Talk:Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans

GAFCON membership

GAFCON lists its members on its official website; some editors are claiming there are members who are not listed. SeminarianJohn (talk) 00:53, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

While the GAFCON official membership list leaves off Alexandria, the primates' council includes them. Adding citation for their inclusion.SeminarianJohn (talk) 01:51, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Issues

An editor is undoing revisions that even just replace older citations that seem to have been incorrectly left behind without explanation. For example, the editor undid the revision of adding two RS (one secondary and one primary) for the Church of Nigeria's 18 million members. The membership claim was not adjusted, just two citations were added to replace the World Council of Churches which does not include 18 million (the WCC says 1,750,000). The second example is the Church of Uganda; the previous cited source said 8 million and the article text said 11 million. I added the 2024 Uganda census as RS and changed to 13,311,800 per the 2024 census. Both were undone. Also, the same editor removed a citation for GAFCON's membership from GAFCON itself, also without explanation. SeminarianJohn (talk) 01:04, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Feel free to readd those citations. I just didn't feel like tracing back through those other edits to be able to restore the accurate reading of Muñoz's study. natemup (talk) 02:08, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I made sure to do separate edits on purpose in case you objected to the wording including "Global South." However, no harm done. I had the citations available pretty quickly. As I said on the other talk page, I can live with your current phrasing "GAFCON-aligned provinces,"; I think that is more accurate. I disagree that your reading is the "accurate" reading. I know how to read academic journals. However, I am going to assume you didn't mean to be offensive there. Also, I support your other suggestion to merge the two GAFCON pages.SeminarianJohn (talk) 02:23, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I would also support such a merge, but I can't actually find the proposal. GenevieveDEon (talk) 23:03, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Percentage of Anglicans represented by GAFCON

Hello editors! I've reviewed the article. Although GAFCON's own sources say it represents 85% of Anglicans (and we should maintain this information as the organization's own statement), censuses, independent surveys, etc., are listed in Anglican Communion#Organisation#Provinces that include the numbers of practicing, self-declared, and baptized Anglicans, according to various independent sources and the churches themselves. The 10 provinces of the Anglican Communion (previous structure, linked to the See of Canterbury) , now at GAFCON, together represent 55.6% of the active members of the Anglican Communion churches and 46.5% of all self-declared Anglicans, as well as 46.7% of baptized Anglicans. We could transfer the dozens of sources from there to here, but I think it would be complicated. However, this information can be verified by anyone who transfers the data to an Excel spreadsheet, selects the data from the 10 GAFCON provinces that represent a percentage of the previous Anglican Communion, and divides the sum by the total number of Anglicans in each definition (active, self-declared, and baptized). Daniel Silva Mendanha (talk) 00:16, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

I think that would unfortunately represent original research or synthesis. However, it appears that there are already reliable secondary sources for claimed membership numbers more in line with the lower estimates you mention, so we should reference those. GenevieveDEon (talk) 07:15, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, Daniel, for joining in, friend. I agree with Genevieve that because the study cited gives specific percentages based on that research, we have to leave those numbers and that sentence the way they are. It's not because I disagre with you; you're right that there are those other estimates. However, as Genevieve says, we can and should add additional RS to give an accurate reflection of both the claims of GAFCON and the research done on the numbers.SeminarianJohn (talk) 02:23, 23 October 2025 (UTC)

Ordination of Women

In a table added by a different editor, a previous editor had marked a few provinces as not ordaining women without any citations and reliable sources confirmed those provinces in fact did ordain or permitted the ordination of women. Another editor, @Dclements09, removed that column and I agree with their decision to remove that table. There is already an existing section in the article about the ordination of women that can better summarize the policies of each church with a known position than just a "Yes" or "No" checkmark.

Currently, I have found WP:RS for all but the following member churches of GAFCON, Alexandria, Brazil, Chile, and South Africa.

The Saint Athanasius Provincial Seminary states that "Following his ordination as the Bishop of the Diocese of Egypt, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa, he resolved to create this theological institution to facilitate the training of men and women for service within the diocese. Previously, the diocese had sent its ordained servants to Episcopal/Anglican theological colleges outside Egypt or to theological institutes supervised by other Christian denominations." (2020) I think that confirms women are ordained in the Episcopal Province of Alexandria, but I want to know what other editors think. SeminarianJohn (talk) 23:11, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm Dclemens1971, but otherwise I don't think that source is sufficient confirmation. Seminaries in jurisdictions that don't ordain women to the priesthood may still train them as deacons or as lay deaconesses. Dclemens1971 (talk) 01:51, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

@Dclemens1971 sorry about tagging the wrong account. I think that it says "its ordained servants..." is referring to the province's "men and women for service within the diocese," but that is why I singled it out for discussion. It's not explicit. I will keep looking for each of these. I still cannot find anything concrete on the GAFCON Brazil and Chile. SeminarianJohn (talk) 05:27, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

The Anglican Church in Brazil ordains women to the priesthood, not going to be able to pull a source at the moment and saying so may be OR, but FWIW it does. Don't know about Chile. Dclemens1971 (talk) 13:17, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I also know I saw a woman serving as a priest in GAFCON Brazil but at the moment that is also just OR because I cannot find RS to back that up. SeminarianJohn (talk) 06:57, 8 April 2026 (UTC)