Iliud Wabukala: The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion: The Church and Its Mission [Transcript]

Archbishop Wabukala’s talk was originally presented at The Ridley Institute, a confessionally Anglican school of theology at St. Andrew’s ~ Mount Pleasant on November 12, 2013. Archbishop Wabukala’s talk was part of a ten-week lecture series on Reformation Anglicanism.

My dear brothers and sisters, I want to thank you so much for your kind invitation to deliver this lecture and for your very generous hospitality. I also thank God for this opportunity to visit and stand alongside you in your struggle for the gospel here in South Carolina. The subject matter of these lectures could never of course be treated as mere ideas and your context is a sharp reminder that we are not dealing with abstract theological debate, but with the reality of spiritual warfare and the need to contend for the gospel as “the power of God for salvation” (Romans 1.16).

You do not need me to tell you that the faithfulness and integrity of our beloved Anglican Communion has been assaulted on a scale that would have been unimaginable even a generation ago, but I believe I do see being worked out the truth of our Lord’s words: “I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). The boldness with which a false gospel has been promoted in the Anglican Communion has, to borrow a phrase once used by my good friend Archbishop Peter Jensen, awoken the sleeping giant of Anglican orthodoxy.

The main manifestation of that awakening is the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, which was launched the first GAFCON in Jerusalem five years ago and has proved that it is a movement which is here to stay following the outstanding success of GAFCON 2013 held a few weeks ago in Nairobi. I count it a great privilege to have been called to be Chairman of this movement and its Primates Council, and I believe that GAFCON and its Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans is of great relevance to our topic this evening. Confessing Anglicans are uniquely placed to articulate a biblical theology of Anglican mission for the twenty first century for two reasons:

1. a) The motivation of the GAFCON movement from the outset was missional. We could not stand by while a false gospel was being promoted with all the confusion that brings. We defend the gospel because we want to promote the gospel and the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008 affirmed that the reason we gathered in Jerusalem was “to free our churches to give clear and certain witness to Jesus Christ.”
2. b) Like any truly reforming movement in the Church, GAFCON simply recovered that which had been lost and I am thinking most particularly, though not exclusively, of the Thirty-nine Articles which were themselves intended by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer as the articulation of that which had been buried beneath layers of mediaeval scholasticism.

Let me remind you of the significance given to the Thirty-nine Articles in the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration. In the Statement we affirm that:

Our core identity as Anglicans is expressed in these words: The doctrine of the Church is grounded in the Holy Scriptures and in such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the said Scriptures. In particular, such doctrine is to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal.

Then in the Jerusalem Declaration Clause 4 it is further affirmed that:

We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.

At this point we should pause to note how remarkable this is. Until recently, the default position throughout the Communion seems to have been to treat the Articles as of merely historical interest. In the Church of England itself, although the Articles still have legal status in defining doctrine, the clergy are not required to subscribe to them and in my own Anglican Church of Kenya our constitution merely gives individual dioceses the option to require subscription to the Articles.

Thanks to GAFCON, there is now renewed awareness of the Articles. It may seem strange to you that I as an African Primate am advocating a document that emerged out of the ecclesiastical and political crisis of sixteenth century England, but simply to dismiss the Articles because of their distance from us in time and space would be a superficial judgment. They are not of course on the same level as Scripture — indeed perhaps their greatest value is the assertion that the Church and its Councils are always themselves under the authority of Scripture — but like the Scriptural text, we must approach the Articles on their own merits and seek to understand the mind of the author, not impose our prior assumptions and prejudices.

When we do that, I believe two great truths become clear which are vital for the recovery of an authentically Anglican understanding of mission, the power of the Gospel and the priority of Scripture. Keep reading