Since the middle of the last century, as Western society has become increasingly secular, Christian values have been shunned with a substantial portion of the church forsaking the clear teaching of the Bible and conforming to the prevailing culture.  This became particularly evident with sexual ethics, and so at the Lambeth Conference in 1998, through Resolution I.10, the worldwide assembly of bishops reaffirmed the Bible’s teaching on sex.  They reaffirmed that:

•    Marriage between a man and a woman is the God given context for sex
•    Abstinence should be honored outside marriage
In spite of this confirmation of the Bible’s teaching on sex, in 2003 a clergyman in a same-sex relationship was consecrated as a bishop in The Episcopal Church (TEC), the Anglican church in the USA.  Within a year TEC clergy were blessing same-sex unions and were soon followed by the Anglican Church of Canada (ACoC).  For years orthodox Anglicans called on TEC and ACoC to repent but to no avail.  So in 2008, when bishops from these two anglican Provinces were invited to the next Lambeth Conference, a group of 291 bishops and 1,148 lay and clergy leaders met in Jerusalem to consider how to take a stand against the collapse of biblical witness in parts of the Anglican Communion.  In that moment the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) was born and the Jerusalem Statement and Declaration was created.