word. I was able to stand at the place where Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burnt to death in 1556 and 1555. This experience made a very strong impression on me as you can see from this video. I have been a bishop for 25 years, but in none of my visits to Canterbury as a bishop or Primate had these events ever been mentioned.
Perhaps this is not surprising because for nearly a generation now it has been clear that the historic leadership of the Communion has just not been willing to recognize that we must be able to distinguish truth from error. This is the reason the GSFA has created a new structure to reset the Communion, the Cairo Covenant of 2019, and it is a reason for great hope therefore that our covenanted membership continues to grow with the Province of the Indian Ocean coming into full membership following a decision made at their Provincial Synod last December after a careful process of discernment.
Being a fellowship of Christ also commits us to a common task of building one another up and the GSFA serves the Anglican Communion in practical ways through its ministry tracks. In February the Leadership and Ministerial Formation Track held another Bishops Formation Retreat, this time in Egypt, where we welcomed fourteen bishops and their wives from Africa, South America and South East Asia to a rich and wonderfully joyful time fellowship and encouragement from the Word of God.
Then just last week, we held our first Economic Empowerment Track Planning Conference, kindly hosted by the Diocese of Singapore at St Andrew’s Cathedral. Singapore was an inspirational venue, having developed from being a ‘Third World’ country to one of the most prosperous in the world in just sixty years since independence from Malaysia in 1965. Delegates from twelve different Provinces, with speakers from Uganda, the UK and Singapore, worked together to generate a strategy to move away from unhealthy patterns of dependency with pilot projects focussing on low-cost education, access to finance and the development of sustainable agriculture.
Representatives of the Mission Partnership Track will also gather in Egypt during May, and I am greatly encouraged by the potential of all three tracks to make a highly positive practical contribution to the ministry and mission of the GSFA Provinces and the wider Communion. To support the continued growth of GSFA, I am very pleased to announce that the Rev Canon Charles Raven has been appointed as Development Secretary with effect from 1st April. He has faithfully served the Churches of the Global South in a variety of ways since 2012, most recently as CEO of The Relay Trust which is a Mission Partner of the GSFA.
The significance and growing impact of the GSFA is reflected by the fact that the Inter Anglican Standing Committee for Unity, Faith & Order (IASCUFO) has publicly invited us to respond to the proposals of the Nairobi-Cairo Report issued last December. We take this seriously and it will be referred to the GSFA’s Faith & Order Commission, but our response will be consistent with the Cairo Covenant which, in contrast to the IASCUFO recommendation of an ‘ecumenical’ pattern of Communion relationships, recognises that the ‘fellowship of Christ’s religion’ requires the discernment of truth from error, of that which is according to Christ and that which is contrary to Christ.
Finally, as we remember all that Christ suffered for our sake during this season of Lent, let us also remember in our prayers those who suffer from war, especially our brothers and sisters enduring civil war in Sudan, Eastern DRC and Myanmar. Please pray also for my own nation of South Sudan at a time of rising tension and insecurity. May we all hold fast to our Easter hope in the Risen Christ who makes all things new.
The Most Rev Dr Justin Badi Arama
Primate of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and
Chairman of GSFA
