Wednesday saw the installation of the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Dame Sarah Mullally at Canterbury Cathedral.
At the start, the Dean of the Cathedral, the Very Rev David Monteith welcomed the congregation to a “truly global gathering”. Later he installed her in the Chair of St Augustine, with the prayer that she might “by God’s grace be an instrument of communion, and fellowship in Christ within the Anglican Communion”.
To the casual onlooker, these words would seem fitting for such a ceremony. Yet to those who have followed the history of the Anglican Communion over the past forty years they had a hollow ring. And those keeping a careful eye on the procession noted that the leaders of sixteen provinces were missing.
There are forty-two provinces in the Anglican Communion, each one is autonomous and they are meant to work together aided by the Instruments of Communion. The primates of twenty-four provinces came to welcome the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and two others, Pakistan and Burundi, sent representatives. Another three, Jerusalem, Melanesia and the Acting Primate of Papua New Guinea, had sent their apologies due to travel issues caused by the war in the Gulf.
It would appear that twelve primates, more than 25% of them, had refused to attend the service. It was the primates of Alexandria, Chile, Congo, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Rwanda, SE Asia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda who absented themselves. Given this, the reason is clear, for these are the leaders of Gafcon and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA).
For more than twenty years the GSFA has called for the Anglican Communion to submit to God’s word and discipline those provinces, including the Church of England, who they perceive to have “departed from the historic faith passed down from the Apostles.” For this reason, they cannot recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury as the “first among equals leader of the global Communion”.
Last month in Abuja, Nigeria, Gafcon went a step further and announced that there has been “a shift of the stewardship of the Anglican Communion from the Canterbury Instruments to the Global Anglican Communion”. Rather than looking to Canterbury for leadership, these provinces will look to a newly formed Global Anglican Council to ensure that true communion can be found in submission to God’s word.
Sadly, Wednesday’s Installation, glorious as it appeared in all its pomp and ceremony, was not a “truly global” gathering. The real story is that the representatives of the vast majority of the world’s Anglicans have turned their back on Canterbury and are seeking new ways of maintaining the “fellowship of Christ within the Anglican Communion".
Susie Leafe is director of Anglican Futures, an organisation that provides pastoral and practical support to orthodox Anglicans.
