The Anglican Communion is made up of forty-two autonomous provinces who are meant to work together. They are aided in this by four ‘Instruments of Communion’, of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is one. It is no secret that for decades the Anglican Communion has been riven with disagreement over the authority of the Scriptures and the inability of the Instruments of Communion to maintain discipline and uphold Anglican doctrine.

Today, at the Installation of the Most Revd Sarah Mullally as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, the extent and seriousness of that division was laid bare. All the pomp and ceremony could not hide the fact that the leaders of twelve of those forty-two provinces had refused to attend the service.

More importantly, those twelve provinces represented the leadership of the vast majority of Gafcon and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) and by any reckoning the majority of the world’s Anglicans. Those who stayed away were:

• The Most Revd Dr Samy Fawzy Shehata, Archbishop and Primate of Alexandria
• The Most Revd Enrique Lago Zugadi, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Chile
• The Most Revd Dr Georges Titre Ande, Primate of the Anglican Church of the Congo
• The Most Revd Gilbert Rateloson Rakotondravelo, Archbishop and Primate of the Indian Ocean
• The Most Revd Jackson Ole Sapit, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya
• The Most Revd Stephen Than Myint Oo, Archbishop of the Church of the Province of Myanmar
• The Most Revd Henry Chukwudum Ndukuba, Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)
• The Most Revd Dr Laurent Mbanda, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda
• The Most Revd Dr Titus Chung, Archbishop and Primate of the Church of the Province of South East Asia
• The Most Revd Ezekiel Kondo Kumir Kuku, Archbishop and Primate of Sudan
• The Most Revd Justin Badi Arama, Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan
• The Most Revd Samuel Stephen Kaziimba Mugalu, Primate of the Church of Uganda

Other primates may have been unable to attend due to illness or problems caused by the war in Iran, but no reason was given by Lambeth Palace for the absence of these twelve men. For those familiar with the story the reason was clear because they had each already given due warning in either the Abuja Affirmation or the Ash Wednesday Statement.

“As the Church of England has departed from the historic faith passed down from the Apostles by this innovation in the liturgies of the Church and her pastoral practice (contravening her own Canon A5), she has disqualified herself from leading the Communion as the historic “Mother” Church. Indeed, the Church of England has chosen to break communion with those provinces who remain faithful to the historic biblical faith expressed in the Anglican formularies (the 39 Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal and the Book of Homilies) and applied to the matter of marriage and sexuality in Lambeth Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference.”

GSFA Ash Wednesday Statement, 2023

“The Canterbury Instruments have compromised the authority of the Scriptures by normalising hermeneutical pluralism, elevating cultural capitulation, and reframing the rejection of Scripture’s authority and clarity as “good disagreement”, and not what it really is – false teaching. We “reject the so-called Instruments of Communion, namely the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), and the Primates’ Meeting, which have failed to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion.”

Gafcon Abuja Affirmation, 2026

Those gathered did their best to draw a veil over the ‘missing primates’. From the Dean of the Cathedral’s welcome to a “truly global event”, to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s attempt to gloss over their non-appearance with vague references to, “.. our Anglican brothers and sisters are unable to be here today due to the war in the Middle East and the Gulf,” everyone attempted to pretend it was business as usual. Anyone who dared to ask why there were so many primates missing were told that it was just that some people could not accept a female Archbishop of Canterbury.

It takes a certain colonial arrogance to refuse to acknowledge the real reasons people give for their actions. And after three decades, it is perhaps that arrogance, which has led both the GSFA and Gafcon to believe there needs to be significant change in the leadership of the Anglican Communion. It is true that at the moment they are divided over the best way forward – GSFA are holding out the Cairo Covenant, while Gafcon look to the Jerusalem Declaration and have announced the formation of a Global Anglican Council, to replace the Instruments of Communion. What both are agreed on, however, is that the future of the Anglican Communion must be confessional rather than institutional. In other words, what provinces believe about the word of God and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is of far greater import than historic relationships.

How this all works out in the future has yet to be seen, but what today’s events have shown is that the leaders of the majority of the world’s Anglicans are not just talking a good game. Instead, by their words and their actions, they have made it crystal clear that they are united in rejecting the moral and spiritual leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

There can be no doubt – the “shift of the stewardship of the Anglican Communion from the Canterbury Instruments” promised by the Abuja Affirmation has begun.