Confessing Movement in the context of "Global Methodist Church"

The Continuing Anglican movement, also known as the Anglican Continuum, encompasses a number of Christian churches, principally based in North America, that have an Anglican identity and tradition but are not part of the Anglican Communion. These churches generally believe that traditional forms of Anglican faith and worship have been unacceptably revised or abandoned within some churches of the Anglican Communion, but that they, the Continuing Anglicans, are preserving or "continuing" both Anglican lines of apostolic succession and historic Anglican belief and practice.

The term was first used in 1948 to describe members of the Church of England in Nandyal who refused to enter the emerging Church of South India, which united the Anglican Church of India, Burma and Ceylon with the Reformed (Presbyterian and Congregationalist) and Methodist churches in India. Today, however, the term usually refers to the churches that descend from the 1977 Congress of St. Louis, at which the foundation was laid for a new Anglican church in North America and which produced the Affirmation of St. Louis, which opens with the title "The Continuation of Anglicanism". Some church bodies that pre-date the Congress of St. Louis (such as the Free Church of England and the Reformed Episcopal Church), or are of more recent origin (such as the Church of England (Continuing) and Independent Anglican Church Canada Synod), have referred to themselves as "Continuing Anglican" as they are traditional in belief and practice, though did not emerge subsequent to the Congress of St. Louis. As these bodies are members of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON), they are referred to as "Confessing Anglican churches".

The mainline Protestants (sometimes also known as oldline Protestants) are a group of Protestant denominations in the United States and Canada largely of the theologically liberal or theologically progressive persuasion that contrast in history and practice with the largely theologically conservative evangelical, fundamentalist, charismatic, confessional, Confessing Movement, historically Black church, and Global South Protestant denominations and congregations. Some make a distinction between "mainline" and "oldline", with the former referring only to denominational ties and the latter referring to church lineage, prestige and influence. However, this distinction has largely been lost to history and the terms are now nearly synonymous.

Mainline Protestant churches have stressed social justice and personal salvation and, both politically and theologically, tend to be more liberal than non-mainline Protestant churches. Mainline Protestant churches share a common approach that often leads to collaboration in organizations such as the National Council of Churches, and because of their involvement with the ecumenical movement, they are sometimes given the alternative label of ecumenical Protestantism (especially outside the United States). While in 1970 the mainline Protestant churches claimed most Protestants and more than 30 percent of the American population as members, as of 2009 they were a minority among American Protestants, claiming approximately 15 percent of American adults. In 2024, approximately 13.1% of Americans were white non-Hispanic mainline Protestants according to the Public Religion Research Institute's Census of American Religion.

The Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (branded as GAFCON or Gafcon after the Global Anglican Future Conference) is a communion of conservative Anglican churches aligned with the Confessing Movement that formed in 2008 in response to ongoing theological disputes in the worldwide Anglican Communion. As of 2025, GAFCON claims to represent upwards of 85% of the world's practising Anglicans. Peer-reviewed research from 2015 and 2016 indicates that the GAFCON-aligned provinces represent closer to 45% of practising Anglicans and just over 54% of members baptised in any of the provinces of the Anglican Communion.

Confessing Anglicans met in 2008 at the Global Anglican Future Conference, creating the Jerusalem Declaration and establishing the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), which was rebranded as GAFCON in 2017. At its founding, it consisted of the Anglican provinces of Rwanda, Nigeria, Uganda, Alexandria, Chile, Congo, Kenya, Myanmar, South Sudan, and the newly formed Anglican Church in Brazil, Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa, and Anglican Church in North America.

Conservative Christianity, also known as conservative theology, theological conservatism, traditional Christianity, or biblical orthodoxy is a grouping of overlapping and denominationally diverse theological movements within Christianity that seeks to retain the orthodox and long-standing traditions and beliefs of Christianity. It is contrasted with Liberal Christianity and Progressive Christianity, which are seen as heretical heterodoxies by theological conservatives. Conservative Christianity should not be mistaken as being necessarily synonymous with the political philosophy of conservatism, nor the Christian right (which is a political movement of Christians who support conservative political ideologies and policies within the realm of secular or non-sectarian politics).

Theological conservatism is found in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Protestantism, the Church of the East, Old Catholicism, and throughout all of Mainstream-Nicene Christianity in both Western Christian and Eastern Christian traditions. Within Protestantism, it is largely made up of Evangelical Christianity and Christian Fundamentalism, while the Confessing Movement, Confessionalism, and to an extent Neo-orthodoxy make up the remaining; in Roman Catholicism it is inclusive of Catholics that adhere to Traditionalist Catholicism as well as the Magisterium, Scriptures, and Traditions of the Church at the exclusion of Catholic Modernism and Folk Catholicism; and in Old Catholicism it currently includes the Union of Scranton, those of similar beliefs, and historically the Union of Utrecht until its adoption of theological liberalism. In spite of this, not every community has had a direct connection with the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy.