Alfred Olwa is Bishop of Lango in the Church of Uganda, and Chairman of the Ministerial Formation and Training Track for the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches. ‘The Bible at the Heart of Communion’ is an edited version of Bishop Olwa’s address delivered at the G26 Mini-Conference, a major international gathering of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) held from March 3 to March 6, 2026, in Abuja, Nigeria.

Brothers and sisters in Christ,

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

We gather from every corner of the world—north and south, east and west; from nations of long-established Christian heritage and from contexts where the church is young, vibrant, and often costly to belong to.

We come carrying different burdens, different hopes, and different histories. Yet we stand under one Lord, confess one faith, and proclaim one gospel.

We have been walking a careful path together.

Talk 1 named how we arrived at this moment.

Talk 2 traced the historical arc of reordering.

If Talk 1 showed us the road behind us, and Talk 2 helped us read the signposts along the way, then Talk 3 must answer the question now pressing on us: What is the ground beneath our feet?

We must move from history to theology –from explanation to foundation, from what has happened to what must hold us together.

The question before us is not complicated, though it is costly:

What is the foundation of Christian communion and, therefore, of the Anglican Communion?

This is not merely a question of institutional survival. It is a question of faithfulness –whether we still believe that God has spoken clearly, that God has revealed his will graciously, and that God expects his church to listen humbly and obey joyfully.

1. Beginning with the Statement

Because foundations are not invented in moments of crisis, but confessed in moments of clarity, we begin not with our own opinions but with the church’s own declaration.

The Martyrs Day Statement says:

‘We declare that the Anglican Communion will be reordered, with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible, “translated, read, preached, taught and obeyed in its plain and canonical sense, respectful of the church’s historic and consensual reading” (Jerusalem Declaration, Article II), which reflects Article VI of the 39 Articles of Religion.’¹The Martyrs’ Day Statement (MDS) is a declaration issued by the GAFCON Primates’ Council on 16 October 2025, under the heading ‘The Future Has Arrived. It was signed by Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda, Chair of the GAFCON Primates’ Council, and released on the commemoration of the martyrdom of Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, who were burned at the stake in Oxford on 16 October 1555 under Queen Mary I.

This sentence is not political.

It is theological.

It is confessional.

And it is decisive.

It is decisive because it names not only what we believe about the Bible, but what we believe the Bible does for the church.

It names the Bible not merely as a reference point, but as the foundation of communion itself.

Because this sentence carries the weight of our future, we must not rush past it. We must open it up carefully and let it examine us.

First: ‘Reordered.’

Not reinvented. Not abandoned. Reordered.

This is the language of repentance and renewal.

Reordering assumes that something has gone out of alignment. It acknowledges that structures, habits, and authorities drift when the Word of God is displaced.

Reordering is not an act of rebellion; it is an act of submission. It is the church saying, ‘We have lost our way, and we must return to the Lord’s way.’

Second: ‘One foundation of communion.’

If communion has one foundation, then communion cannot survive when that foundation is negotiated.

The church does not choose its foundation; it receives it.

The church does not construct its unity; it lives into a unity that God has given in Christ and reveals in his written Word—the Bible.

Third: ‘The Holy Bible.’

If Christ is our foundation, and Christ rules his church by his Word, then the Scriptures are not one authority among many. They are the living instrument of Christ’s rule.

Where the Bible is honoured, Christ is honoured. Where the Bible is sidelined, Christ’s voice is softened.

Fourth: ‘Plain and canonical sense.’

If the Bible is our foundation, then it must be read in such a way that the church can actually hear God speak—plainly, coherently, and with Scripture interpreting Scripture.

This guards us from both arrogance and despair: arrogance that imagines we can master the text, and despair that imagines the text can never master us.

Fifth: ‘Historic and consensual reading.’

Because no one generation owns the Bible, we read it not in isolation but in communion with the saints across time. This humbles us. It reminds us that novelty is rarely faithfulness, and that faithfulness is often costly.

Having named the foundation, we must now ask what it means to build communion upon it in practice.

2. Scripture as the Sole Foundation of Communion

If the Bible is truly our foundation, then it cannot be merely an honoured symbol within communion; it must be the source of communion itself.

Communion is not sustained by geography, culture, ethnicity, language, diplomacy, or historical sentiment.

These are beautiful gifts of God, and we thank God for them. But gifts cannot carry weight unless they rest on something stronger. The early church understood this instinctively.

Acts chapter 2 verse 42 tells us that they devoted themselves first to the apostles’ teaching, and then to fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers.

Doctrine precedes communion. Truth generates unity. When truth is shared, fellowship becomes real. When truth is relativised, fellowship becomes fragile.

This is why communion collapses when the Bible is treated as optional. When the Bible no longer governs us, communion becomes performative rather than real.

We may share conferences, instruments, and statements, but we no longer share faithfulness or obedience.

But this raises an important question: 

What kind of authority do we mean when we say ‘Scripture alone’?

3. Sola Scriptura, Not Solo Scriptura

If the Bible is the foundation of communion, then we must be clear about how the Bible functions within the church.

Solo Scriptura (Scripture Only), isolates the Bible from the church and produces fragmentation, individualism, and competing private authorities. In interpreting the meaning of Scripture it elevates the individual and their personal preferences. It sets aside the truth that the Scriptures are given to the church and that God has created us as people who live in communion with each other. ‘As iron sharpens iron, so one man’s face sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17.’ In seeking to understand Scripture and honour its overriding and liberating authority we learn from each other.

Sola Scriptura, (Scripture Alone) by contrast, places the Bible supreme within the church’s historic and consensual life. We accept as helpful historical creeds, councils, and traditions as long as they agree with the Bible.

Orthodox Anglicanism has always held the Bible as supreme, but never as solitary. The Reformers did not abolish tradition; they purified it by Scripture.

They did not reject the creeds; they confessed them more clearly because of Scripture. They did not despise the church; they loved the church enough to call her to obedience.

So Scripture is not lonely. It is spoken by God to us. It is his voice. It is how he exercises his lordship amongst us, making us ‘wise for salvation’ – 2 Timothy 3:10-17)

And, if Scripture is an act of God’s lordship within the church, then we must ask how we listen to this Lordly Word faithfully together.

4. The Jerusalem Declaration’s Threefold Interpretative Framework

If the Bible is supreme, then interpretation – reading and understanding – becomes a matter of communion itself. How we read determines how we live together.

The Jerusalem Declaration²TheJerusalem Declaration is the founding confession of the GAFCON movement, issued at the conclusion of the first Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem, 22–29 June 2008. It was adopted as the doctrinal basis of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans(GFCA, now GAFCON) and, per Point 7 of the 2025 Martyrs’ Day Statement, assent to it now defines membership in the Global Anglican Communion. gives us a threefold hermenutical framework for Biblical interpretation, designed and shaped for unity in truth:

Scripture is plain — God speaks in ways his people can understand and obey.

Scripture is canonical — we receive the whole counsel of God, not isolated fragments.

Scripture is consensual — we listen with the great cloud of witnesses across time.

Each word guards us from a different temptation. ‘Plain’ guards us from scepticism; ‘canonical’ guards us from selectivity; ‘consensual’ guards us from novelty out of a mistaken belief.

Together, they protect the church from both rigidity and drift.

But interpretation alone is not enough. We must also ask whether the Bible is sufficient to shape the church’s life and proclamation.

5. Article VI and the Sufficiency of Scripture

Article VI of The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion reminds us that Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation. This means Scripture is not merely authoritative; it is sufficient.

The Christian gospel does not need to be completed by cultural trends or corrected by contemporary sensibilities.

This reframes our disagreements. We are not debating secondary matters. We are debating whether the Bible still defines sin and grace, repentance and forgiveness, holiness and hope.

If the Bible is sufficient, then silence where the Bible speaks is not compassion—it is abandonment.

When sufficiency is denied, authority soon collapses. And, this, brings us directly to the crisis of our present ecclesial moment.

6. A Clear Contrast with the Canterbury Structures

If the Bible is the sufficient and supreme foundation of communion, then any structure that relativises the Bible undermines communion itself.

The Canterbury Structures³The ‘Canterbury Structures’ — more formally the Instruments of Communion (formerly ‘Instruments of Unity’) — are the four institutional mechanisms through which the provinces of the Anglican Communion have historically maintained interdependence and communion with the See of Canterbury. They were explicitly rejected in Point 2 of the GAFCON Martyrs’ Day Statement as having ‘failed to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion’. have normalised interpretative pluralism, elevated cultural accommodation, and reframed division as ‘good disagreement.’

But disagreement cannot be the glue of communion. Ambiguity cannot be the basis of unity. Unity without truth is not Christian unity; it is institutional incoherence.

When the Bible becomes one voice among many, the church loses its prophetic voice.

When cultural pressure becomes decisive, the gospel becomes negotiable.

This is not about personalities. It is about obedience to the Lord of the church.

And obedience is not theoretical. It is embodied in lived Christian life across the global church.

7. A Personal Witness from the Global Church

In many parts of the world, the church grows through conviction, not compromise. In my context—the Church of Uganda – where the Bible is trusted, preached, and obeyed, the gospel bears fruit. Where the Word is clear, disciples are formed. Where sin is named, grace becomes precious.

In contexts of suffering and spiritual conflict, ambiguity is not pastoral sensitivity; it is pastoral absence. In all honesty, our people in the Church of Uganda, and Christians worldwide  do not need a church unsure of its message.

We need a church confident in the saving power of the gospel. This lived reality leads us to a deeper truth about the church.

8. The Global Anglican Communion Is the Anglican Communion

If communion is grounded in shared submission to the Bible, then communion already exists wherever the Bible governs the church.

The Global Anglican Communion is not a reactionary movement. It is Anglicanism living from its foundation. Communion exists where confession exists.

Structures may recognise it later, but God already recognises it now. This forces us to ask where true authority lies in the church.

9. The Bible, Not Instrumental Primacy

The Bible—not Canterbury.
The Bible—not Lambeth.
The Bible—not councils or commissions.

Christian institutions exist to serve the Word of God. They do not stand above it. When instruments drift from the Bible, they lose the authority they were meant to exercise.

Structures exist for the sake of truth—not truth for the sake of structures. This is not a rejection of Anglican identity. It is a recovery of Anglican obedience.

10. Confessional and Catholic Continuity

The Bible at the heart of communion produces a church that is deeply catholic and truly reformed.

Creedal, formulary-based, patristic, reformational. This is Anglicanism at its strongest—not its weakest.

Confessional identity does not narrow mission. It strengthens it.

11. The Bible and Mission

Where the Bible governs:

Mission flourishes.

Evangelism deepens.

Disciples mature.

Churches multiply.

And,

Communities are transformed.

The Word of God does not turn the church inward; it sends the church outward. Truth is not the enemy of love. Truth is love’s foundation.

Jesus prayed that we would be sanctified in truth so that the world may believe (John 17:17). Communion grounded in the Bible is not inward-looking; it is world-facing.

12. Preparing the Way Forward

If the Bible is the foundation of communion, then we must now ask the uncomfortable but necessary question:

Why did the Canterbury Institutions fail to guard this foundation?

This is not a question of blame. It is a question of responsibility.

Reordering begins with repentance. Renewal begins with truth-telling. The church is healthiest when she is most honest before God.

I trust that Talk 4 will take us there.

May God grant us: courage to listen; humility to repent; and, faithfulness to obey—for the glory of Christ, for the holiness of his church, for the salvation of the nations.

Amen.

—

• 1
  The Martyrs’ Day Statement (MDS) is a declaration issued by the GAFCON Primates’ Council on 16 October 2025, under the heading ‘The Future Has Arrived. It was signed by Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda, Chair of the GAFCON Primates’ Council, and released on the commemoration of the martyrdom of Bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, who were burned at the stake in Oxford on 16 October 1555 under Queen Mary I. ↩︎
• 2
  TheJerusalem Declaration is the founding confession of the GAFCON movement, issued at the conclusion of the first Global Anglican Future Conference in Jerusalem, 22–29 June 2008. It was adopted as the doctrinal basis of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans(GFCA, now GAFCON) and, per Point 7 of the 2025 Martyrs’ Day Statement, assent to it now defines membership in the Global Anglican Communion. ↩︎
• 3
  The ‘Canterbury Structures’ — more formally the Instruments of Communion (formerly ‘Instruments of Unity’) — are the four institutional mechanisms through which the provinces of the Anglican Communion have historically maintained interdependence and communion with the See of Canterbury. They were explicitly rejected in Point 2 of the GAFCON Martyrs’ Day Statement as having ‘failed to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion’. ↩︎