Lawyers Task Force

Network Statement

The Gafcon Lawyers Network provides legal and canonical counsel and resources to the Primates, bishops, clergy and other leaders of Gafcon as we seek to live out the Jerusalem Declaration and its implications for our life and ministry together under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures.
 
We met three times during Gafcon 2018, with approximately 30 lawyers at each of our meetings from Africa, Asia and Australia, North America and the UK.  We addressed:

• The needs of Gafcon leaders and churches facing challenges to religious liberty and association.
• The challenge of living under Sharia law.
• The definition of our identity as Anglicans.
• How we can strengthen our life together under the Jerusalem Declaration and the historic formularies of the Anglican Church worldwide.
• Exit strategies for those Biblically faithful Anglicans who can no longer compromise and adjust to the false teaching within their own dioceses and national churches.

From our discussions, we resolved to form three working groups to address the following issues:

1. The Religious Liberty group will seek to provide resources for our Gafcon members to counter secularizing threats to the rights of freedom of speech, worship and association, religious use of property, employment and threats of discipline both within and outside the church against those who seek to live, witness and minister to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
2. The Anglican identity group will provide resources for Gafcon members to define themselves confessionally and conciliarly within their own governing and decision making structures. 
3. The Exit Issues group will help Gafcon members face the difficult choice of how to differentiate themselves from diocesan and National church structures that have been irreversibly compromised by false teaching.

In all of these matters, we will seek and take counsel from the Gafcon Primates Council, and offer ourselves, our services and our gifts as servants to the Primates as they provide direction and order for our Gafcon movement within the Anglican Communion.  We plan to carry on our work immediately following this conference through ongoing discussions, writing, sharing resources, meeting and developing a directory of resources on-line.