The Anglican Church of Southern Africa’s Provincial Synod has voted against two motions that would have opened the door to prayers and special liturgies for same-sex couples — a defeat administered at what is expected to be Archbishop Thabo Makgoba’s final synod as Primate of Southern Africa.

The votes on 23 September 2026 capped a years-long campaign by the Archbishop and his allies to move the church toward affirming its LGBTQ+ members, and they leave the province’s teaching on marriage unchanged after successive defeats stretching back a decade.

The first motion, proposed by Dr Ashley Petersen of the Diocese of False Bay and seconded by the Bishop of False Bay, the Rt Rev Stafford Moses, asked the synod to allow church members in committed same-sex unions to be prayed for within the province and to bring a report on the pastoral reception of that ministry to the next provincial synod. It was defeated by 78 votes to 71, with 10 abstentions — a margin of seven votes.

A second motion from the Diocese of Johannesburg asked for the compilation of a distinct liturgy to serve the pastoral needs of the LGBTQ+ community, explicitly separate from the marriage liturgy and from rites of blessing. It fell by a wider margin, 98 to 61 with 10 abstentions.

The official resolutions posted by the Anglican Church of Southern Africa noted that the synod had heard, on the Tuesday before the votes, a eucharistic address encouraging deep reflection on inclusivity and on those “still left out of the church’s embrace, especially the LGBTQIA+ community.” The appeal did not shift the outcome.

The vote is the latest in a sequence of provincial synod defeats on the same question. In 2016 the Provincial Synod rejected blessings for same-sex couples, with bishops opposing the measure by 72 percent.  In 2023 the House of Bishops itself declined a proposal from the ACSA Theological Commission that would have given dioceses a local option to allow blessings, with a majority stating they could not accept what they termed a non-biblical innovation.

At that meeting Makgoba sought to preserve momentum by proposing a commission to prepare prayers and guidelines for those in same-sex relationships — language calibrated to keep the matter alive without forcing a division.  The fruits of that commission’s work were among the proposals defeated at the 2024 provincial synod, which rejected both bishops’ permission to approve blessings and a set of pastoral prayers for couples in civil unions, again by a show of hands.

Archbishop Makgoba delivered his charge to the 38th Session of the Provincial Synod on 20 September, days before the vote. His July 2026 charge to the Diocesan Synod of Cape Town, delivered shortly before a sabbatical in the Netherlands, was studded with valedictory notes: he reflected on 24 years in episcopal ministry, asked forgiveness for failures, and commended the diocese to its future leadership.

In that charge he cited Augustine of Hippo’s “For you I am a bishop, with you I am a Christian” as a description of his own vocation, and he concluded by blessing clergy with words given to him at his pre-ordination retreat: “Love your people deeply; pray more than you worry; listen more than you speak; stay close to the poor, the wounded and the forgotten.”

Makgoba, appointed Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of Southern Africa in 2008, had made the inclusion of LGBTQ+ Anglicans a recurring theme of his tenure. He welcomed the appointment of the first woman as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2025 as a sign of the church’s openness to change.  The repeated failure of the provincial synod to follow his lead on sexuality is the most prominent unresolved question he leaves to his successor.

Southern Africa’s decision runs against the current in several Global North provinces. The Church of England’s General Synod abandoned standalone blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples in February 2026, though informal prayers for same-sex couples during ordinary Sunday services have been permitted since 2023.  Across Africa, the overwhelming majority of Anglican provinces maintain traditional teaching on marriage and have resisted pressure from Canterbury and from Western partners to revise it.

The Diocese of Saldanha Bay, whose bishop the Rt Rev Raphael Hess had approved blessings for same-sex couples unilaterally in 2024, remains an outlier within the province.  The synod’s votes leave his diocese in an anomalous position, its practice unratified by provincial authority.