Anglican Communion Symposium: Unity in Truth – a Summation

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

April 28, 2026

Six Anglican theologians convened at the Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Oreland, PA to assess a Communion in deep crisis. The appointment of a woman Archbishop of Canterbury, the blessing of same-sex couples by the Church of England, ongoing GAFCON and Global South realignments, and the fracturing of traditional structures have brought Anglicanism to the edge of permanent schism. The symposium's central question: Can Anglicans maintain unity without sacrificing truth?

Dr. Gerald McDermott — Unity in Truth

McDermott opened by arguing that any unity not grounded in biblical truth is false unity. He praised global Anglicans — particularly ACNA and GAFCON — for breaking from Canterbury after decades of doctrinal drift, and commended the Global South Fellowship's 2023 Ash Wednesday Statement rejecting Canterbury's headship. He noted that twelve primates boycotted the recent enthronement of Archbishop Sarah Mullally, representing provinces comprising 75% of Communion membership.

However, McDermott challenged whether the realignment goes far enough. His primary target was women's ordination. He argued that male-only Holy Orders represent an unbroken two-thousand-year consensus, grounded not merely in culture but in creation itself, citing Paul's letters to Timothy and Corinthians. He criticized ACNA's "dual integrity" policy — allowing bishops to decide individually on women's ordination — as the very hermeneutical pluralism that global Anglicans rightly condemn in Canterbury. The Abuja Affirmation's proposed Global Anglican Council, which includes lay decision-makers on doctrine, was criticized as Presbyterian rather than Anglican in polity. McDermott closed with a call for repentance modeled on the Latvian Lutheran Church, which reversed women's ordination in 1993 and has since maintained orthodox teaching on marriage and sexuality.

Dr. Alice Linsley — The Unbreakable Bond

Linsley dismissed organizational and corporate models of unity as fundamentally inadequate. Corporations produce transactional loyalty; the Gospel demands something categorically different — a bond sealed in blood. Christian unity, she insisted, is sacramental and blood-born, not institutional.

Drawing on anthropology and Scripture, she argued that blood has been recognized across human cultures as the deepest bond of kinship. The blood of Christ — which purifies, redeems, and reconciles — is the basis of the everlasting covenant and the only true foundation of ecclesial unity. The priesthood is perpetually under attack, she argued, because priests stand at the intersection of sacrifice and life. She traced Anglican doctrinal confusion back to the 1938 Doctrine in the Church of England and lamented the Church's long failure to discipline error — from Bishop Pike to Bishop Spong. Her conclusion was blunt: there is no compromise with apostasy. Anglicanism's only path forward is recovering its identity as a clan — a family bound by the blood of Christ, loyal to the same Lord and Gospel.

Most Rev. Dr. Mouneer Anis — A Federation of Churches

The Egyptian Archbishop identified two root causes of the Communion's crisis: theological drift (allowing culture to reshape doctrine) and structural weakness (no binding authority to enforce accountability). He outlined five possible futures for Anglicanism — renewal of the current Communion (unlikely without repentance), growth of separate networks like GAFCON and GSFA, a federation of like-minded Anglican churches, multiple theologically-defined communions, or ecumenical alignment with Rome. His prescription centered on truth-grounded unity and reformed conciliar structures, echoing Christ's prayer in John 17.

Fr. Mark Perkins — The Future of the Traditional Anglican Parish

Perkins offered a case study in his founding of St. Dunstan's Academy, a farm, trades, and classics boarding school in the Anglican tradition that has raised over $2.5 million and drawn inquiries from four continents. He drew three lessons from its success with direct implications for global Anglicanism.

First, embodiment. Amid a culture of increasing disembodiment, St. Dunstan's integrates head, heart, and hand. Students raise and butcher animals, build their own structures, and live under a rule of digital poverty — no screens or personal devices. The school is built on the model of the traditional parish, with community life centered around the church. Perkins argued that all Anglican work must be parochial in orientation, grounded in embodied local community rather than abstract jurisdictional structures.

Second, masculinity. Perkins called for unapologetically masculine formation, arguing that single-sex education and meaningful rites of passage are essential for boys becoming men. He went beyond opposing women's ordination to argue that female altar servers must also be eliminated, since mixed-gender altar parties obscure the nuptial imagery of the Eucharist. He framed ordination not as an ethical question but an ontological one: a female priest, like a same-sex marriage, simply does not exist, regardless of what documents are signed.

Third, ecumenism. St. Dunstan's practices grassroots ecumenism — embedded in a particular diocese, yet ministering across jurisdictional lines — without disguising or compromising its identity. Perkins closed by pointing out an inconvenient truth: the REC and other bodies rejecting women's ordination are not in actual full communion with ACNA or GAFCON so long as those bodies permit it. Either intercommunion is a convenient fiction, or opposition to women's ordination is. He challenged global Anglicans to face that reality honestly.

Fr. Ben Jefferies — Hating Even the Garment

Taking Jude 23 as his text, Jefferies developed an extended metaphor: just as a garment stained by unclean flesh must be hated and put away, so the governing documents of the Church — constitutions, canons, and authorized liturgies — become spiritually toxic when they enshrine immoral decisions. Individual episcopal sin is tragic but local; the real crisis comes when disobedience is embedded in governing structures.

Jefferies argued that the central issue tearing the Church apart — encompassing women's ordination, same-sex marriage, and gender — is fundamentally a moral question, not a doctrinal one. Bishops who affirm the Nicene Creed but disobey its God are no better than devils who can recite articles of faith. He identified precise historical turning points: not the ordination of the Philadelphia Eleven in 1974, but TEC's rewriting of its canons in 1976; not Gene Robinson's consecration, but TEC's revision of marriage canons in 2015; not isolated blessings, but the Church of England's December 2023 authorization of liturgies for same-sex couples. Jefferies examined his own ACNA context critically — its constitution tolerates both obedience and disobedience on Holy Orders, making the garment stained. He closed by arguing that any global realignment effort not resolving women's ordination is like complex surgery that sets a broken bone only partially — the effort is not worth making unless the alignment is complete.

Rev. Dr. George Westhaver — Mere Catholicism, Practical Holiness, and Unity in One House

Westhaver offered the symposium's most historically grounded and irenic voice. Drawing on Archbishop Cosmo Gordon Lang and John Keble, he called Anglicans to resist despair and see current trials as an opportunity — noting that the Arian controversy lasted two full generations before resolution at Constantinople in 381.

He examined E.B. Pusey's 19th-century arguments that the 39 Articles, properly read with the Church Fathers, need not divide East from West or Protestant from Catholic. For Pusey, unity is partly God's direct gift and partly the fruit of mutual love; intercommunion alone does not destroy it, but loss of essential faith does. Westhaver then turned to the Church of England's "Five Guiding Principles" model — a structured differentiated communion enabling those who reject women's ordination to flourish within the broader church — and asked whether it could serve as a template for global Anglican realignment. He engaged the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals favorably, noting their appeal to Paul and Barnabas as a precedent for "walking together at a distance." His closing appeal, drawn from Pusey, was for increased prayer, humility, and the courage to be thankful even in crisis — trusting that God does not extend a church only to abandon it.

Conclusion

The symposium surfaced genuine consensus on several points: Canterbury has failed; realignment is necessary; unity must be grounded in truth rather than tolerance. But it also revealed sharp internal divisions — particularly on women's ordination, the adequacy of GAFCON's and ACNA's structures, and whether differentiated communion is a faithful path or a compromise too far. The gathering made plain that the most consequential fault line in global Anglicanism runs not between orthodox and liberal provinces, but through the orthodox camp itself.