Mullally Goes to Africa and Finds the One Province That Agrees With Her. Its Synod Doesn't.
By David W. Virtue, DD
September 25, 2026
Sarah Mullally has chosen her stage with care. When the primates of the Anglican Communion gather in Johannesburg from 28 February to 5 March next year, it will be her first Primates' Meeting as Archbishop of Canterbury.
She has taken it to the one African province whose archbishop shares her mind on sexuality, whose leadership welcomed her appointment, and whose ties to the Episcopal Church run back decades and run deep, in friendship and in money.
Give her credit. It is a shrewd piece of choreography. The first woman to sit in the chair of Augustine, hosted on African soil by the church of Desmond Tutu, in a democratic South Africa the primates have not visited since 1993, when apartheid was still dying. The photographs write themselves. The message is plain: Africa is not all Abuja and Kampala. There is another Africa, and it is glad to have her.
It was meant to be a showcase. Within forty-eight hours of the announcement, the showcase cracked.
The Synod Said No
On 23 September the Provincial Synod of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa voted down a motion that would have allowed members in committed same-sex unions to be prayed for within the province. The margin was 78 to 71, with 10 abstentions. A second motion, asking for a distinct liturgy for the LGBTQ+ community, fell more heavily still, 98 to 61.
Note where that second motion came from: the Diocese of Johannesburg. The diocese that will welcome the primates next February could not carry its own proposal through its own synod.
This was Archbishop Thabo Makgoba's final synod as Primate, the last push of a campaign that has run for a decade. In 2016 the synod rejected blessings and licensing of clergy in same-sex civil marriages, and Makgoba said he was "pained." In 2023 his bishops could not agree to bless same-sex unions and settled instead for drafting prayers. In 2024 the synod turned down blessings again and reaffirmed that marriage is between one man and one woman for life. Now, at the very end, it has refused even the prayers.
Makgoba is an able, gracious and formidable churchman. He led his bishops as far as they would go, and further than many of them wished. But a primate can lead a synod only where the people are willing to walk, and the people of Southern Africa have stopped walking. The Archbishop of Canterbury is coming to be hosted by a leadership its own pews will not follow.
Why Southern Africa?
Why does the leadership in Cape Town sit so comfortably with Canterbury and New York when the rest of the continent does not? Part of the answer is history: Tutu, the long struggle against apartheid, and the moral capital that English and American Anglicans invested in it. When Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe refused last year to resettle white Afrikaner refugees, he pointed to his church's historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. Those ties are real, and they are cherished on both sides of the Atlantic.
Part of the answer is money. No one has published a single ledger, and I will not pretend to one. But the channels are well documented. Trinity Wall Street gave some $2.2 million to dioceses and organizations in Africa and the Caribbean in 2020 alone, including $150,000 to the College of the Transfiguration, the province's seminary. ACSA's bishops publicly thanked Trinity in 2016 for a workshop on making their churches self-sufficient. Episcopal Relief & Development works through HOPE Africa, the province's social development arm. The Compass Rose Society funded Continuing Indaba, which paired Episcopal dioceses with Global South dioceses to work through their differences over sexuality.
None of this proves a purchase. Much of it feeds the hungry and trains clergy, and that is good work. But influence need not be bought to be earned, and gratitude is a currency too. What the money evidently could not do was reach the synod floor. Bishops can be flown to New York. A synod of clergy and laity cannot.
The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches has noticed. Its fall pastoral letter, released this week, speaks of a movement away from patterns of dependency. It did not need to name names.
As for Mullally, she comes as no neutral broker. As Bishop of London, she backed the Church of England's plan to bless same-sex couples, even while affirming the church's definition of marriage. She is travelling to meet the one African archbishop who has spent a decade trying to do the same thing, only to discover that his people want no part of it.
The Largest Province Stays Home
Then there is the matter of who will not be in the room.
The Church of Nigeria, the largest province in the entire Anglican Communion, will not be there. Nigeria, together with Uganda and Rwanda, has largely refused the Instruments of Communion since the 2016 Primates' Meeting. Their Global Anglican Communion, formalized at Abuja this spring, now requires its office-holders to refuse Primates' Meetings, the Lambeth Conference and the Anglican Consultative Council altogether.
So, Canterbury's first Primates' Meeting on African soil in a generation will proceed without the largest Anglican church in Africa, which is to say the largest Anglican church in the world. Mullally will speak of the Communion from Johannesburg while the Communion's largest church speaks for itself from Abuja.
A Verdict, Not a Showcase
Lambeth Palace will call Johannesburg a sign of hope. It will point to the hospitality of Archbishop Thabo and the warmth of the Diocese of Johannesburg, and both will be genuine. It will say that Africa is diverse, that the Communion endures, that walking together remains possible.
But consider what the week actually showed. The province Canterbury chose as its friendliest African host has just told its own archbishop no. The largest province in the Communion will not come at all. And the churches of the Global South are speaking openly of ending their dependency on the very institutions that have courted Southern Africa's bishops for a generation.
Sarah Mullally went to Africa looking for agreement. She found it at Bishopscourt. She would do well to listen to the synod hall.
The primates will gather in Johannesburg to talk about unity. What awaits them there is not a showcase. It is a verdict.
David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com
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