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, the Most Rev'd Dr Laurent Mbanda, proclaiming new arrangements for the Anglican Communion--or rather the creation of a new entity called the "Global Anglican Communion" (doubtless GAC henceforth)--on behalf of a whole set of national Churches who, as far as we can tell, have not actually made their own decisions about this.

Archbishop Mbanda has had a busy week or two. Within minutes of the announcement that Bishop Sarah Mullally was to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury, a carefully-crafted missive (obviously prepared well in advance and presumably with abundant counsel) appeared over Dr Mbanda's name decrying the appointment. The letter expressed regret over the appointment of a woman but--bearing in mind that the Gafcon constituency itself is by no means of one mind about women's leadership--leant harder on what it saw as Bishop Mullally's openness to LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Now however the news--or rather the claim--about the rearrangement of Communion relations on the part of the Gafcon primates suggests a kind of wishful-thinking, combined with forgetfulness of some essentials of Anglican polity, as noted. The communiqué, which did not seem to have benefited from quite the same care as the earlier letter about Canterbury, reports that the views expressed were those of "Gafcon Primates" but without naming those present (or indeed who else was present). It stated both that the new Global entity constituted the restoration of the "original structure as a fellowship of autonomous provinces" but (awkwardly to say the least) then clearly dismissed any respect for autonomy of provinces by declaring from on high that its members "shall not participate in meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, including the ACC, and shall not make any monetary contribution to the ACC, nor receive any monetary contribution from the ACC or its networks." 

That is, Archbishop Mbanda seems to have claimed a sort of primatial authority that must have a few of his supposed allies reaching for Article XXXVII, now perhaps updated to read "the Archbishop of Rwanda hath no authority in this realm of X." Even if this new statement really represents the views of the whole Gafcon primates' group, those primates do not have the power, singly or collectively, to decree any of this for those dioceses or provinces who have participated in Gafcon meetings.

There is of course no question that many Anglicans in parts of what is unhelpfully called the "Global South" are deeply unhappy with directions taken by others on matters such as women's ordination, and more acutely around the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the life of the Church. These debates have led to a breakdown of some relationships, and strain on others. The Gafcon movement has become a focus for these, but there are many Anglicans who have been trying to relate both to Gafcon programs and to the "Instruments of Communion": the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, more recently (if controversially) the Primates as a group, and the Archbishop herself. 

Of these, quite a few African provinces have ordained women even as bishops. So far there have been women bishops in Kenya, South Sudan, and Angola, as well as the more Canterbury-friendly southern African dioceses of Lesotho (a bishop now going to Pretoria) and Eswatini. The Gafcon leadership is unhappy about this and is using the current situation to "double down."

Archbishop Mbanda's move thus seems to be an attempt by the forces behind Gafcon--whose real commonality lies in particular theological positions, not in the "Global South"--to use a woman's appointment to Canterbury as momentum to launch, not just a movement or program as Gafcon had been, but an actual international denominational structure. The announcement does constitute a significant step in cementing the divisions that existed already, but part of it is just stating the already-obvious.

Part of it however is vaunting ambition--and an ambition that seems to have forgotten something basic about Anglican polity, and hence seems unlikely to deliver everything it claims. It throws down the gauntlet to the relatively conservative Anglicans who have wanted to remain in communion with Canterbury as well as to deal with Gafcon, and attempts to make them choose. Some may be cowed into submitting to the new Gafcon structure, others will not. The perception of arrogance may not help. While Archbishop Mbanda also claims that his followers have not "left" the Communion because they "are" the Communion, the reality will prove more complex.

It is also important for Anglicans outside this orbit not to take the claims of the Gafcon group at face value. There is no "Global South" in the sense that caricaturists on both sides may find convenient. There are many (e.g.) African Anglican Christians who are deeply committed to ongoing relationships with those in the Church of England and elsewhere, whose views they may not always accept, but whom they know to be part of Christ's body. Whatever will be their relationship to the new GAC entity, we shall have to wait and see.

Those liberal-minded Anglicans who shrug at the latest conservative posturing also need to remember that their own positions have only become settled practice in recent decades, and to sneer at those who differ is to show a different form of forgetfulness, and arrogance. To correlate such conservatism with ethnic and national identity remains, as always, racism. It remains vital to retain and deepen our relationships, whether through the traditional "Instruments" or otherwise, and in any case to remember that Communion is God's gift, and that neither Canterbury nor Rwanda can change that.