Sarah Mullally and Reforming the Anglican Communion

By Mouneer Anis

October 8, 2025

The Church of England has announced the appointment of Sarah Mullally as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. I had anticipated her appointment since the Church’s General Synod of February 2023, when Mullally led the motion to allow blessings for same-sex couples—a move strongly endorsed by Archbishop Welby. Her leadership in that moment made clear the trajectory that has now culminated in this appointment.

By choosing her, the Church of England has effectively distanced itself from the vast majority of Anglicans in the Global South, who have consistently upheld the traditional Christian teachings on marriage and ordination. Many had hoped for a path toward healing and reconciliation within the deeply fractured Anglican Communion. Instead, this decision appears to close that door and signals an affirmation of the unorthodox and unilateral direction taken by the Church of England and several other Western provinces.

The Church should not embrace every new trend or innovation that arises in the surrounding culture. While it is called to engage the world with love and understanding, it must also guard its spiritual identity and moral integrity. When the Church loses its distinctiveness, it risks blending into the world it is meant to transform. To remain faithful to its calling, the Church must discern carefully, accepting what aligns with the gospel and rejecting what contradicts it. Only by retaining this holy distinctiveness can the Church continue to be the salt that preserves and the light that guides a darkened world.

It is increasingly evident that the Church of England is following in the footsteps of the Episcopal Church in the United States—a path marked by progressive theological and ethical positions that are heretical and have widened divisions with the rest of the Anglican family.

The appointment also risks deepening the gap between the Church of England and its ecumenical partners, particularly the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, for whom questions of doctrine and tradition remain central to communion.

This does not diminish the reality that women have always played a vital role in the life and mission of the Church. From the biblical witness of faithful women such as Mary Magdalene and Priscilla, to the countless women who have sustained the Church through prayer, service, and motherhood (both biological and spiritual) over the centuries, their ministry is indispensable. Yet, at the same time, it is impossible to ignore two thousand years of unbroken Christian tradition regarding marriage (between a man and a woman) and Holy Orders (which are reserved for men). This unbroken tradition is matched by and rooted in the plain sense of Scripture in both Testaments.

Orthodox Anglicans now have a historic opportunity to reform and redesign the Anglican Communion. Established in 1868 after the first Lambeth Conference a year earlier, the Communion’s colonial structure is outdated. The needed renewal should be built on a covenantal relationship among member provinces, united in their commitment to uphold traditional Anglican faith and practice. Such provinces must embrace the principle of interdependence—walking together in mutual accountability, not in hierarchy or domination. What affects all should be decided by all. If these decisions on marriage and ministry had been decided by all, Anglicans would never have departed from the orthodox tradition on marriage and ministry.

Therefore, leadership of this renewed Communion should arise from the people, through transparent and representative election, rather than inherited privilege. In this vision, the Global South Covenantal Structure, which we in the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) have developed, offers an inspiring and practical model for building a faithful, reformed, and truly global Anglican Communion. It is worth mentioning that fourteen Global South provinces have already adopted this new structure.

The GSFA Covenantal Structure corrected the current dysfunctional Instruments of Communion that led to the fragmentation of the Anglican Communion. It is composed of the following three sections.

Section 1: “have a doctrinal basis for the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), where membership of the ecclesial grouping is not merely by geographical location but by way of agreement to clearly enunciated Fundamental Declarations in keeping with orthodox faith.”

Section 2: “to express the group’s common life by way of relational commitments to one another in discipleship, mission and ministry. These relational commitments will be actualised through specific Task Forces, which we envisage will work with other doctrinally orthodox global bodies, dioceses and parishes in the Anglican Communion.”

Section 3: “to establish conciliar structures for the Churches of GSFA so that particular Provinces/Dioceses in their respective Churches and together as the Church universal have a clearer process for addressing ‘Faith and Order’ issues, establishing the limits of diversity, holding each other accountable to a common dogmatic and liturgical tradition, and making decisions which carry force in the life of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA).”

Doctrinal, relational, and conciliar agreement “makes the GSFA an effective and coherent ecclesial body with member Churches in full communion with each other. The goal is to be an ecclesial body that is faithful to God’s revealed word and effective in Gospel mission to the world.”

The appointment of Sarah Mullally as head of the Church of England makes it clear that the time has arrived for different Anglican orthodox groups to join together. We need a new united Communion with such a strong Covenantal Structure.

Mouneer Anis was the first Anglican archbishop of Alexandria, Egypt.