Conservative Anglicans meeting in Nigeria's capital Abuja have pulled back on plans to elect a rival 'primus inter pares' to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Gafcon is leaving behind old structures and old titles and is unveiling a new leadership council with Rwanda's Archbishop Laurent Mbanda as its leader. The Global Anglican Future Conference (Gafcon) dissolved its Gafcon Primates Council and replaced it with the Global Anglican Council.
The new Global Anglican Council will include primates, advisers and guarantors, made up of bishops, clergy and lay members, each with full voting privileges. The Chairman of the Council will be a Primate, but he will not be 'primus inter pares' (first amongst equals). Archbishop Laurent Mbanda from Rwanda was unanimously elected as chair of the new Global Anglican Council.
' Gafcon leaders have opposed liberal trends such as same-sex marriage and the ordination of openly LGBTQ+ clergy in the Anglican churches of Europe and North America. Venerable Canon Justin Murff stated that Gafcon insists doctrine is at the heart of their differences with the Church of England, not gender or sexuality. Murff also claimed that Archbishop Mullally has 'repeatedly promoted unbiblical and revisionist teachings regarding marriage and sexual morality' because of her support for same-sex unions, and that the majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopalism.
According to sources, Sarah Mullally is the Archbishop of Canterbury and the first woman in that position. There are some 95 million Anglicans around the world with the Archbishop of Canterbury as their spiritual figurehead, and two-thirds of the world's Anglicans are in Africa. Gafcon claims to speak for the majority of the Global South, although that is contested.
How many Anglicans worldwide actually support Gafcon's restructuring and break from traditional Anglican structures remains unclear. What practical implications the new Global Anglican Council will have on the daily operations and unity of the Anglican Communion is also uncertain.