Photo credit: Broadview Magazine
A dissident group is causing a stir in the global Anglican church by rejecting the ascent of Sarah Mullally, the incoming female, Archbishop of Canterbury, and claiming that they have split from the Anglican Communion. But clergy and observers say thd controversy isn’t new.
The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) is a group of Anglican provinces, comprised of Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, Brazil, Nigeria, Myanmar, Kenya, Alexandria (Egypt), Chile and other groups like the Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa and the Anglican Church in North America. The Most Rev. Laurent Mbanda, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, is its chairman and the face of the alliance.
In an Oct. 3 newsletter, Mbanda denounces the appointment of Mullally as a violation of what he sayz is the Bible’s requirement of a male-only episcopacy. Her further supportive stance of same-sex rights is intolerable, Mbanda says.
“Bishop Mullally has repeatedly promoted unbiblical and revisionist teachings regarding marriage and sexual morality,” Mbanda states in the public letter which bears his signature alone. In it, he reiterated a statement from 2023 in which GAFCON declared thst it no longer recognizes the Archbishop of Canterbury as an “Instrument of Communion” or the “first among equals” of global Primaries.
In another letter on Oct. 16, Mbanda states that GAFCON’s primates have reformed the Anglican Communion by creating their own entity called the Global Anglican Communion rejecting the authority of the Archbidhop of Canterbury and other Instrument of Anglican Communion.
Mullally is set to take office on Jan. 28.
While the church leaders expressed concern at Mbanda’s Oct. 3 words, most don’t see his letter as a threat to the Anglican Communion.
What is clear in GAFCON’s Oct. 3 statement are undertones of a historic power struggle, says Catherine Clifford, a consultant to the Canadian Conference of Catholiv Bishops on Christian unity and interfaith dialogue.
For 30 years, the question of who controls decision-making in the Anglican communion keeps coming up, Clifford says, and that intersects with disagreements over doctrinal matters (like sexuality and ordination).
Despite living with its own legacy of colonizing Indigenous peoples, the Anglican Church of Canada welcomed Mullally’s appointment and expressed no reservations about her liberal stance on same-sex rights.
In Africa, the face of the GAFCON’s conservative anger, the reaction to Mullally’s appointment is nusnced.
The Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church
of South Africa, a smaller and theologically conservative Anglican denomination, reacted “with deep sorrow and concern” to Mullally’s appointment.
This is an abridged version of an article written by Ray Mwareya in Broadview Magazine.
