The recent meeting of the Global Anglicans in Abuja, Nigeria has left a little bit of confusion. What exactly happened there? I will come back to that in future essays and installments. But at least one thing came out of the meeting that was very good. In the “Abuja Affirmation,” we are told:

The Jerusalem Declaration, which includes the Reformation Formularies, expresses our common confession of the Biblical truth, shared faith, and communal conviction.

Later on, there is a quote from a previous Anglican gathering, with this added statement, “The Global Anglican Communion is a return to this historic sense of the Anglican Communion as ‘a fellowship of autonomous provinces bound together by the Formularies of the Reformation.'”

So that’s two times that “the Reformation Formularies” are named as a standard of faith and practice. “Is that really ground-breaking?” you might ask. It shouldn’t be. Historically it is undeniable that the Church of England and also the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States held to the 39 Articles, Book of Common Prayer, and Ordinal as its doctrinal and liturgical standards. But unfortunately, this has not been so clear for at least 100 years. Even the ACNA itself isn’t always as clear as it can be on these points. Sometimes they simply say that the 39 Articles are “the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that” and a document that “express[es] fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.” That way of expressing things strikes me as having just a bit too much fudge. The reason for this half-hearted affirmation (maybe it’s two-thirds affirmation?) is that the Episcopal Church had itself relegated the 39 Articles to the “historical documents” section of their archives. (They never did succeed in fully changing their constitution, but they do seem to have convinced enough people not to care too much.) And so it’s a very good thing that the ACNA has also adopted the Jerusalem Declaration. The Global Anglicans have done us a great service in clarifying the central place of the Reformation Formularies.

What else does the Jerusalem Declaration say? Here it is in full:

1. We rejoice in the gospel of God through which we have been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Because God first loved us, we love him and as believers bring forth fruits of love, ongoing repentance, lively hope and thanksgiving to God in all things.
2. We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God written and to contain all things necessary for salvation. The Bible is to be translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading.
3. We uphold the four Ecumenical Councils and the three historic Creeds as expressing the rule of faith of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
4. 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.
5. We gladly proclaim and submit to the unique and universal Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, humanity’s only Saviour from sin, judgement and hell, who lived the life we could not live and died the death that we deserve. By his atoning death and glorious resurrection, he secured the redemption of all who come to him in repentance and faith.
6. We rejoice in our Anglican sacramental and liturgical heritage as an expression of the gospel, and we uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.
7. We recognise that God has called and gifted bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession to equip all the people of God for their ministry in the world. We uphold the classic Anglican Ordinal as an authoritative standard of clerical orders.
8. We acknowledge God’s creation of humankind as male and female and the unchangeable standard of Christian marriage between one man and one woman as the proper place for sexual intimacy and the basis of the family. We repent of our failures to maintain this standard and call for a renewed commitment to lifelong fidelity in marriage and abstinence for those who are not married.
9. We gladly accept the Great Commission of the risen Lord to make disciples of all nations, to seek those who do not know Christ and to baptise, teach and bring new believers to maturity.
10. We are mindful of our responsibility to be good stewards of God’s creation, to uphold and advocate justice in society, and to seek relief and empowerment of the poor and needy.
11. We are committed to the unity of all those who know and love Christ and to building authentic ecumenical relationships. We recognise the orders and jurisdiction of those Anglicans who uphold orthodox faith and practice, and we encourage them to join us in this declaration.
12. We celebrate the God-given diversity among us which enriches our global fellowship, and we acknowledge freedom in secondary matters. We pledge to work together to seek the mind of Christ on issues that divide us.
13. We reject the authority of those churches and leaders who have denied the orthodox faith in word or deed. We pray for them and call on them to repent and return to the Lord.
14. We rejoice at the prospect of Jesus’ coming again in glory, and while we await this final event of history, we praise him for the way he builds up his church through his Spirit by miraculously changing lives.