No, the "Global South" Has Not Left the Anglican Communion
Part of the DNA of Anglicanism is the autonomy of national churches. This principle led English church leaders of the 16th century to support Henry VIII when he determined that the English church should not be subject to Roman primacy. The Church of England as a whole, and the various bishops in their dioceses, had responsibility and autonomy that no other bishop--not Rome externally, not Canterbury internally--could preempt. When the Anglican Communion later emerged as a whole family of such national churches and not just as the colonial offshoots of one, this principle was firmly upheld; the first Lambeth Conference was brought together in 1867 on the strict understanding that neither the Archbishop of Canterbury personally, nor even this group of bishops, could usurp the authority that properly belonged to the bishops in their own sphere. Primacy and collegiality were strictly limited as means of determining the mind of the Church. It is thus odd to read the Archbishop of Rwanda, th...
