ABUJA: Competing Communions to Emerge from G26
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COMMENTARY
By David W. Virtue, DD
March 4, 2026
The push to form a rival Anglican Communion has reached a climax at the G26 gathering of primates meeting this week in Abuja, Nigeria's capital.
The move culminates more than 28 years of theological conflict over the authority of Scripture and human sexuality — disputes that have plagued the Communion through four successive Archbishops of Canterbury and now threaten to transform long-simmering divisions into a permanent split. GAFCON, which claims to speak for nearly 100 million Anglicans, represents the majority of the global church.
At the heart of the dispute lies Lambeth Resolution 1.10, passed at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which upholds marriage as a lifelong union between a man and a woman and affirms abstinence for those not called to marriage. Four archbishops — George Carey, Rowan Williams, Justin Welby, and now Sarah Mullally — have each failed to hold the Communion together. The institution today lies in tatters, as Global South primates move to reconstitute it along orthodox lines.
At the four-day conference now underway in Abuja, GAFCON — a global movement of "authentic Anglicans, guarding God's gospel" — plans to elect its own "first among equals," just weeks before Archbishop Mullally's formal installation at Canterbury Cathedral. The timing is no coincidence.
Mullally will be installed as spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans in a ceremony later this month, but her appointment has deepened existing fractures across the Communion. Not all Global South bishops align with GAFCON's position: the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and Kenya's first female bishop, Emily Onyango, both welcomed Mullally's appointment.
Founded in 2008 in response to theological disputes over same-sex unions, GAFCON last October resolved to "reorder the Anglican Communion," refusing to participate in meetings convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury and urging members to sever remaining ties with the Church of England. The movement has consistently maintained that it has not left the Communion — rather, the Communion has left them, having embraced what GAFCON calls "strange and erroneous doctrines."
At the opening press briefing in Abuja, the Rev. Canon Justin Murff, GAFCON's Communications Director, addressed the question that has shadowed the movement since its founding: whether it constitutes a break from the Anglican Communion. "The goal is not to break apart the Communion," Murff said. "This is a claim to continuum." He emphasized that GAFCON defines itself through the Jerusalem Declaration — the theological statement adopted at its inaugural 2008 gathering — which articulates not what members oppose, but what unites them: a Communion anchored in the authority of Scripture. "We will be reaffirming and upholding the Jerusalem Declaration," he said.
Formally, the Anglican Communion is held together by four "Instruments of Communion," headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The majority of Global South primates have now rejected all four.
"This is a schism, even if they don't want to say that," said Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford. The election of a rival global spiritual leader, he told the BBC, is "a very aggressive thing to do." MacCulloch is an openly gay Anglican academic.
The Anglican Communion comprises 42 provinces across 165 countries. Its member churches share a common heritage and liturgical tradition while maintaining independent governance. It is the third-largest Christian denomination after Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy — a platform that carries significant weight on issues ranging from climate change to human rights and global peace.
"We see ourselves as a family of autonomous, yet interdependent churches," Bishop Anthony Poggo, Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, told the BBC.
The relationship between the Church of England and the broader Anglican world has never looked more precarious.