The Very Rev. Canon Collin D. Reid has been elected the fifth Bishop of Montego Bay, chosen by the 155th Synod of the Anglican Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands at a session held in St. James, Jamaica, on Wednesday, April 8, 2026. Canon Reid received 75 clergy votes and 101 lay votes, filling a vacancy that has stood since the elevation of the Rt. Rev. Leon Golding to the episcopate of the wider diocese.

The synod, convened under the theme “Renewal, Accountability, and Hope,” concluded its business with the election of Canon Reid, who has spent nearly two decades as Rector and Senior Canon of the Cathedral Church of St Jago de la Vega in Spanish Town, St. Catherine — the oldest Anglican church outside the United Kingdom. Canon Reid has held that post since February 1, 2008, and has also served as Rural Dean of St. Catherine parish overseeing Holy Trinity in Spanish Town and other congregations: St. John’s in Sligoville, St. Joseph’s in Innswood/McCook’s Pen, St. Matthew’s in Mt. Moorland, and St. Barnabas in Crescent. He also serves as one of the Bishop’s Examining Chaplains for the diocese.

“We have a bishop!” the Jamaica Observer reported from the floor of the synod, capturing the relief and celebration following a lengthy vacancy. Canon Reid is married to Carol; they have two children.  In 2009, he served as Head of the Chaplaincy Team for the Anglican Consultative Council’s fourteenth meeting (ACC-14), held in Kingston, Jamaica. 

The Diocese of Montego Bay has been without a diocesan bishop since the Rt. Rev. Leon Golding was elected the fifteenth Diocesan Bishop of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in March 2025 and enthroned in September of that year. 

The Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands is an unambiguously traditional Anglican body on questions of human sexuality. When the Church of England’s General Synod voted in February 2023 to authorize the blessing of same-sex civil marriages, the Bishop of Kingston, the Rt. Rev. Garth Minott, was swift to clarify that the decision carried no force in the Caribbean. The Church in the Province of the West Indies, he told the Jamaica Gleaner, would “continue to affirm Lambeth Resolution 1:10 of 1998,” which holds that homosexual practice is incompatible with Scripture and that same-sex unions cannot be blessed. Canon Reid has served his entire priestly ministry within that theological framework.

Yet the diocese’s conservatism on sexuality has not translated into alignment with GAFCON’s increasingly separatist trajectory. When the Global Anglican Future Conference issued a statement in October 2025 rejecting the See of Canterbury’s authority following the appointment of Dame Sarah Mullaly as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, the Diocese of Jamaica’s House of Bishops responded with notable care. In a statement published in March 2026, the bishops questioned the legitimacy of GAFCON’s claim to represent a “Global Anglican Communion,” arguing that “given the nature and structure of Anglican polity, with its Canons and Synodical government, it is rather doubtful that any such drastic change can be made.” The statement affirmed women’s ordination and expressed explicit support for the four Instruments of Communion — the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Primates Meeting, and the Anglican Consultative Council — that GAFCON has moved to repudiate.

The diocese thus occupies a theologically distinct position in the current landscape: orthodox on sexuality, supportive of women in holy orders, and firmly within the structures of the Canterbury-centred communion. The date and location of the Bishop-elect’s consecration have not yet been announced.