By Tim Wyatt
A group of conservative Anglican leaders have denounced the Archbishop of Canterbury after the Church of England’s decision to bless some gay relationships. Their rejection of Justin Welby’s role as leader of the Anglican Communion has precipitated what could become the greatest crisis yet in the centuries-old institution.
What just happened?
A press release from 10 primates — the most senior archbishops who lead Anglican denominations — from the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) was published on Monday 20 February. It condemned the Church of England for its decision this month to create new services of blessing for gay couples, and announced that the primates no longer accepted the Archbishop Justin Welby as the de facto head of the Anglican Churches worldwide.
The communiqué declared that the CofE had by its actions broken off formal sacramental relations (in Christian language, “communion”) with more conservative churches that continued to hold to the traditional doctrine that sexual relationships were only for heterosexual couples who were married. The primates also said that they would no longer recognise the Archbishop’s role as the “first among equals”, and as a result they would begin a process to find a new model of leadership among the conservative traditionalist churches.
The primates ended their message by asserting that they, rather than the CofE or the Archbishop of Canterbury, were the guardians of the Anglican Communion and that rather than leave the network they would instead seek to return it to its traditional teaching on marriage and sexuality. “The Church of England is the ‘historic first’ province, but now that it has departed from the historic faith the responsibility falls to the remaining orthodox primates,” they concluded.
What is the GSFA?
The GSFA is a loose grouping of 15 of the 42 Anglican churches around the world, mostly representing Africa, Asia and Latin America. Among this list are two breakaway churches, not part of the official Anglican Communion, which split from their respective mainstream churches in North America and Brazil in recent decades over LGBTQ+ relationships and marriage. This 15 includes churches that have begun the process of applying for membership and one is an Australian diocese, not a whole church.
They are all churches dominated by a conservative theological position on marriage and sex, which argues strongly against any liberalisation of traditional Christian teaching to include gay couples.
Although the GSFA claims to trace its origins back to the 1990s, it was a little-known or publicised network before last year’s Lambeth Conference, the first gathering of Anglican bishops from across the world since 2008. There, the GSFA attempted to enforce a re-commitment to traditional conservative teaching on marriage and head off efforts by more liberal churches in the United States, Canada, Scotland and Wales to open up more space for LGBTQ+-affirming theologies. In the end, Justin Welby struck a fractious compromise by formally acknowledging for the first time there were legitimate yet contradictory beliefs on marriage and sexuality within the Anglican Communion.
Although there is a significant overlap in membership between the GSFA and Gafcon, another conservative Anglican movement, they have slightly different approaches and aims. Gafcon was formed in 2008 in protest at the consecration of gay bishops in North America, and has supported and overseen breakaway churches in more liberal regions. The GSFA on the other hand has always insisted it sees itself as a “faithful remnant” within the communion and wants to steer official Anglicanism back to traditional doctrine rather than foment further fracturing.
However, in practice now the GSFA is aligning with these breakaway non-official Anglican bodies and attempting to defenestrate Archbishop Justin Welby, the distinctions between the two groups seem minimal.
Why has this happened now?
Although the Anglican civil war over sexuality has been brewing since the late 1990s, the latest row is the result of the CofE’s Living in Love and Faith (LLF) project. This consultation and research project, running since 2017, had been encouraging discussion and exploration around marriage, identity, relationships and sexuality. In January, after LLF had concluded, the CofE’s senior bishops decided to respond by introducing new prayers and blessings which could be used in parishes for same-sex couples after they had entered a civil marriage or civil partnership. The doctrine of the church — that marriage in God’s eyes is only between a man and woman — would not change, however.
After a marathon and contentious debate at the CofE’s General Synod — the church’s elected national assembly of bishops, vicars and lay people — the proposals were voted through. The GSFA attack has come as a direct result of these plans for gay blessings. Despite the Archbishop of Canterbury insisting that legally the CofE’s doctrine remained unchanged and no gay couples could be married in church services, the GSFA primates have concluded the mother church of the Anglican Communion has now followed its America, Scottish, Brazilian and Canadian cousins in abandoning orthodox Christian teaching on sexuality.
What has been the response?
Lambeth Palace issued a statement which noted the “deep disagreements” on sexuality across the Anglican Communion were not new. “We note the statement issued today by some Anglican Primates and we fully appreciate their position,” it said. “The 42 member churches of the Anglican Communion are independent and autonomous, but at the same time interdependent.”
The statement goes on to note that last week Archbishop Justin Welby was at a meeting in Ghana of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), a pan-Anglican congress representing each local church, which meets every few years. There, he said he was open to conversations about reforming the structure of the communion to accommodate better the growing differences between the conservative and liberal branches of global Anglicanism. However, any such changes cannot be imposed upon the communion by one faction but would need to be agreed by consensus, the statement adds.
“Despite our differences, we must find ways to continue walking and working together as followers of Jesus Christ to serve those in need. It was clear at this week’s global Anglican gathering in Accra that many Anglicans share this view. It remains the archbishop’s prayer and his call to Anglicans around the communion.”
Anthony Poggo, a former bishop in South Sudan — who, as secretary-general of the Anglican Communion, heads its central office in London — also issued a response.
He said he was saddened by the GSFA primates’ position but welcomed their “frankness and candour”. He noted their position on sexual ethics was shared by the “vast majority” of Anglicans worldwide, but reiterated that the recent synod vote in England had not changed the CofE’s doctrine on marriage.
At the ACC meeting in Ghana, representatives present from 39 of the 42 Anglican churches agreed to seek to “walk together” and “learn how to accommodate differentiation patiently and respectfully”, Bishop Poggo added. A commission had been formed to discuss theological questions around the communion’s structure and how decisions would be made and the GSFA was welcome to share its views with this body, he said.
Finally, he said the Archbishop of Canterbury had asked him to call a meeting of all the Anglican primates and was open to that gathering discussing his own role in the communion if the other primates wanted that.
What will happen next?
Constitutionally and legally, the GSFA does not have the power by itself to remove Justin Welby from his position of leadership nor to introduce any other reforms to the communion structures. Any reforms would need to be approved not only by the Archbishop, but also the three other “instruments of communion”, the four historic centres of authority in Anglicanism: the archbishop, the Lambeth Conference, the ACC, and the Primates’ Meeting.
However, given Archbishop Justin Welby’s comments in Ghana and the growing upset among conservatives, it seems likely, at the very least, that the Archbishop of Canterbury always being the “first among equals” is now up for debate. One proposal sometimes mooted would be to switch to a rotating presidency, where each primate took on the leadership of the communion for a period.
In what now seem highly prescient comments at the ACC, Justin Welby said: “Let me be clear about one thing: I will not cling to place or position as an instrument of communion. The role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the See of Canterbury, is an historic one. The instruments must change with the times. I hold it very lightly, provided that the other instruments of communion choose the new shape; that we are not dictated to by people, blackmailed, bribed to do what others want us to do, but that we act in good conscience before God.”
When the initial row over consecrating gay bishops erupted under Rowan Williams’s archiepiscopate, his solution was to set up an Anglican covenant. This would be a binding agreement between different churches over what they would and would not do without the consent of the others, but it foundered in his own General Synod and when rejected in the mother church of England, it was swiftly dropped. Ever since, there has been no clear structure for handling theological disagreements between member churches.
As each of the member churches in the communion are functionally independent, the GSFA cannot force the CofE (or indeed any other church that has gone further and introduced gay marriage) to recant and return to traditional doctrine. When the American and Canadian churches voted over same-sex marriage a few years ago, they were subjected to minor sanctions — described in the communion as “consequences” — which saw them barred from representing the communion in international meetings for a time. However, these sanctions have not been repeated for the Church in Wales, which brought in similar gay blessings to those just approved in England in 2021.
It does seem likely that the trickle of conservative priests and parishes seceding from the CofE over sexuality will increase because of the LLF blessings. Many of these have already sought oversight from breakaway bishops consecrated by conservative Anglican archbishops overseas, and the GSFA’s communiqué explicitly invites more of this development.
