GAFCON Overhauls Leadership Structure, Stops Short of Formal Schism

Primates dissolve council, create broader governing body — but decline to name a rival archbishop

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

VirtueOnline.org 

March 5, 2026

ABUJA, Nigeria — Conservative Anglican primates meeting in Nigeria’s capital this week voted to dissolve the GAFCON Primates Council and replace it with a broader governing body, but stopped well short of the formal split that many in the movement had anticipated.

The newly created Global Anglican Council will include primates, bishops, clergy, and lay members, each holding full voting privileges — a significant departure from the top-down structure that has guided the Global Anglican Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON) since its founding in 2008.

“Today is a historic day for the Global Anglican Communion. Indeed, the future has arrived!” the primates declared in a statement.

Three-Man Council, No 'First Among Equals'

Three leaders will form a new Primates Council: Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda, who will serve as chairman; Archbishop Miguel Uchoa of Brazil; and Bishop Paul Donison of the USA. Their terms will run until the next GAFCON conference, scheduled for Athens in 2028.

Notably, the council will have no primus inter pares — Latin for “first among equals” — a title that would have implied a parallel to the Archbishop of Canterbury. That option was taken off the table entirely.

Dame Sarah Mullally, recently appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury, will remain the formal spiritual head of the global Anglican Communion. While millions of evangelical and Anglo-Catholic Anglicans are expected to disregard her authority in practice, there will be no overt institutional challenge to her leadership.

For those who had hoped GAFCON would mount a direct challenge to the liberal direction of the Church of England, the outcome is likely to disappoint.

A Conciliar Model — and Its Critics

The new structure is built around the principle of conciliarism — the idea that the Church governs itself through shared councils rather than a single central authority. The approach has been championed by Archbishop Bob Duncan, the emeritus leader of the Anglican Church in North America, and Bishop Phil Ashey, a canon lawyer.

But the model has drawn skepticism from within orthodox Anglican circles. The Rev. Chuck Collins, a Reformation historian and theologian, warns that conciliarism could prove to be a structural substitute for genuine theological conviction.

“We do not need another Windsor Report to tell us what Anglicans have confessed true over time,” Collins wrote, referring to the 2004 document that attempted to address divisions over homosexuality within the Communion.

Collins argues the new council risks resembling the Anglican Consultative Council — the existing body designed to coordinate cooperation among Anglican provinces — rather than advancing the confessional Anglicanism rooted in the Thirty-nine Articles, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and the Books of Homilies.

The Case for Confessional Roots

Dr. Gillis J. Harp, a retired history professor at Grove City College, argues that the path forward for orthodox Anglicans lies in recovering their Reformation heritage, not in building new institutional frameworks.

Harp traces the current doctrinal drift in part to a decision made at the founding of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the 1780s, when American Anglicans chose not to require clergy to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles. By the late 1970s, those Articles had been relegated to a “Historical Documents” appendix at the back of the American prayer book.

“The Articles will help reinvigorate Anglican theology because they reflect the core teaching of the Protestant Reformation,” Harp writes. He identifies key doctrines including the supremacy of Scripture, justification by grace through faith, and the proper administration of the sacraments as non-negotiables for any genuine Anglican recovery.

Harp also takes aim at several practices he considers departures from historic Anglican teaching: reserving and venerating the Eucharist, expanding the sacraments from two to seven, praying for the dead, and claims of apostolic succession through physical lineage.

The English Reformers, he argues, held that what mattered was adherence to apostolic doctrine, not episcopal genealogy.

What Comes Next

Whether the new Global Anglican Council can provide the theological coherence and institutional momentum that GAFCON's supporters seek remains to be seen. The Athens gathering in 2028 will be the first real test of whether conciliarism can hold together a movement that spans continents and traditions — and whether it can offer a credible alternative to a Communion its members believe has lost its way.

END