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Concluding presentation at Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC) summit April 14 2026 From Anglican Mainstream April 28, 2026 Scripture makes it clear that there are grounds for distancing ourselves from those in error in the church: Romans 16.17 I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. 1 Corinthians 5 9-11 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. Ephesians 5 3-7 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not become partners with them; 8 for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), I Timothy 6:11 But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Titus 3:10. 10 As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, 2 John 9-11 Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, 11 for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. How are we to do this? We cannot say who and who is not a Christian. But we can say that we believe they are wrong on 1 or more issues. Examples were given from a number of parishes. In one, distancing from revisionists has produced a closer relationship with other orthodox churches. Another vicar does not feel they are being heard by their diocesan bishop, and feels as though the bishop does not want them to be there. The vicar does not attend cathedral worship in order to express the reality of impaired fellowship. In London Diocese, Bishop Mullally set up additional oversight within the diocese. But this was not taken up elsewhere and is (it was suggested) dying on the vine in the diocese. In some dioceses resources are being taken away from orthodox churches to liberal churches in an effort to show that liberal churches can grow. One speaker suggested that in 25 years there will be two kinds of churches in the CofE, cathedrals and evangelical churches. People are being discipled on these issues in church for 90 minutes a week and by the BBC the rest of the week. Interview with Bishop Pete Broadbent, for 20 years the Bishop of Willesden. (Your reporter wondered why such a competent person was not made a diocesan). He is on the panel for Alternative Spiritual Oversight for the CEEC. For him, PLF (Prayers for Love and Faith) is a line that has been crossed. It is not possible for him to be in communion with the whole House of Bishops because as a whole they allowed PLF. So, he does not go to the cathedral with other bishops. Bishop Pete was asked several questions: Q What would be your point of division? A. Distinguish between the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop (giving the legal licence) and their spiritual oversight. We are part of the CofE. It has not changed its doctrine yet. Q. Why have so many good people (who were orthodox on marriage) when they became bishops changed their views? A. They feel they have to be there for everybody and give care to everybody so they bend and swerve and sway. He expects that the new Archbishop, who chairs meetings well and got things done in the NHS as Chief Nursing Officer will push the agenda and try and get recognition of SSM in the CofE. Q. What is the role of Alternative Spiritual Oversight? A. It gives someone with whom concerns can be shared, who is at the end of a phone, and can give advice on how to deal with a bishop who is being a pain. They share your concerns and give as much oversight as possible. (This was expanded later to indicate that ASO can be given to individuals in a mixed setting). The Ephesian Fund Parishes are using the Fund primarily to make a contribution to parish share – in the knowledge that the Fund seeks assurances about how the money is allocated/used. Churches in 34 dioceses have used/are using it and turnover for 2026 will be in excess of £10 million SUMMARY The apostolic faith is currently written into the doctrines of the CofE. LLF has produced impaired fellowship, is a matter of conscience and has led to a request for provision to secure orthodoxy, for orthodox oversight and biblically bounded spaces for ministry. Q. Is the CEEC saying that people in practicing same-sex relationships are not welcome in our churches? A. No – all are welcome... But there are certain roles and positions that people can have only if they are living a biblically faithful life. Q. Are chaplains represented on the CEEC? A. Yes Q. Has the CEEC changed its red lines? A. No. PLF is / always has been unbiblical and unacceptable. “Guarding the Deposit” is in the CEEC Library online and is commended. https://ceec.info/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/guarding_the_deposit.pdf END

Distinguished Contributors Anglican Scholars & Clergy Most Rev. Dr. Mouneer Anis Archbishop (Ret.), Province of Alexandria Egypt Rev. Dr. George Westhaver Principal, Pusey House Oxford, UK Rev. Dr. Gerald McDermott Distinguished Professor of Theology Jerusalem Seminary Dr. Alice Linsley Biblical Anthropologist & Scholar Midway University (Ret.) Rev. Ben Jefferies Priest & Liturgical Scholar Trinity Anglican Seminary Rev. Mark Perkins Chaplain & Assistant Headmaster St. Dunstan's Academy, VA The Future of the Traditional Anglican Parish: A Case Study - Fr. Mark Perkins Back in 2021, when my friend Thomas Fickley told me about his vision for a farm, trades, and classics boys boarding school in the Anglican tradition, I knew he was onto something… but I have been taken aback by the response to St. Dunstan’s Academy. We’ve had faculty and student inquiries from all over the country and from four continents. We’ve been covered in First Things, Touchstone, WORLD, and Christianity Today. There is a chapter about our founding in a forthcoming book by Ruth Graham of the New York Times. And, from ground zero, with no fundraising experience and not a dollar paid to consultants, we’ve raised over $2.5 million. In what follows, I give three reasons why St. Dunstan’s has struck such a chord, each of which has direct implications for parishes and for global Anglicanism. In short, St. Dunstan’s is authentically embodied, unapologetically masculine, and we are engaged in genuine grass-roots ecumenism. First, amidst the increasing disembodiment of contemporary culture, St. Dunstan’s is authentically embodied. Our work integrates head, heart, and hand. Students will raise, slaughter and butcher; they will grow, harvest, and cook their own food in our agriculture and culinary arts programs. Our students are already building their own buildings in our trades program. While on campus students live under a rule of digital poverty — no screens, phones, headphones, or individual digital devices allowed. We are building our school along the lines of the traditional parish, in which the whole community will live within earshot of the church bells. This reintegration of school, church, neighborhood, and work restores what was the parochial norm for all of human existence until the day before yesterday. The parish — that place in which sacramental worship spills over into life in a thick community — the parish remains the Anglican norm. Our theology and work should be parochial in orientation. There are essentially two realities in the Church: there is Christ’s One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and there is the local instantiation of that Church. The local instantiation is the people gathered round a bishop — the parish within a diocese. The parish-in-diocese is in one sense part of the whole Church, but in another sense it is the fullness of the Church in a place. A parish-in-diocese lacks nothing essential — it just is the Church in a place. Everything between the diocese and the Church Catholic — whether province or jurisdiction or communion — each of these is in some sense an artifice. That doesn’t make them unreal, much less bad. But the parish-in-diocese is fundamental in a way that a jurisdiction or communion is not. Our ecumenical work starts with the premise that the fullness of the Church is present in every diocesan parish. Ecumenical work must not proceed from a false sense of inferiority. I fear that, for some, pointing to an “international communion” of some numerically large number of Christians spanning the globe is a form of ecclesial self-justification — a response to insecurity vis-à-vis Rome and the East. But if the local reality is the diocese, and the ultimate reality is Christ’s Church, then what matters is whether and how the diocese is a local instantiation of the Church — which is determined not by intercommunion agreements but rather through the sacraments, particularly Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, and Holy Orders in Apostolic Succession. More on that to come, but for now the point is that we do not win converts to an abstract, disembodied faith. We make disciples who join with their brothers and sisters in a particular place at a particular altar to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Our parishes are inherently and always embodied by virtue of their participation in the sacramental life. And yet we are being pulled away at every moment by the temptation to attend to other things. We are constantly pulled toward a way of life that is distracted, disembodied, disintegrated, and empty. The responsibility of our parishes is not to recreate exactly what we are doing at St. Dunstan’s, though they surely can imitate some of what we do, but to give our attention, our time, and our bodies to the work of our own parishes — not to distractions and abstractions. This means reconsidering our approach to digital spaces and social media. Our online work must always be downstream of and subservient to the embodied parish. Success is measured not in views or likes or subscriptions but rather by the extent to which these digital initiatives push people off their phones and computers and more deeply into embodied, parochial community. Does your online presence encourage you to push deeper into the life of your parish? Does it do the same for others? Or are you just one more algorithmically driven dopamine hit? Perhaps this sounds irrelevant to the future of global Anglicanism. I assure you it is not. Virtually all of the challenges we are addressing today are deeply connected to the neutered, androgynous, and acedic disembodiment of this present evil age. Which brings me to my second point. In the face of post-industrial androgyny, St. Dunstan’s is unapologetically masculine. Thanks to some very stark data about male outcomes in education, the workplace, and overall health, mainstream culture has begun to pay attention to the particular challenges facing our young men. But this new attention is all happening within the dominant feminist cultural frame. Boys are now a distinctly disadvantaged demographic, and so most of the conversation is dedicated to addressing inequities so that we can continue along our not-so-merry androgynous way. We need to reject the premises of the conversation, even as we make common cause where we can. We need to honor sex difference, not flatten it. Single-sex education is one way of doing so. Boys, in particular, need meaningful rites of passage to draw them out of boyhood and into manhood. They need to inherit manhood from mature men, alongside a band of brothers. The good news is that churches, by and large, still offer single-sex spaces — men’s groups and women’s events and the like. Smaller churches are also likely to offer intergenerational spaces where older men, younger men, and boys can get to know one another. But we need to do more to recover the vision of sexuality from Genesis to Revelation. For one thing, as Fr. Gerry and others have said, we need to give up on the failed experiment of women’s ordination. But not only that. I used to think that the best way to protect the exclusively male character of ordination was through a kind of sacramental minimalism — make sure the priest is male, but everything else in the Church can be mixed gender. But so long as male-only ordination is the one discordant stroke in an otherwise-androgynous painting, it will always look incoherent and irrational. We must situate our understanding of ordination within the larger picture of sex difference, from creation to eschaton. To take one example, if we want to end the misguided experiment with women’s ordination, we must also end our experiment with female altar servers. Altar service, like the priesthood itself, is unexceptionally male in Scripture and in the liturgical tradition of the Church. Up until sixty years ago, male altar service was a Vincentian canon norm — practiced by all, everywhere, at all times. A mixed-gender altar party is liturgically and symbolically incoherent. The Holy Eucharist is nuptial — every Holy Communion is an image of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. In the Eucharist, the Bride of Christ, the Church, approaches the altar to become one with her beloved, Jesus Christ, in the sacrament. The celebrant is an icon of Jesus Christ the Bridegroom, and the servers are the friends of the groom. Mixed-gender altar parties both obscure and distort this imagery, creating the same kind of sexual confusion and disorder that obtains when you attend a wedding where a man is among the bridesmaids or a woman among the groomsmen. These minor offices are also a traditional means of discerning whether one’s particular vocation of service to the Church is in ordained ministry. Restoring the male character of altar service allows for the recovery of the cursus honorum as a rite of passage by which a boy ascends through the minor offices until he attains the rank of a man. For us, that is the lay reader, who proclaims the Scriptures amidst the assembled Body of Christ and is authorized to lead services in absence of an ordained minister. Lay reading is the job of a man, not a boy. I understand if the notion of restoring exclusively male altar service makes your blood run cold. Not too many parishioners are all that invested in the debates over women’s ordination… but if you tell people that their daughters cannot be acolytes… you’re going to have a problem on your hands. Pastoral wisdom is necessary. But to the extent that that idea remains unthinkable — to precisely that extent, your parish remains trapped in the dominant feminist frame. What we need — and what St. Dunstan’s offers — is an unapologetic masculinity which takes as its starting point the story of sexuality told in Scripture and lived out in the tradition of the Church. Lastly, St. Dunstan’s is engaged in genuine grass-roots ecumenism. St. Dunstan’s is a school, not a church. We are an independent, board-governed 501c3 nonprofit. As chaplain, I am hired and can be fired by the headmaster, who is hired and fired by the board. But we are a school framed around the sacramental life of our chapel, and my sacramental ministry flows not from the board but from my bishop, who sits on the board ex officio. We are not ecclesial free agents. Rather, we are embedded in the life of a particular diocese, even as our ministry extends beyond jurisdictional bounds. Disembodiment, sexual confusion, presentism, acedia — these are acids eating away at Christian fidelity. The battle against these forces cuts across the traditional lines of intra-Anglican squabbling and indeed across denominational borders altogether. We will happily make common cause with any who share our vision for Christian maturity, masculine strength, and an embodied and rooted way of life centered around the sacramental life of the Church. But we do not disguise who we are, nor do we compromise what we are. Grass-roots ecumenism requires honoring the sacramental unity we ultimately share in Holy Baptism, Holy Communion, and Holy Orders in Apostolic Succession — while also acknowledging and mourning the realities of impaired communion. Again, the two fundamental realities are the Church and its local instantiation, the parish-in-diocese. Because the parish in a diocese lacks nothing fundamental, we seek unity without compromise and without self-justification. We reject the inferiority complex that is the numbers game. I will end on what is perhaps a provocative note. Our opposition to same-sex marriage and to women’s ordination is not primarily ethical (as in, “women should not be ordained” or “same-sex marriages should not occur”). Rather, it is a matter of ontology. Marriage and priesthood are of divine origin. We cannot alter them. Whether we like it or not, there is no such thing as a same-sex marriage or a female priest. These things are not for us to decide. The God who knows more and loves better than we have already decided them. The Anglican Province of America, of which I am a priest, is not in communion with the ACNA or GAFCON as a whole. Nor could we be, unless we were to embrace women’s ordination. I mean that literally — we cannot be in full communion. This is not a matter of choice, except insofar as we have chosen to reject the innovation of women’s ordination. So long as we do that, we are incapable of full communion, no matter what sheet of paper we might sign. There is no such thing as full communion without the sharing of altars and the sharing of priests. It does not exist. Because the mutual recognition of Holy Orders is a sine qua non of full communion, the REC and all other dioceses and jurisdictions that reject women’s ordination… these are in actual fact not in full communion with the ACNA or GAFCON as a whole either, except insofar as they accept women’s ordination. In other words, it is either the case that intercommunion in the ACNA is a convenient fiction… or that opposition to women’s ordination is a convenient fiction. And, in either case, it is best to dispense with convenient fictions and face up to inconvenient truths. At St. Dunstan’s, by God’s grace and through the particular work to which he has called us, we seek to dispense with the convenient fictions that dominate our culture. We challenge young men to embrace the inconvenient truths that are necessary for their own maturation as Christian men — for the health of their parishes, for the good of the Church, and for the life of the world. “Hating Even the Garment” - Ben Jefferies I. I have taken for my text Jude 23 – ‘to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.’ • This image – the garment stained by the flesh – is what I want to dwell, and unpack its relevance as an image that illuminates the path forward on this question of unity and truth and the future of the Anglican Church. • The image is of course indexed to the commandments in Leviticus – that garments can be rendered unclean, toxic, by being stained with unclean bodily fluids, mold, and the like. • The first thing I wish to offer is a theological interpretation of this image: The uncleanness of a bodily member – corresponds to the immoral acts of the church. The garment – corresponds to the documents that govern the church’s life: Formulary documents and constitutional documents. • Think of it – in the early centuries of the Church, the institutional life of the Church was fully embodied in the will of the individual bishop. Same with kings in the early Middle Ages, right? But on this side of 1215 – the signing of Magna Carta – the life of the Organic Company is embodied not only in the will of the head, but also in constitutional documents. As a man wears clothes, that buffer his presentation to others, that give him a different shape – so King John donned Magna Carta, and bequeathed it as a vestment to his successors. • It’s the same thing in the Church today. The life of the Church is no longer embodied solely in the person of the individual bishops. The bishops don the Constitution of their dioceses – they are beholden to it – as well the Constitution of their province. • And, since the Church is a spiritual entity, the Constitution and Canons and Liturgies of a Church are spiritual things. They are maximally important. • So, when a bishop sins (and by extension, mutatis mutandis, when a priest sins – he mars the body of Christ. He makes a wound and infects it with sin. This sin can be anything: Personal sin: Abuse, Theft, Adultery; or it can be a sin of disobedience affecting another, such as officiating the “wedding” of a gay couple. Whatever the sin – it is the bishop’s sin. The church has always had sinful bishops. Thankfully there have always been Godly and Righteous Bishops as well – we remembered Alphege and Anselm just this week – but wickedness in the church, as such, is not the problem. Those who love righteousness are called to carry the pain of the wound with them, and pray for healing. • The problem comes when the infection seeps out of the wound, and into the garment – that is, when the immoral action gets embedded into the governing documents of the Church. When dioceses and provinces re-write their Constitutions, or authorize unrighteous liturgies. Then the garment is stained. • And we are to hate the garment stained by the flesh. II. • This brings me to the second point I wish to convey to you this afternoon: The priority of Catholic Morality. The Life of the Church Catholic is instantiated in Catholic Faith and Catholic Morality: What we believe, and what we do. So often the question of Christian unity places the Catholic Faith as the Sun around which the ecumenical discourse should orbit, but I believe this is backwards. The ability to spiritually perceive and believe the Catholic Faith is subsequent to, and conditioned by Catholic Morality. We see this ontological sequence throughout the New Testament – that when the heart is hardened by sin, the mind is subsequently darkened. • Think of Ephesians 4:18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. • And THE issue that is tearing apart the Church today – and it’s all one issue – the question of what does the Bible say about Sex, Sexuality and the Sexes – It began with Women’s Ordination, Same-sex marriage was the middle game – THE issue – is a moral issue. The question to be asked isn’t “what’s the theology of this? What ought to be believed about marriage? And so on” – these are belief questions – and they are non sequiturs. On matters of catholic morality, the question is simply, ‘Is God being obeyed? Or disobeyed?’ • With a few odd and fringe exceptions, none of the Anglican Bishops around the world today are denying the Nicene Creed. The Era of Bishops like Pike and Spong and, in the UK, JAT Robinson – that’s ancient history. Dame Mullaly spoke of the Resurrection of Christ in her enthronement sermon in a perfectly satisfactory way. But the assertion of the Faith claims of the Church Catholic are unimpressive, by themselves. The Devils can recite the first two articles of the Nicene Creed without flinching. The real matter is, are we obeying this God we confess to believe in? • Confusing Faith and Morality has created an ecclesial quagmire. The reason that women cannot be ordained isn’t important. The fact that in God’s Holy Book he spoke through his servant St. Paul and said, “I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man” – this is a commandment – are we obeying it? Or disobeying it? • And let me now link this with my first point – that some Bishop ordained women to the priesthood in 1974 – is a local disobedience. Tragic, Irritating, but a localized sin. When the General Convention of The Episcopal Church re-wrote their Canons in 1976 to enshrine women’s ordination – now the garment is stained. And those who gathered at St. Louis in 1977 and broke off were exactly right in doing so. Same thing in our day. Gene Robinson getting consecrated wasn’t the Rubicon. ACNA jumped a little early at the request of the GAFCON bishops. 2015, when TEC’s General Convention re-wrote their marriage canons, or in the UK – it was December 2023 when the House of Bishops approved the prayer for the blessing of a ”married” gay couple. For authorized liturgies are also governing documents. • The garments are now stained. We must hate them. Which means put them off – put them away, and pray for them to be cleansed, apart from ourselves. III. • All of this has set the stage for my final point, to address the conference question head on, with new eyes. • How should we Anglicans retain unity in the truth? & What truth is essential? • In the first place, clarifying the difference between faith and morals evaporates the cavil of “what is first order doctrine?”. We don’t ask “is the female priesthood first order or second order doctrine?” No, it’s not a matter of doctrine, it’s a matter of obedience. With this clear, we see that “first order doctrine” itself is an oxymoron spawned amidst moral disobedience. The Lord Jesus deposited a body of belief to the Apostles – this has been passed down for 2000 years. It must not be added to, or taken away from. It can be clarified by never developed in the way Newman meant the word. The entirety of Catholic Truth - in faith and morals – is essential, and is not to be compromised even an iota for the sake of unity. • So, let’s get down to some concrete application of all this. • Judgment begins with the household of God, we must look first at the log in our own eyes, and examine the garments that we are wearing – are they stained by the flesh? If you are a bishop or an executive committee member – the provincial constitution and canons. If you are a presbyter, or standing committee member, your diocesan constitution and canons. Who cares if some Anglican province somewhere is celebrating gay bishops, if your own garment is also stained. This is the first order of priority – to have our own garments purified. Only then will be capacitated to deal rightly toward others. • Let me start closest to home – to use myself as a demonstration – The diocese I am in – Upper Midwest of the ACNA – has nothing in its constitution or canons that opposes the Catholic Faith or Catholic Morality. It is silence on the question of women in the diaconate, and the legal principle of silence implying consent holds here. The province I am in – ACNA – has a corrupted constitution – because it allows each bishop to decide for their own diocese on the matter of women’s ordination. But, structurally, to say that Catholic Morality – that is, obedience – and anti-Catholic morality, i.e. disobedience – are both tolerable, is to fundamentally authorize error. Our ACNA garment is stained. Now, this happened before I knew of it, before I was a presbyter, before I knew better – otherwise I would have tried to take a stand – as I did with the Augustine Appeal a few years ago. But as it is – it is an error, a compromise, an unrighteousness, that I bear with and pray for. • For my part, I could never join the REC, even though it is obedient on Holy Orders, because the Declaration of Principles of 1873 clearly rejects the Catholic Faith. A 2017 Pastoral letter that attempts to explain it away is not the same as a repentance and a scrubbing of the garment. It would be bad faith to ever take on willingly a garment that is stained when we are called to hate it. If the Abp of Canterbury offered me a chaplaincy to the King with a million-pound stipend a year, I could not take it, because the garment is stained. • At a larger global level, and with this I’ll end: • The Nairobi-Cairo Proposal out of Canterbury can go nowhere, because it asserts women’s ordination as a fait accompli and allows for differing views – obedient AND disobedient views on homosexual practice. • GAFCON initially showed promise, but the Kigali Statement asserts the Bible to be the Rule of Faith, which is not the Catholic Teaching. It is also styling itself recently as a Confessional Church, which is also un-Catholic. Furthermore – it has welcomed bodies, such as the Reformed Episcopal Church of South Africa, which plainly deny the Catholic Faith. • Like GAFCON, the Cairo Covenant of the Global South doesn’t breathe a word about Women in Holy Orders. While Silence on this front may be construed as consent, the larger practical question presents itself: Are we going to do all this work of realignment, only to have the biggest issue in our midst completely unresolved? It is like going into a 12 surgery for a complex bone-fracture, only to agree to set the bone mostly in the right way, but not fully. The effort of global realignment seems to me to not be worth effort if we’re not going to align around Catholic Faith and Morals. But if it did – if the ACNA, say, cleansed the garment, and brought an end to the disobedience of Women’s ordination, a cascade of real unity, beginning with the G3, could commence and the witness would be dazzling. ‘Mere Catholicism, Practical Holiness, and Unity in One House’- The Rev. Dr George Westhaver INTRODUCTION: THE COURAGE TO BE THANKFUL In 1904, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon Lang gave a series of lectures called The Opportunity of the Church of England: ‘The strength of the forces which are dissolving the traditions and habits of religion’ mean that very many churchmen find themselves in ‘a shifting rubble of half-formed doubts in which no religious influence can take root and become …clear conviction’. Despite his colourful diagnosis, he said ‘this is our opportunity’: ‘There are energies in the very forces which cause the evil, which can be converted into powers of recovery’. Indeed, his lectures are full of hope: Let us [therefore] …have the courage to be thankful for these times in which it has pleased God to ask for our ministry. It is useless to sigh for other times; the days in which there were no special trials. ‘The study of history is the best cordial for drooping spirits.’ Long difficult divisions in the Church may tempt us to despair. Cosmo Gordon Lang’s counsel invites us to see these trials as an opportunity. About 50 years earlier, in another time of division, John Keble, the Father of the Oxford movement, also called his fellow churchmen to persevere in hope: ‘Look at the early Church and the long agony of the contest with Arianism after the council of Nicaea. How long was it before she had rest from the troubles which then beset her on a chief point of doctrine? We are now in 1850, and some eager ones think it much too long to wait for 1851 or 1852 for settlement of our present troubles: but she waited for two whole generations until the Council of Constantinople in 381, and under all sorts of interruptions, anomalies, charges of heresy, and breaking of communion. ‘The whole air of England seems to me to ring with voices from the dead and from the living: “Stay here; think not of departing, but here do your work.”’ Can Keble’s call to ‘persevere in hope’ in the search for unity in truth inform our response to the current struggles in the Anglican communion? A CATHOLIC APPEAL TO THE 39 ARTICLES The recent Abuja statement points to ‘the Reformation Formularies’ of the Church of England, to ‘the Thirty-nine Articles and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer’ as expressing the doctrinal basis for unity. I would like to consider how E B Pusey’s careful study of the 39 articles as a focus for unity both within the Church of England, and within the Western Church, can help us to consider what this appeal offers. In their article ‘IS THE ANGLICAN “RESET” TRULY ANGLICAN?’, Fathers Hans Boersma, Gerald McDermott, Greg Peters offer a more in-depth example of this kind of approach. They look at the tension between declaring the Bible to be ‘its own interpreter’ and the patristic or ecclesial exegesis which both gives us the creeds but also challenges contemporary assumptions about the plain sense of the Bible. For Pusey, ‘The real danger was that the Articles should be understood to deny what was Primitive as well as [error, “Romish” error]’. Pusey re-stated and adapted John Henry Newman’s controversial argument: ‘…our Articles neither contradict anything Catholic, nor are [our Articles] meant to condemn anything in early Christianity, but only [errors in] the later system in the Church of Rome.’ This was not an obscure theological argument, ‘inside baseball’ for Anglicans: reading the articles and the Anglican formularies with the Fathers and the whole Church gives the Gospel a converting power to meet the rising tide of secularism, religious liberalism, and indifference. Pusey was particularly astute at perceiving the way biblical interpretation hides implicit ideas which can obscure rather than reveal Christ. His arguments about the Articles are arguments about shaping a theological or cultural imagination which makes the Incarnation, the union of the divine and human natures in Christ, the lens through which we read the Bible, the Church, and the world. Will a contemporary Anglican appeal to the Articles be shaped by this kind of ‘sacramental ontology’ and the ‘doctrine of the catholic fathers’, or will our appeal to the Bible be made superficial by the glosses and prejudices of our day, or even of one part of the Church? So, for example, to condemn as un-biblical the ‘Romish doctrine of Purgatory’, the late medieval errors which Pope Benedict XVI rejected, is only the beginning of a scriptural consideration of the intermediate state and how God brings to completion the good work begun in us. The condemnation of the “sacrifices of Masses” rejects ‘the purchase of Masses’ for the forgiveness of sins’, yes. But the patristic and biblical doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice, the Church’s pleading of ‘the “pure offering” which the Prophet Malachi foretold’, this doctrine of the Eucharistic sacrifice is part of the proclamation of the Gospel and the life of the Church. The 39 Articles are not a confession of faith, not a catechism, so appealing to them is the beginning of a conversation, not the end. The 19th century example suggests that in order for the Articles to serve as a basis for renewing communion, then we will need to consider how to avoid narrowing our presentation of the ‘fine gold’, of the Gospel proclamation. Unity in Truth Between 1865 and the declaration of papal infallibility in 1870, Pusey wrote three book-length public letters proposing the reunion of the English and Roman Churches on the basis of the 39 Articles and the Council of Trent. ‘Unity is, in part, the direct gift of God’ writes Pusey. ‘In part, it is the fruit of that gift in the mutual love of the members of the Church.’ In his hierarchy of gifts, Pusey emphasises the gifts which God gives: ‘Christ our Lord, God and Man, binds us to Him by the indwelling of His Spirit, by the gift of His Sacraments, administered by those to whom He gave the commission so to do, [and] by the right faith in Himself.’ Pusey notes that unlike many Churches or Communions, the C of E both assumes this unity, and prays for it. ‘At Holy Communion we pray God to “inspire continually the Universal Church [not C of E only] with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord”’ and ‘We pray for “all Bishops,” not our own only’. ‘The Church is one’, but ‘How it is one, the Church nowhere defines’. Contemplating schisms in the Church, Pusey argues that, ‘There is no ground to assume that suspensions of inter-communion (sad and mournful as they are) and in themselves only, hinder either body from being a portion of the Body of Christ.’ ‘Unlove began its work even in the Apostles’ times.’ If intercommunion does not destroy union with God the Holy Trinity, what does? ‘It is of man to retain the faith which he has received. They have not the same Lord, who do not believe the same truth as to Him’. For Pusey unbelief with regard to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation is especially corrosive. According to this view, unity is destroyed only when a body loses essential notes of the Church—apostolic ministry, the true sacraments, the substance of the faith, or the moral law. On the basis of Pusey’s principles, how do decisions about the doctrine of marriage, or what constitutes a holy life, affect communion? Such decisions have disrupted our communion with one another in love, but do they affect communion with God in Christ? If decisions are made against the received consensus of Scripture and the wider Church, whether or not this constitutes rebellion or formal schism depends in part on the degree to which the people or synods making those decisions understand themselves to be contradicting the catholic consensus of the Church. Or do we believe, rightly or wrongly, that we are developing the faith and practice of the Church in fidelity to the Gospel? This of course is the focus of the debate, not an answer. Differentiation Serving Unity In a letter written in 1845 to a priest at S Clement’s Church here in Philadelphia Pusey writes: ‘There is absolutely no doubt that our succession is valid, that our Bishops are the successors of those through whom God planted the Gospel here; and so our Church is the appointed channel of God’s gifts, and the instrument of salvation to us.’ In this last section, I would like to consider if the arrangements made in the Church of England to maintain the widest possible degree of communion despite serious disagreement over apostolic ministry and the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate can serve as a model for seeking unity in truth in the Anglican communion and between the Anglican churches. The Five Guiding Principles enshrined in the House of Bishops’ Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests states that the C of E’s ‘own clear decision on ministry and gender is set within a broader process of discernment within the Anglican Communion and the whole Church of God’. The 5 Guiding Principles also make a commitment, without a limit in time, to enable those ‘who, on grounds of theological conviction, are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests’ to ‘flourish within its life and structures’. The Society under the patronage of Saint Augustine and Saint Hilda is the ecclesial community which gives flesh and spirit to these principles. The Society offers ministry in the historic and apostolic succession, ‘sacramental assurance’, and provides episcopal oversight for clergy and for parishes that affiliate to The Society. The Society also ‘promotes and maintains catholic teaching and practice within the Church of England’. In the same way that the Abuja statement points to ‘doctrinal … departures from the teaching of Scripture’ in the Anglican communion, the Society’s foundation assumes that the ordination of women represents a departure from the teaching of the Bible and the consensus of the Church. Does this change weaken or damage the apostolic channel of God’s gifts, the instrument of salvation to us? This is a serious matter not addressed in the GAFCON documents. The result of the arrangements made to secure the widest possible degree of communion in light of the issues raised by the ordination of women is that the Church of England could be described as an ecumenical fellowship within a unifying canonical structure. It no longer displays the system of full inter-communion which has been the norm for a church. In the most hopeful form, this church within a church promotes the widest possible degree of ecumenical fellowship within the C of E, and by this serves the unity of the whole Church. As I investigated what one might learn for the Anglican churches from the Church of England model of degrees of communion alongside ecclesial differentiation, I discovered what many of you will know much better, that this model has already been proposed. ‘The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals’ for ‘Renewing the Instruments of the Anglican Communion’ has very explicitly applied the language of the ‘highest possible degree of communion’ from debates about ordination to our profound disagreements about the doctrine of marriage. The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals recognises what we already know, that ‘Solemn calls to unity may … function as an abuse of power’. It replaces the language of ‘walking together’, or wearing down, with Differentiated communion: ‘We find in the story of Paul and Barnabas a precedent for walking together at a distance’ maintaining some degree of unity despite “sharp disagreement”. On the basis of the century-long Donatist controversy and Augustine of Hippo’s arguments, the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals proposes that it is an error ‘to break from the Church in search of a haven of purity, rather than contesting for the orthodox faith within the Church, which is always a mixture of wheat and weeds, [bad fish with the good]’. Until harvest time, the struggle for unity in truth will be accompanied with much ‘lamentation and groaning’. On the basis of Abuja’s commitment, ‘to support faithful Anglicans whether they stay in … mixed provinces or decide to leave’, one commentator has proposed that ‘the best and brightest in GAFCON who are not part of the Global Anglican Council could engage in the Instruments of Communion’, and contribute even now to the Nairobi-Cairo process’. This would strengthen the bonds of communion and interdependence between Anglicans and express the truth that we need one another. Bearing with One Another in Love Jurisdictional, institutional, and even confessional instruments of unity can only serve our unity in Christ if they express a genuine charity and holiness of life. In the words of one of the Society bishops from a sermon at Pusey House, accepting differentiation as a path to unity does not mean giving up on truth: Bearing with one another in love ‘cannot mean remaining apart in static silence. … If truth is objective, then it is the same for everyone, and we will come to dialogue over disagreement in the belief that the truth will convert’. The NCPs stress the importance of seeking ‘the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace’ for our witness to the Gospel: ‘A dogged refusal to give up on each other, to remain in relationship despite deep and significant disagreement, can be a remarkable witness to the power of Christ to bring unity in a divided world’. John Henry Newman’s entrance into the Roman Catholic Church stirred up division and anger in the Church of England. Pusey was urged to both condemn his friend and the Church of Rome. The public letter he wrote is full of lessons for our current struggles: ‘You too’, Pusey writes, ‘have felt that it is what is unholy on both sides which keeps us apart….As each, by God’s grace, grows in holiness, each Church will recognise, more and more, the Presence of God’s Holy Spirit in the other; and what now hinders the union of the Western Church will fall off….But while we go on humbled, and the humbler, surely neither need we be dejected. God’s chastisements are in mercy too. ‘And so now, then, in this critical state of our Church, the most perilous crises through which it has ever passed, must not our first lesson be increase of prayer?’ [Pusey:] ‘It is not to immediate results that we ought to look, “the times are in His hands”; but this one cannot doubt, that the good hand of God, which has been over us in the manifold trials of the last three centuries, checking, withholding, guiding, chastening, leading, and now so wonderfully extending us, is with us still. It is not thus He ever purposes to leave a Church. Gifts of grace are His Own Blessed Presence. He does not vouchsafe His Presence in order to withdraw it.’ Or, in the words with which we began, and in the face of our current trials, ‘let us have the courage to be thankful for these times’, even as we know that, until harvest time, the struggle for unity in truth will be accompanied with much ‘lamentation and groaning’. END

By Bishop Francis Omondi, Garissa, Kenya April 26, 2026 I began my episcopal ministry at a time when the Anglican Communion was entering significant upheaval. The early signs of strain were already evident; yet the pace and force of recent developments have surpassed what many anticipated. We now face a future we did not fully shape, but one we must nonetheless navigate with care and discernment. Recent developments—particularly the emergence of a GAFCON-led “Global Anglican Communion”—have sharpened long-standing questions about our identity. On Martyrs’ Day 2025, Archbishop Laurent Mbanda announced a new global vision known as “FUTURE,” signalling a deliberate shift away from the historic Communion centred on Canterbury toward an alternative global structure. Proponents portray this direction as a recovery of spiritual authority and doctrinal clarity. They claim fidelity to Biblical authority, grounding their vision in the plain and canonical reading of Scripture articulated in the Jerusalem Declaration (2008) and echoing Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles. The Kigali Commitment of 2023 reinforces this trajectory, rejecting the Instruments of Communion, those very structures that have historically safeguarded unity and mutual accountability across Anglican provinces. In doing so, GAFCON does not preserve Anglican tradition but disrupts it. Although the Global Anglican Communion (GAC) maintains that it is neither abandoning Anglicanism nor forming a new denomination, it asserts that it is “resetting” the Communion and restoring what it interprets as the original intention of the 1867 Lambeth Conference. These developments compel us to ask searching questions. What kind of future is being constructed? And on a more personal level, what does this future mean for my episcopal ministry within the Anglican Church of Kenya—a province rooted in the Global South yet deeply shaped by the inherited bonds of Anglican tradition? Internal Contradictions Despite these assertions, unresolved contradictions continue to weigh down the future that GAFCON envisions. Central to its proposal is the claim that Scripture possesses a single, authoritative interpretation. An interpretation it locates in the Jerusalem Declaration and sets against what it labels as revisionist theology. Yet this claim falters under scrutiny. GAFCON’s own internal disagreements reveal the instability of its interpretive framework. Nowhere is this more evident than in the movement’s divergent positions on the ordination of women. Kenya and South Sudan consecrate women as bishops, while Uganda and Nigeria oppose the practice on the grounds that Scripture mandates a male-only episcopate. Nigeria and Egypt extend this prohibition even to the priesthood, a stance not shared by Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, or South Sudan, all of which ordain women as priests. These are not minor or peripheral disagreements. They expose deep theological fissures that undermine GAFCON’s insistence on a singular, canonical reading of Scripture. These tensions grew sharper with the appointment of Bishop Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury, a decision publicly denounced by Rwanda, Uganda and Nigeria. Their objections, both to her gender and to her voting record supporting same-sex blessings, were presented as evidence of the Church of England’s doctrinal unfaithfulness. Yet beneath these disputes lies a more fundamental question. Will the future of Anglicanism be shaped by the careful, conciliar discernment of Scripture that has defined the tradition since Richard Hooker, or by the theological priorities of a single province, whether Nigeria or America? GAFCON’s appeal to doctrinal purity thus reveals tensions that weaken its credibility as a guardian of uniform Biblical interpretation. Classical Anglican theology, articulated most fully by Hooker, affirms that Scripture is interpreted through the dynamic interaction of Scripture, reason, and tradition. The Lambeth Conferences and the Instruments of Communion have consistently upheld this broad hermeneutical approach, not as optional, but as foundational to Anglican identity. These instruments do not exist to enforce uniformity through exclusion. Rather, they sustain communion through shared discernment, pastoral patience and theological humility, especially in moments of disagreement. Here, the contrast becomes unmistakably clear. GAFCON advances a model of authority that asserts unity is impossible without adherence to “truth” as it defines it, declaring that “we can no longer walk together with those who persist in unbiblical teaching.” Such a position stands in tension with historic Anglican self-understanding and replaces centuries of conciliar deliberation with a more confessional, exclusionary framework. This shift does not stand alone; it accelerates the fragmentation already emerging across the Communion. The resulting narrowing of Anglican theology stands in sharp contrast to the ecclesial vision expressed in the Lambeth Conferences and embodied in the Instruments of Communion. This shift toward a more restrictive theological model marks a significant departure from the broad, inclusive approach that has shaped Anglican identity for generations. Historically, these structures upheld a unity grounded not in doctrinal uniformity but in shared discernment, patient engagement, theological diversity and mutual accountability. By redefining unity as dependent on doctrinal conformity, the emerging GAFCON model moves away from the dispersed and collegial authority that has held the Anglican Communion together. Instead, it reimagines Anglican identity through the lens of separation, prioritising exclusion over engagement and narrowing the scope of what it means to belong to the Communion. This approach not only fragments the global Church but also diminishes the richness and depth that have historically marked Anglican theology and practice. These inconsistencies undermine not only the Jerusalem Declaration’s claim to coherent theological reflection but also the very Anglican tradition GAFCON asserts it is preserving. In reshaping Anglicanism around a narrower doctrinal centre, sustained through separation rather than communion, GAFCON risks diminishing a tradition formed by breadth, patience and careful engagement with contested questions. The unresolved disagreements within GAFCON over women’s ordination further expose the fragility of its project. Far from offering theological coherence, these contradictions weaken the Declaration’s claim to represent a consistent, canonical and comprehensive Anglican theology. Theological Foundations These calls have now produced two sharply divergent responses within the Anglican world. One urging separation in the name of doctrinal clarity. The other calling for reform from within the Communion’s historic structures. Advocates of separation argue that fidelity to Scripture requires decisive action whenever they believe core doctrines are compromised. To them, remaining in communion with Canterbury, as it is now, amounts to theological compromise. Separation, therefore, is not seen as schism but as an act of obedience, driven by the conviction that Anglican unity must rest on doctrinal truth rather than institutional loyalty. When the Instruments of Communion seem unable to safeguard those truths, they believe an alternative structure becomes necessary. This reasoning mirrors earlier Anglican realignments, including the formation of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Yet embracing separation introduces profound difficulties. Breaking away does not merely address perceived doctrinal error; it reshapes Anglican identity itself. Historically, Anglicanism has rested upon a shared centre, a common liturgical inheritance, a historic episcopate and dispersed authority, rather than upon strict doctrinal uniformity. Separation, therefore, raises a critical question: how can Anglicans preserve their identity if they reject the very instruments and relationships that have long sustained it? In contrast, those who urge remaining within the Communion appeal to classical Anglican theology. They draw upon Hooker’s vision of Scripture interpreted within the life of the Church through the interplay of Scripture, reason, and tradition, a vision that recognizes disagreement as a normal, even necessary, aspect of ecclesial life rather than a failure of faith. The Lambeth Conferences and the Instruments of Communion have embodied this approach, consistently favouring patient discernment over rupture, even in moments of deep theological tension. From this perspective, Canterbury functions not as a doctrinal supervisor but as a symbolic and relational centre that enables communion across difference. It provides space for theological argument without fracturing into competing Anglicanisms, allowing reform to unfold within the inherited structures that have historically held the Communion together. This approach, however, is not without its own challenges. Advocates of reform often invoke the need for change without articulating clearly what that reform entails. Without a distinction between reform, understood as the correction of error, and change, understood as structural or cultural adaptation, the risk of theological drift becomes real. Critics warn that prolonged ambiguity erodes trust and allows unresolved tensions to masquerade as unity. The Communion is therefore confronted not merely with a simple choice between faithfulness and compromise, but with a deeper tension between two long-standing Anglican instincts. The instinct toward separation, which prioritises doctrinal clarity yet risks severing the tradition from its historical and ecclesial foundations. And the instinct toward staying, which prioritises continuity and shared discernment yet risks confusion when the nature of reform remains undefined. Missional Implications The implications of delinking from Canterbury are indeed immense. The central issue is not simply whether provinces choose to leave or remain within the historic structures of the Communion. Rather, it concerns the more fundamental question of what defines Anglican identity. When Anglicanism is reduced to adherence to a single interpretive framework, such as the Jerusalem Declaration, its rich theological and historical breadth is diminished, and separation becomes an almost inevitable outcome. By contrast, Anglicanism in its historic form is rooted in Scripture interpreted within the life of the Church, sustained by the Book of Common Prayer and guided by conciliar discernment. From within this broader and more faithful understanding, remaining in the Communion and pursuing reform emerges as the more coherent path. The primary challenge, therefore, is not the reality of change itself, but change undertaken without theological consistency, historical accountability or communal deliberation. The future of Anglicanism will depend not only on the direction chosen but on the extent to which that choice embodies the breadth, humility, and patience that have long characterized the Anglican tradition. Establishing a Global Anglican Communion and urging provinces to delink from Canterbury represents a significant reconfiguration of Anglican identity. These developments do not occur in isolation. Instead, they reveal the wider structural and theological consequences that emerge when doctrinal boundaries become the basis for jurisdictional realignment. It is to these broader ecclesial, relational and missional implications that we now turn. In 2007, the Church of Nigeria removed all references to “communion with the See of Canterbury” from its constitution. This redefined its relationships with other provinces, not based on geographic boundaries but on shared doctrine and biblical interpretation. This shift had far-reaching consequences for the province’s engagement with the wider Communion. One immediate outcome was that the Church of Nigeria gained constitutional authority to “create convocations and chaplaincies of like-minded faithful outside Nigeria” and to appoint individuals, within or beyond Nigeria, to oversee them under the jurisdiction of the Nigerian Primate. This provision enabled the establishment of churches under Nigerian oversight in the United States, including the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) and eventually the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Such a precedent raises a critical question. What would prevent provinces labelled “revisionist” from applying the same logic to create parallel jurisdictions within GAFCON-aligned provinces such as Uganda, Nigeria or Kenya? If doctrinal affinity becomes the primary criterion for jurisdictional expansion, the Communion risks entering an era of reciprocal interventions, competing ecclesiastical structures, and deepening fragmentation. The mission field is changing quickly. CANA was created to offer pastoral oversight for conservative Nigerian Anglicans in the United States. Today, demographic trends and cultural shifts show a major missiological transition. American Anglicanism is becoming more culturally integrated and more liturgically diverse. David Goodhew’s recent analysis of The Episcopal Church’s post-COVID attendance patterns highlights this. Two congregations now hold services in Igbo, one of Nigeria’s major languages spoken by hundreds of thousands of Americans. Seven parishes have also introduced Latin services. These developments show a shifting ecclesial landscape. Immigrant communities are no longer isolated cultural enclaves. They are active contributors to a broader and more connected American religious environment. This challenges earlier assumptions that African-rooted Anglican jurisdictions in North America serve only as cultural sanctuaries. Instead, they are participating in a shared and rapidly evolving missional context. Archbishop Peter Jensen argues that GAFCON is not a protest movement but a mission movement. Its goal is to expand evangelism, discipleship and church planting. Yet this vision is weakened by the growing fragmentation of the Church. Fragmentation creates parallel structures and competing priorities. It strains relationships and reduces the coherence of Anglican witness. As these divisions deepen, the missional energy GAFCON promotes becomes harder to sustain. This fragmentation also places provinces under pressure to choose sides. Such decisions threaten long-standing partnerships that once supported global cooperation. Theologians like Michael Ramsey and Rowan Williams remind us that Anglican strength has never come from rigid uniformity. Instead, it comes from sustaining communion despite theological diversity. That core principle is now severely tested, as the Church must decide whether it will allow division to shape its identity or seek unity that strengthens its mission. Historically, Anglican missions have assumed that coherent oversight fosters coherent witness. A shared proclamation of the gospel, an integrated pattern of discipleship, and a unified deployment of resources have enabled Anglicans to minister with clarity and confidence. Overlapping jurisdictions, however, disperse these energies. Clergy and congregations must navigate conflicting lines of authority rather than focus on the pastoral and evangelistic needs of their communities. Competing structures generate parallel programs, duplicate ministries and foster rivalry where collaboration is essential. The result is a diminished public witness, eroded trust among the faithful and a mission field increasingly uncertain about Anglican identity and purpose. In this respect, overlapping jurisdictions do not merely complicate canonical order; they strike at the heart of Anglican ecclesiology. They undermine the Church’s vocation to be a visible sign of unity and a credible instrument of God’s reconciling mission. They fracture what the Anglican tradition has understood as the bishop-in-synod and replace it with a patchwork of competing voices. The cumulative effect is centrifugal rather than centripetal, dispersing the Church’s witness and diminishing its capacity to proclaim Christ with the clarity, coherence and catholic integrity that have long characterized Anglicanism. Paths Forward These mounting tensions have brought the Communion to a moment of profound uncertainty. For more than two decades, Anglicans have carried the persistent question of whether we would remain together or gradually drift apart. Earlier realignments, often undertaken with deep conviction, were framed as necessary attempts to safeguard the faith during periods of perceived doctrinal compromise. At their best, these actions sought to provide clarity in moments that felt marked by confusion. Today, however, we sense that the Communion has reached a new and more decisive turning point. In 2023, ten Global South primates publicly denounced recognition of the Archbishop of Canterbury as primus inter pares following his support for same-sex blessings. Their declaration signalled a significant rupture in their relationship with Canterbury and exposed the depth of the theological and relational fractures now shaping the Anglican world. Responding to these changing dynamics, Archbishop Paul Kwong, chair of the ACC in 2024, launched a process to consider future directions for the Communion. The Nairobi–Cairo Proposals from IASCUFO urge the Church to reconsider its understanding of shared life, drawing again on the 1930 Lambeth Conference and calling for leadership structures that reflect today’s global Anglican realities. IASCUFO’s latest recommendations advocate for more diverse Communion leadership. They propose that the Archbishop of Canterbury convene a council of regional primates to share pastoral duties and represent the Communion as needed. The archbishop would remain the chief ecumenical representative but could delegate involvement where appropriate. For the largely symbolic ACC Presidency, IASCUFO suggests simplifying the ACC’s structure to clarify the Chair’s role. The Archbishop of Canterbury would continue as an ex officio member of both the ACC and its Standing Committee, serving alongside five other primates. Together, these steps seek to align Communion leadership with contemporary global needs. At the same time, developments within the Church of England further reveal the complexity of the moment. The 2026 General Synod’s decision to pause the Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process on sexuality, relationships, and gender demonstrates that the Communion is wrestling not merely with doctrinal disagreements but with fundamentally different visions of its identity and future. These global shifts coincide with significant changes within the mission field itself. Increasing participation and influence of conservative immigrant communities, particularly within The Episcopal Church, indicate a growing cultural sensitivity in Western Anglicanism. This development disproves the belief that African-rooted Anglican bodies in North America are mainly cultural refuges. Instead, these communities are emerging as active contributors to a more diverse and interconnected ecclesial landscape, helping to reshape both liturgical life and missional priorities. In such a moment of testing, the wisdom of Archbishop Desmond Tutu remains instructive. As he led South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he reminded us that naming wounds is not meant to imprison us in the past but to release us from its grip. His pastoral insight calls us to confront present challenges with honesty and hope, refusing to let fear or bitterness determine our future. Now, as decisive actions unfold across the Communion, we stand together at a genuine crossroads. The question before us is not merely institutional or structural; it is deeply spiritual and communal. Will we choose a path that leads to further fragmentation, or will we seek reforms that honour our shared foundations while allowing space for healing and renewal? Whichever path we discern, may we walk it with humility, patience and a deep longing for the unity for which Christ Himself prayed, a unity that strengthens the Church’s witness and reflects the reconciling love of God. Conclusion Beloved, we find ourselves living through a moment none of us anticipated, yet one that now demands our faithful discernment. The future being imagined for us—whether through GAFCON’s restructuring or through shifts within the historic Instruments of Communion—carries profound implications for our fellowship, our mission, and our shared identity as Anglicans. These developments have arrived with unsettling speed, and they require from us not fear, but clarity, courage, and prayerful deliberation. GAFCON offers a vision grounded in conviction, yet one that risks deepening division through an increasingly narrow ecclesial framework. Remaining within the historic Anglican Communion provides continuity and a shared theological inheritance, yet it too requires honest engagement and genuine reform. Neither path is without cost. But whichever course we choose, it must arise not from reaction or external pressure, but from our desire to remain faithful to Jesus Christ—rooted in Scripture, shaped by our Anglican heritage and committed to walking together even when the road is difficult. Thus, our calling in this moment is not simply to choose between separation and continuity, but to discern what it means to be authentically Anglican in a time of global upheaval. We must resist the temptation to decide in haste or to allow louder voices—whether global or local—to dictate our future. Instead, we are invited to listen attentively to the Spirit, to one another, and to the witness of our tradition. The unity for which Christ prayed is not a unity devoid of conviction, but a unity formed through humility, patience, mutual accountability and hope. My prayer is that our province will find the courage to pursue a path that neither fractures our Communion nor abandons the conciliar wisdom that has sustained it for generations. May we choose a future not shaped by fear but illumined by grace, one in which love and truth meet, and in which the Anglican Church of Kenya bears faithful witness to the reconciling mission of God in a divided world. The Rt. Revd. Dr. Francis Omondi Otieno is the second Anglican Bishop of Garissa in the Anglican Church of Kenya.

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Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said he believes a demonic element is manifesting in U.S. politics during an interview with The Spectator that aired April 17, 2026. | Screenshot/YouTube/The Spectator By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter April 21, 2026 Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said during a recent interview that he believes a demonic element is manifesting in the political culture of the United States, pinpointing the rhetoric of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth as a prime example. Williams, who served as the ceremonial head of the Church of England from 2002 to 2012, suggested to The Spectator in an April 17 podcast that the recurring political applications of the word "demonic" by figures such as former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., or Tucker Carlson, are potentially misguided, though not necessarily entirely false. "On the surface level, it's another example of the incredibly overheated picture of political argument in the States at the moment," he said of such terminology. "And for nearly 2,000 years, people have been identifying the Antichrist with people they don't like very much; not exactly new." Carlson and Greene, both of whom were once key supporters of President Donald Trump and his political agenda, have since broken with him over the Iran war while accusing him of exhibiting characteristics typically associated with the Antichrist. After Trump's profane Truth Social threatening to annihilate Iranian civilization on Easter, followed by a meme portraying him as a Christ-like figure a week later, Greene said his behavior is "more than blasphemy" and "an Antichrist spirit."ist spirit." During his weekly monologue last Wednesday, Carlson accused Trump of an increasingly sacrilegious attitude toward Christianity, citing his public feud with Pope Leo XIV and social media posts that he said were "a mockery of God." Reading from the description of "the man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-12 and the prophecy of a boastful king in Daniel 11:36, Carlson claimed Trump has shown the traits described in such passages, though he said it remains "unclear" if Trump is the Antichrist. Williams observed that accusations of being the Antichrist have been leveled at various figures throughout Christian history, including by many Anglicans against individual popes and the papacy generally, which he dismissed as "nonsense." He noted the Apostle John described "antichrist" as a spirit, which Williams said has manifested in different ways throughout history. "Already, in the New Testament, you have the qualification in the letters of John that Antichrist is all over the place," he said. "It's not going to be one enormous figure with horns on his head taking over the world so you can say, 'Oh yes, that's Antichrist, I'd know him anywhere.'" Williams instead identified the spirit of Antichrist as the "deeply subversive, anti-life, anti-God elements which are creeping around all the time, and there are those in power who enable them." "In that sense, I'll put my neck on the block and say, I think there is something demonic, in the wider sense, in the political culture of the United States at the moment: the permission being given to articulate, in the name of God, views which are, I've thought, completely antithetical to the Gospel," he said. Williams singled out the religious overtones from Hegseth, who has invoked imprecatory psalms against foreign adversaries and used biblical rhetoric to suggest God's favor rests on U.S. military action in Iran and elsewhere. "Pete Hegseth's rhetoric about the violent obliteration of enemies, period. That strikes me as diabolical, in that broad sense, of something which is working against the Gospel," he said. Williams' comments come amid an ongoing fracture among Christians over the war in Iran. Evangelical leaders such as Franklin Graham have stood behind the president and the war effort, while some Anglican and Roman Catholic leaders have raised concerns about its moral justification. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services, claimed earlier this month that the preemptive nature of the U.S.-Israeli strike against Iran rendered it unjust. He urged Catholic service members in a moral dilemma to "do as little harm as you can." Pope Leo XIV has condemned the violence in strong terms, claiming earlier this month that "God does not bless any conflict" and that "anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs." In a homily during his tour in Cameroon last week, the pope claimed the world is being "ravaged by a handful of tyrants." Williams' successor, present Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, expressed solidarity with the pope in a statement she issued last week. "I stand with my brother in Christ, his holiness Pope Leo XIV, in his courageous call for a kingdom of peace. As innocent people are killed and displaced, families torn apart and futures destroyed, the human cost of war is incalculable," she said. Williams, who has been giving interviews after publishing a new book last month, recently made headlines for warning that the global Anglican Communion might cease to exist amid tensions over gender and sexuality. END

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD www.VirtueOnline.org April 22, 2026 As the denomination sinks slowly toward its twilight years, carried along by an aging congregation of Baby Boomers with few younger members filling the pews behind them, corruption has risen in near-perfect proportion to the weakening of its institutional safeguards. The Episcopal Church did not arrive at its present crisis overnight. What is unfolding today — a cascade of financial irregularities, sexual misconduct allegations, institutional opacity, and eroding moral authority — is the product of decades of theological drift, demographic decline, and the quiet collapse of internal accountability. This is not unique to religion. Across history and across sectors, the pattern is grimly consistent: declining institutions breed the conditions in which corruption flourishes. When oversight weakens, norms erode, enforcement becomes discretionary, and bad actors face fewer consequences. The Episcopal Church, for all its storied history and social prestige, is no exception to this iron law of institutional decay. The Long Decline: Demography and Theology The rot set in gradually. Beginning in the late 1960s, the Episcopal Church embarked on a series of progressive theological revisions that alienated large segments of its traditional membership. The ordination of women to the priesthood in 1976, while celebrated by reformers, provoked the departure of tens of thousands of traditionalists who formed splinter Anglican bodies. The revision of the Book of Common Prayer that same year — replacing the majestic 1928 prayer book with a modernized text — further fractured the congregation. The most convulsive rupture came in 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated Gene Robinson, an openly gay man in a partnered relationship, as Bishop of New Hampshire. The decision sent shockwaves through the worldwide Anglican Communion and triggered the largest schism in the denomination’s modern history. Entire dioceses — including San Joaquin, Fort Worth, Quincy, and Pittsburgh — voted to leave the Episcopal Church and align with more conservative Anglican provinces in Africa and South America. Protracted and expensive litigation over church property followed, consuming millions of dollars in legal fees and consuming years of leadership attention. The numbers tell the rest of the story. By 2024, active Episcopal membership had fallen below 1.6 million — less than half of its peak. Average Sunday attendance had declined even more sharply, to roughly 450,000 nationally. The median age of an Episcopalian is now estimated to be over 60. In many dioceses, the majority of remaining congregants are retired. New church plants are rare; parish closures are routine. Into this environment of diminished numbers, reduced financial resources, weakened institutional memory, and distracted leadership, corruption found fertile soil. Institutional Decay and the Corruption Equation Social scientists who study organizational failure have long identified the relationship between institutional decline and rising misconduct. The causal chain tends to run in a predictable direction: as membership and revenue fall, organizations reduce administrative and oversight staff; as oversight thins, the culture of accountability weakens; as that culture weakens, individuals — whether motivated by greed, lust, or simply the human temptation to take advantage of diminished scrutiny — begin to act on impulses they might otherwise have suppressed. The Episcopal Church has followed this script almost precisely. Budget cuts at the denominational and diocesan level have reduced compliance and audit functions. Volunteer-driven governance structures — vestries, standing committees, diocesan councils — are composed of well-meaning laypeople who often lack the expertise or bandwidth to detect sophisticated financial misconduct. Clergy, whose authority within their congregations is substantial and whose access to parish funds is often minimally supervised, occupy a position of structural vulnerability to temptation. The result has been a visible and documented rise in cases of financial misappropriation, sexual misconduct, and abuse of ecclesiastical authority — many of which, as the evidence below demonstrates, have been handled with a degree of institutional opacity that has compounded rather than resolved the damage. A Disciplinary System Built to Fail At the heart of the accountability problem is Title IV of the Episcopal Church’s canons — the denomination’s clergy discipline framework. Revised substantially in 2011, Title IV was intended to modernize and professionalize the handling of complaints against clergy. In practice, it has created a procedurally dense, discretion-laden system that critics say is designed more to protect the institution and its clergy than to deliver justice to complainants. The statistics are damning. In a six-month window from August 2023 to February 2024, thirty-four formal complaints were filed against bishops with the Church’s Disciplinary Board for Bishops. Of those, seven were dismissed outright. Eighteen never progressed beyond the initial intake and inquiry stage. Only a handful proceeded to anything resembling a formal hearing — and formal hearings, under Title IV, remain exceptionally rare. The structural problems are multiple and well-documented: Near-total confidentiality: Historically, almost all Title IV proceedings remained confidential unless a case reached a formal hearing panel — something that almost never occurs. This means that clergy can be the subject of repeated complaints, receive informal discipline or no discipline at all, and move from parish to parish or diocese to diocese without their new employers having any knowledge of their history. Broad discretionary power: The Presiding Bishop and diocesan bishops hold enormous discretionary authority over whether to release information about disciplinary proceedings. In practice, this discretion has overwhelmingly been exercised in favor of institutional silence. Complainant barriers: The church’s own documentation acknowledges that its Title IV protocols are overly complex and not user-friendly for complainants, many of whom are already traumatized. The result is a system that systematically disadvantages those it purports to serve. Clergy mobility loophole: Deposed clergy — those who have been formally removed from ordained ministry — have in numerous documented cases continued to represent themselves as active priests, often in contexts involving vulnerable individuals. This system-wide opacity has allowed misconduct by clergy to go unaddressed or unresolved for years, and in some cases has enabled serial abusers to continue operating within church settings long after initial complaints were filed. Sexual Misconduct: A Culture of Protection Among the most troubling patterns documented in recent years is the systematic protection of clergy accused of sexual misconduct, sometimes at the highest levels of the denomination’s episcopal leadership. Multiple bishops have faced credible allegations that they shielded colleagues accused of serious misconduct rather than prioritizing the safety and well-being of victims. The pattern typically involves the suppression or dismissal of initial complaints, informal arrangements that allow accused clergy to quietly resign or transfer rather than face canonical proceedings, and the deployment of institutional resources to discourage or complicate civil legal action by victims. The problem is not limited to heterosexual abuse. A survey of LGBT Episcopalians — a demographic that the church has gone to extraordinary lengths to welcome and affirm — revealed that a significant percentage of LGB respondents reported experiencing inappropriate behavior within church settings. This finding is particularly striking given the denomination’s strong public commitment to LGBTQ+ inclusion and dignity. It suggests that the culture enabling abuse is structural, not merely ideological, and that progressive theology has not produced progressive safeguarding practice. The trial of Episcopal priest Richard Losch, who faced allegations of raping a minor, illustrates both the severity of the crisis and the inadequacy of the institutional response. The trial ended in a hung jury — an outcome that raised profound questions about the church’s ability to investigate, document, and refer serious allegations in a manner that supports effective prosecution. Critics noted that the church’s internal handling of the initial complaint, prior to civil law enforcement involvement, may have impaired the evidentiary basis for the criminal case. Anglican Watch and the Rise of External Accountability In the absence of effective internal accountability, a measure of external scrutiny has emerged. AnglicanWatch.com, an independent watchdog website, has systematically catalogued cases of moral and financial misconduct within the Episcopal Church and broader Anglican structures in North America. Its documentation — covering dozens of cases involving bishops, priests, and deacons — represents the most comprehensive public record of Episcopal Church disciplinary failures currently available. The site operates as a form of accountability journalism, publishing case narratives, canonical analysis, and in some instances communications from diocesan officials that would otherwise remain confidential. Its existence reflects the degree to which the Episcopal Church’s internal systems have failed to inspire confidence among its own members. Case Study: The Rev. Roger Haenke The case of the Reverend Roger Haenke offers a representative illustration of how the system’s failures compound themselves over time. Haenke was suspended and ultimately deposed under Title IV clergy discipline after the Diocese of San Diego initiated formal proceedings against him in August 2025. The nature of the underlying misconduct has not been fully disclosed publicly — itself a product of the confidentiality regime that Title IV enforces. What is documented is what happened after deposition. Rather than withdrawing from ministry, Haenke registered a personal website on which he continued to represent himself as holding priestly status. Anglican Watch, which tracked the case, noted that the site was still active sometime after his deposition and issued a public warning that Haenke should not be engaged in any capacity involving vulnerable populations. The organization encouraged anyone with knowledge of his activities to contact civil law enforcement. The Haenke case illustrates a recurring pattern: deposition removes a clergy member’s canonical authorization but does not prevent them from continuing to present themselves as a priest in digital or community contexts where their deposed status is unknown. The church has no effective mechanism for notifying the public — or even future employers outside the denomination — of deposition. Financial Corruption: The Episcopal Church Women Scandal Financial misconduct has proven no less corrosive than sexual misconduct, and in some respects more visible, because it leaves an audit trail. The case currently unfolding around the Episcopal Church Women (ECW) is perhaps the most striking example of financial corruption to emerge from within the denomination in recent years. The ECW is an organization with a history stretching back to 1871, when it was founded as a vehicle for women’s lay ministry within Episcopal congregations. For well over a century, it has championed women’s participation in church life, supported children’s educational programs, administered community grants, and embodied what its founding charter describes as stewardship in Christ. It has been, by any measure, one of the more admirable expressions of lay vocation within the Episcopal tradition. That legacy has now been shadowed by a criminal investigation into significant financial irregularities within the organization’s diocesan chapter in Ohio. The investigation was initiated after the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio reported to law enforcement that substantial discrepancies had been identified in the ECW’s financial accounts. The Cleveland Police Department is actively assisting in the investigation. The diocese has worked with ECW leadership to secure the affected accounts and initiate a comprehensive forensic review. The full scope of the alleged misappropriation has not been publicly disclosed, and the investigation is ongoing. But the case has sent a tremor through ECW chapters nationally, prompting questions about the adequacy of financial controls across the organization’s diocesan structures. For an organization whose identity is rooted in stewardship and charitable purpose, the damage to institutional credibility is considerable regardless of how the investigation ultimately resolves. Conclusion: A Church at the Crossroads The Episcopal Church stands at a genuinely critical juncture — not merely in the rhetorical sense that the word “critical” has come to imply, but in the precise sense that the choices made in the next several years will determine whether the institution experiences a managed reformation or an unmanaged collapse. The forces at work are not mysterious. Demographic decline is real and accelerating. Financial resources are contracting. Institutional authority is diminished. The accountability structures that might contain misconduct have been shown, repeatedly, to be inadequate to the task. And the willingness of independent observers — from AnglicanWatch to secular news organizations to civil law enforcement — to scrutinize the church’s internal conduct has increased precisely as the church’s own self-regulatory capacity has weakened. There are those within the denomination who understand what is at stake and are calling, with increasing urgency, for structural reform: a genuine overhaul of Title IV to eliminate the confidentiality regime that shields serial offenders; mandatory financial audits at the parish and diocesan level with results made available to congregants; a public registry of deposed clergy; and a cultural reckoning with the ways in which institutional loyalty has too often been placed above the protection of victims. Whether those calls will be heeded — or whether the institution’s remaining leadership has the will and the capacity to undertake reforms of that magnitude — remains, at this writing, an open question. What is no longer open to serious dispute is the nature and extent of the problem. David W. Virtue, DD, is the founder and editor of VirtueOnline (www.virtueonline.org), an independent Anglican news and commentary website.

Bishop Ashley Null at Annaba--photo Vatican News www.jmeca.org.uk April 21, 2026 Pope Leo XIV and the Anglican Bishop of North Africa, Dr Ashley Null, have something important in common, namely a great affection for, and sense of a bond with St Augustine. The Pope, because he belongs to the Augustinian Order; Dr Null, because his sphere of academic expertise is Reformation Theology, which owes much to St Augustine. His writings deeply impacted the development of the formularies of the independent English church under King Edward and Queen Elizabeth. (Both Dr Null and Luther were attracted by a characteristic North African Christian theological tradition that centres on the ideas of grace and gratitude). So it was appropriate that the two should meet in Algeria where Augustine was born and where, at what once was called Hippo, he was himself a Bishop. Algeria was the first stop on Pope Leo’s African trip and though much of the press coverage has centered on the Pope’s words about peace and tyrants, this was also an important moment for the Christian Church in this Muslim country. At the Basilica of our Lady of Africa in Algiers, Bishop Null had a place of honour in the sanctuary where he was presented to the Pope as the representative of non-Roman Christian Churches. Later he went to Hippo (modern day Annaba). He writes: "In Annaba, I was given a massive seat on the first row of the congregation with no one else beside me in the row. Behind me was a French imperial princess and her young son. I was asked to wear my non-eucharistic episcopal robes, so I did, as you can tell from the picture!” He added, “the Anglican Church was shown much honor and respect during the Pope's visit.” The Rector of Holy Trinity Church in Algiers, Rev’d Craig Watson was present at the Basilica in Algiers and was honoured by being invited to sit inside the building. The majority of the crowd were outside (having to brave appalling weather)! He has also reflected on the experience. He writes: “The Pope’s visit to Algeria was historic.. The government showed vision and extended a warm welcome to him as he walked in the footsteps of Saint Augustine. Algerian Christians were delighted that he came to their land for the first time and they hope that this may be a significant moment in the attitude towards the Christian community here in Algeria. "Adel Kader, the Father of the Algerian Nation, was imprisoned and then sent into exile in Syria after his surrender to the French. During his time in exile in Damascus, he defended the Christian community and the Jewish community from those in the wider community who wanted to cause them harm and suppress them, during a time of unrest in that land. Today the Christian community in Algeria continues to be grateful for Kader's founding vision of Christians having a full place in Algerian society. "The Pope reflected on the importance of unity, love and prayer as key tenets of the Christian life and encouraged all those who call themselves Christ's followers to embrace this way of life. Cardinal Vesco, on behalf of the Catholic Church in Algeria, reaffirmed the ecumenical strength that exists in Algeria and the loving partnership that exists between the various Christian denominations, and welcomed the Pope wholeheartedly on behalf of all Christian churches in the land. "The desire of the Christian church to contribute positively to the development of the nation of Algeria was evident in the welcome that the Pope received from all the Christian churches and the Algerian authorities. Going forward Christians are eager to work with the Algerian Government to build on this excellent event to further develop the vision of Adel Kader in practical ways to support Christian ministry, as well as mutual understanding and partnership with Muslims.The wisdom and courage shown by the Algerian government in inviting the Pope and organising an excellent visit is to be commended and we look forward to the positive things that will develop as a result.” Bishop Ashley spoke to Vatican News before the Papal Mass at Annaba. He said, “I think the truth is, the only thing more beautiful than the landscape and the seascape of Algeria is the beauty of the hearts of the people”. He admired how the Algerian people “opened their arms and their hearts” to embrace Pope Leo, “to make him feel welcome”, and “to honor his mission of peace”.

COMMENTARY By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org April 19, 2026 The Episcopal Diocese of Western New York is fighting for its institutional life. Founded in 1838 — the first diocese ever to be divided from another, and notably the first not to follow state lines — it once stood as a flagship of Anglican witness in the Great Lakes region. St. Paul’s Cathedral graces the heart of downtown Buffalo, a monument to an era when the diocese commanded cultural authority and spiritual vitality. Today, that authority is in question, and that vitality has measurably ebbed. The raw numbers tell the story plainly. In 2015, the diocese reported 9,336 members across its seven-county territory. By 2023, that figure had collapsed to 6,014 — a loss of more than 35 percent in eight years. Average Sunday attendance has fallen to just 1,646 persons across 52 congregations, (average size congregation is now 31), with plate-and-pledge income from the diocese’s 51 filing congregations totaling a fragile $4.48 million. No membership statistics were even reported for 2024 — itself a telling silence. These are not numbers compatible with institutional confidence. This collapse mirrors the wider denomination. The Episcopal Church, which once boasted over three million baptized members, has shed more than half its baptized membership since the 1960s and now reports fewer than 1.5 million adherents nationally. Sunday attendance across the entire church has fallen below 400,000 — less than half of what it was when the current presiding bishop was ordained a priest. The denomination posted its first churchwide budget deficit in recent memory, and average pledge size has dropped more than 15 percent. In Western New York, a regional church that was already thin is becoming thinner still. The Sean Rowe Interregnum and Its Aftermath Until November 2024, the Diocese of Western New York had been sharing a bishop with the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania under a cost-cutting partnership established in 2019. That bishop was the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe — now the 28th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, having been elected on the first ballot at the 81st General Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. Rowe was 49 at the time of his election, the youngest presiding bishop in the church’s history. The proposed merger between Western New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania — the logical endpoint of the shared-bishop arrangement — collapsed when Rowe’s elevation to presiding bishop removed the chief architect of the partnership. The diocese was left holding neither a diocesan bishop nor a clear path forward. Rowe’s departure did not merely create a vacancy; it exposed a deeper vacancy of identity that no organizational restructuring had addressed. Rowe is not known for theological orthodoxy. His public statements have signaled alignment with the Episcopal Church’s progressive agenda on sexuality and doctrine. He has described the belief that the denomination is dying as “a lie from the pit of hell,” a rhetorical flourish that drew wide attention but convinced few who have looked honestly at the parochial reports. His vision for institutional survival is structural — mergers, shared staff, organizational “experimentation” — with no corresponding call to return to apostolic doctrine, proclaim sin and salvation, or recover the Great Commission. What is conspicuously absent from his reform agenda, as orthodox observers have noted, is any theology of repentance. The Bishop Search: A Proxy War for the Diocese’s Soul The diocese’s Standing Committee has now initiated a bishop search, and the language it is using is revealing. The diocesan profile “currently under development,” the committee has acknowledged, “is reflecting a deeper truth — that we do not yet have a fully integrated or clearly articulated diocesan identity.” That is a remarkable admission from a diocese that has existed since 1838. Translation: before the diocese can agree on who should lead it, it must first agree on what it believes and where it is going. The committee has also declared that the search is entering “a season of reset,” framing the pause not as institutional paralysis but as “faithfulness to one another and to our mission to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” That phrase — “to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ” — is doing a great deal of work in a denomination where the content of that proclamation has become deeply contested. To orthodox ears, it sounds like a lifeline. To the progressive establishment, it sounds like a placeholder. The diocese has hired a communications consultant to facilitate the listening process and help navigate competing visions. This is worth noting. A diocese of 6,000 members, with an average Sunday attendance barely exceeding 1,600 persons and a combined pledge income of $4.5 million, is spending scarce resources on a communications consultant to manage internal conflict rather than on evangelism, church planting, or pastoral care. The optics reveal the priorities. The Florida Precedent — A Cautionary Tale Those who doubt what awaits an orthodox candidate in Western New York need only study the Diocese of Florida’s recent bishop search. An orthodox priest emerged as a viable candidate. He was not accused of heresy, moral failure, or administrative incompetence. He was accused — implicitly and explicitly — of insufficient enthusiasm for the ordination of openly gay priests and insufficient deference to the church’s pansexual agenda as codified in General Convention Resolution 2012-A049 and its successors. He was excoriated, his reputation shredded in ecclesiastical forums, and he was driven from the process entirely. A second attempt produced the same result. The message was unmistakable: deviation from the progressive line, however modest and however politely expressed, will not be tolerated. The same machinery is operative in Western New York. Any candidate who declines to fully affirm the church’s entrenched sexual progressivism — regardless of his theological depth, pastoral gifts, or administrative competence — will face the same fate. The church’s gay lobby is organized, well-funded, and deeply embedded in the search and consent process. It does not lose these contests. The die, as they say, has been cast. The Laity’s Silent Rebellion There is a persistent and well-documented reality in the Episcopal Church: the laity are, on average, considerably more conservative in faith and morals than the clergy and episcopate who represent them. Surveys consistently show that significant numbers of Episcopalians in the pews hold traditional views on Scripture, marriage, and sexual ethics — views that are not reflected in the policies and pronouncements of the institutional church. Most say nothing. Episcopalians are, by cultural formation and social instinct, conflict-averse. They do not make scenes. They do not organize caucuses or circulate petitions. They simply, quietly, stop coming. That is precisely what the statistics reveal has happened in Western New York. The 35 percent membership loss over eight years is not primarily a demographic story, though demographics play a role. It is a theological story. Faithful Anglicans who sought a church that proclaimed the Gospel without ideological qualification have, over time, found that church elsewhere — in the Anglican Church in North America, in independent Anglican congregations, or not at all. The diocese’s standing committee is correct that a “reset” is needed. The question is whether the institutional church has the will, and the freedom, to actually execute one. The Path Forward: What Faithfulness Actually Requires The Diocese of Western New York has, in its bishop search, a moment that very few Episcopal dioceses have been able to seize in the past two decades: the freedom to ask, openly, what faithfulness to the Gospel actually requires. The handful of dioceses that have maintained orthodox leadership — Central Florida, Dallas, and a small number of southern dioceses among them — are not coincidentally the dioceses showing the most institutional resilience. A faithful path forward for Western New York would require the election of a bishop who can articulate a clear, unapologetic Gospel proclamation; who will hold the line on apostolic doctrine not as a culture-war position but as pastoral necessity; who will speak honestly to the laity about what the numerical decline means and what repentance — institutional and spiritual — actually looks like. It would require the diocese to resist the pressure to merge its identity into the church’s progressive monoculture, and to make the case, congregation by congregation, that orthodox Anglican Christianity offers something the surrounding culture cannot: objective truth, genuine community, and an eternal horizon. Whether that path is still open — given the structural pressures, the entrenched lobby, and the diocese’s financial fragility — is the honest question the Standing Committee must answer before it proceeds any further. The faithful people in those 52 congregations deserve nothing less than that honesty. David W. Virtue, DD is the founder and editor of VirtueOnline, the world’s most widely read orthodox Anglican news service. You can read more here: www.virtueonline.org

by Paddy Benson Valonia Press, Sevenoaks. 2026 147pp Review by Rev. Dr. Chris Sugden https://anglicanmainstream.org/article/the-church-and-the-nyayo-state/ Daniel Arap Moi, as president of Kenya from 1978 to 2002, christened his approach “Nyayo” claiming to follow in the ‘footsteps’ of the revered independence leader and first President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta. This was eventually a piece of PR to suggest he was continuing the policies of Kenyatta. But he radically changed the centres of power in Kenya, to be lodged in the Kenya African Nationalist Union (KANU) which was the only political party allowed in the ‘new’ one party state. Arap Moi, who made a Christian profession, was chairman of KANU and President of Kenya. It was nationalist policy and any disagreement was judged to be disloyalty to the nation. By 1982 anxiety was growing that ‘Nyayoism’ might be another word for a presidential personality cult and dictatorial rule. But Benson gives a unique analysis of Moi and Nyayoism as an ideology. Kenyatta had excluded the people from formal political processes. Moi included them but on condition of the loyalty required of all members of the leadership corps to support one another in implementing a single vision for society. The church no less than other institutions was required to follow this as well. In this situation, Bishop David Gitari of Embu, subsequently Archbishop of Kenya, preached a number of sermons on various occasions, such as the launch of an archdeaconry, confirmation service, and consecration of bishops. He did not enter into the politics of the situation. He based his sermons on careful biblical exposition that called for truth and justice. In doing so the sermons lay out a solid grounding for the church to be concerned for the wellbeing of the whole community, not just of its membership. He and his colleagues engaged with the realities of political power and did not spend time lamenting the theoretical weakness of the ruling philosophy. He did not offer a theological alternative to Nyayoism. While the State believed in a doctrine of progress under the guidance of divine providence, the Church was conscious of being in the shadow of God’s impending judgement. Gitari engaged in prophecy which aims at people as personifications of institutions and situations which perpetuate circumstances contrary to the will of God for the world. And Nyayoism prized loyalty about truth. His critique was tantamount to treason and he was fiercely criticized in Parliament and the press but the church remained one of the few remaining organisations with licence to dissent. Archdeacon (in the CofE) Paddy Benson was a close colleague of Bishop Gitari from 1978 – 1989 and his acting Director of Communications. He recorded the whole episode in his MPhil thesis completed within 15 years of the events he described. His thesis is published more or less as he wrote it 30 years ago. It provides an eyewitness account of the events and an analysis of the different ideologies of the party, local leadership, the nation state and the engagement of the church. His study is of value to anyone wanting to understand the development of Kenya and to see a model of engagement by senior Anglicans and Presbyterians with issues of justice and truth in national life. END

Rite to be added to the Church in Wales' Book of Common Prayer By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org April 17, 2026 The Church in Wales Governing Body has voted to make permanent provision for church blessings of same-sex civil marriages and civil partnerships. Five years ago, the Governing Body declared it "pastorally unsustainable" to offer no formal recognition to those in committed same-sex relationships, and approved a blessing rite on a five-year experimental basis. That trial period expires in September. At its meeting in Llandudno, the Governing Body debated a motion to make the provision permanent by incorporating the rite into the Book of Common Prayer. The measure required a two-thirds majority across each of the three Orders: Bishops, Clergy, and Laity. All five bishops voted in favor. Clergy approved the measure 32–7, with five abstentions; laity voted 48–8, with two abstentions. The Church in Wales does not yet permit same-sex marriage. However, following several months of listening exercises, the bishops issued a pastoral letter in November 2025 indicating that a majority favored the view that "the time is right to offer equal marriage." Further proposals are expected in April 2027 to change both civil and church law accordingly. Archbishop of Wales, the Most Revd Cherry Vann, said: "I want to thank everyone for the ways in which this debate was conducted — calmly, and with mutual respect. We want everybody to be able to hold their views with integrity whilst not losing sight of the image of God that resides in all of us." Archbishop Vann has been in a relationship with Wendy Diamond, a retired council employee, for 30 years. The two entered a civil partnership in 2015. Vann kept the relationship private until her appointment as Bishop of Monmouth in 2020. Global Anglican Communion Chairman Pushes Back The Most Rev. Dr. Laurent Mbanda, Primate of the Church of Rwanda and Chairman of the Global Anglican Communion, responded sharply to the vote. "Five years ago, the Governing Body of the Church in Wales approved the trial usage of a liturgical rite of blessing for same-sex marriages — and today it has become the first church to make such rites a permanent addition to its Book of Common Prayer," he said. "This decision received unanimous support from the bishops and overwhelming support from both clergy and laity." Mbanda called the vote a departure from Scripture: "The leaders of the Church in Wales have shown their determination to continue to wander from the truth of God's word. For our part, we continue to call upon them to turn back from their error and to 'choose this day' whom they will serve" (Joshua 24:15). He invited disaffected Welsh Anglicans to align with the Global Anglican Communion. "We offer prayers for the faithful in Wales and we invite them — and all biblically faithful Christians throughout the Anglican world — to sign the Jerusalem Declaration and join with us as we seek to proclaim Christ faithfully to the nations."

The Church in Wales runs with gay abandon down the hill into the Abyss, with the Gadarene swine. COMMENTARY By Paul Blackham www.virtueonline.org April 17, 2026 One bishop had to retire recently because of issues with safeguarding, excessive drinking and church members overstepping sexual boundaries at Bangor Cathedral. Just two months ago, in February, a report revealed that a priest who abused a 15-year-old boy rose to the top and became a bishop. The allegations were, of course, covered up by the Church in Wales. There are deep reasons why the Living God with His Church, for long ages, has been so careful to set such clear boundaries around sexuality. Christian marriage has always been modelled on Christ and Church - just as Adam and Eve were. (Ephesians 5:31-32). The celibate single life has always been held up as the higher form of devotion to Christ and Church - as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 7 and Jesus explains in Matthew 19:12. Jesus teaches us that we do not need to be defined by our desires, but rather we can have a new identity that belongs to our glorious eternal future. We can know a freedom to say "no" to our deceitful desires - a freedom to say "yes" to holy love and fruitful service. "The grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age..." (Titus 2:11-12) With sexual boundaries broken down, integrity compromised and purity defiled, it is no surprise that the "Church in Wales" wishes to call down blessings onto what the Bible calls sexually immoral couplings. At their meeting this week, there were still a handful of prophets of the LORD God of Israel left to speak out. We thank God that there still remained, perhaps not seven thousand, but perhaps 7 or 8, who had not bowed the knee. All five bishops voted for sexually immoral blessings, as did clergy by 32 to 7 (with five abstentions), and laity by 48 to 8 (with two abstentions). Those of us who have been in these kinds of gatherings know that it is very hard to speak out for purity, compassion and faithfulness - faced with a tidal wave of peer pressure to go along with the 400 prophets rather than stand with Elijah and trust in the Living God, the Holy One of Israel. There were those who spoke out with courage and faithfulness... Della Nelson offered a detailed critique of the proposed liturgy - showing that it deeply undermines Biblical teaching on marriage and it is "offering marriage under another name". "Rev Melanie Prince, from the diocese of St Davids, said she had been speaking recently to members of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, about how they could help Christians in that part of the world. "Do not water down the gospel we are dying for," was the response she received. Julia Schulz, a lay member from Bangor diocese, added that the blessing "looks like a marriage service in all but name", and that they should remember Bible teachings about the "blueprint for what a Christian marriage is"." Inevitably, there were those who talk a good talk in private, but said nothing in this public event. Some "orthodox" have long since retreated from the field entirely and gone away to cuddle and huddle in their theological "safe spaces". However, even among those who stay on the field of battle, all too many talk as if they want to stand up for Jesus and speak out on the Bible... but when it comes to the moment... they slink and slither away into the shadows, silently, shamefully. I was just speaking to a faithful saint, who spoke out with great courage and compassion at this gathering... and she noted how so many of those who claim to support the Christian Faith, either voted for spiritual suicide or else had nothing at all to say. We pray for those with the Spirit of Elijah who are still fighting for the Church in Wales. The story of Elijah is of a faithful saint who was very zealous for the LORD God of Israel - who was not as alone as he feared he was. When the institutions of that ancient Church were overrun by fertility cults, yet, it was not the end of the story. There was a day when the Living God answered by fire. He has done that in Wales before. May He do that again.... "Pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly... My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins." - James 5:16-20 The Rev Dr Paul Blackham is a Welsh‑based evangelical theologian, pastor, and church planter, active for decades in both England and Wales. END

COMMENTARY David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org April 15, 2026 An AI-generated image depicting Donald Trump as Jesus Christ, posted on Truth Social on Sunday night, brought forth sound and fury from a number of quarters. It was later deleted. The image, which was shared without a written comment by the president, showed Trump donning a traditional white robe and red shawl and healing a man while surrounded by four adoring people, including a nurse and a soldier. In the background, an eagle is flying in front of the U.S. flag to the left; soldiers appear to be ascending toward a heaven-like light in the middle; and another eagle is flying next to military jets to the right. Speaking to reporters outside the Oval Office, Trump said that he posted the image but insisted it was meant to depict him as a doctor, dismissing suggestions that it portrayed him as Jesus Christ as a fabrication by “fake news.” “It's supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better," he said. "And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.” Reaction was swift, mostly condemning the president’s depiction of himself as Jesus Christ, bearing in mind that he has made no pretense of being a Christian. MIKE JOHNSON House Speaker Mike Johnson said he contacted Trump “as soon as I saw it” and told him the image wasn’t being received as intended; Trump agreed and deleted it. Johnson reiterated that he had asked Trump to delete it, and that Trump did not think the image was sacrilegious but had misunderstood how it would be interpreted. ROBERT GAGNON Evangelical theologian Robert Gagnon’s position was essentially that the outrage over the image was overblown. He pointed out that a right-wing influencer named Nick Adams was the true originator of the image on Substack, framing it as less of a direct Trump statement and more of a repost of existing content. Snopes confirmed that the image had first been posted on February 4, 2026, by Nick Adams, a conservative commentator with a history of sharing AI-generated, biblically themed Trump content, who captioned it: “America has been sick for a long time. President Trump is healing this nation.” MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE Even former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once among Trump's most vocal supporters, wrote: “On Orthodox Easter, President Trump attacked the Pope because the Pope is rightly against Trump's war in Iran, and then he posted this picture of himself as if he is replacing Jesus. I completely denounce this, and I'm praying against it.” VP J.D. VANCE Vice President J.D. Vance, pressed in an interview on Fox News, offered a different explanation: “I think the president was posting a joke, and, of course, he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren't understanding his humor.” TIM WHITAKER Tim Whitaker, founder of The New Evangelicals and a critic of Christian nationalism, had this to say: “When Trump posted an AI image of himself depicted as Jesus—healing the sick, surrounded by soldiers and ICE agents and an American flag—my flabbers were genuinely ghasted. Not because I didn't see it coming, but because now it's official. It's out in the open. No more subtext. This is the false gospel of Christian nationalism completing its final form.” Whitaker argued that the image wasn't just blasphemous imagery but represented a deeper theological substitution: “Christian nationalists aren't confused. They're not being manipulated into thinking Trump is like Jesus. They have replaced Jesus with Trump—because the Jesus of the Gospels doesn't give them what they actually want. The Jesus of the Gospels said love your enemies. He said blessed are the meek. He said care for the sick and the poor and the marginalized.” Whitaker also described comparisons between Trump and Jesus—such as those made by Trump's spiritual adviser Paula White at a White House Easter lunch—as “blasphemous,” reflecting concerns that religious language was being distorted for political purposes. Whitaker has been tracking what he calls “Christian nationalism” for over a decade and views this moment as the culmination of a long-term trend in which political loyalty has superseded theological fidelity for some evangelical supporters of Trump. MELANIE PHILLIPS British Jewish journalist Melanie Phillips, writing in The Times, said there had been a “near-hysterical clamour” that Trump “was clearly a sacrilegious megalomaniac and had now lost the Christian vote.” She argued that “the furore over the image detracted from his words about the Pope,” and that “stripping aside Trump's boastful and bombastic ramblings, his core point was justified. The Pope's attitude to the Iran war is shocking.” “This is gross blasphemy,” Brilyn Hollyhand, the former chair of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council and a self-described “full-time Christian,” said of the image in a social media post. “Faith is not a prop. You don’t need to portray yourself as a savior when your record should speak for itself.” The AI image may soon be forgotten, like so many online controversies. What will remain is the deeper question it raised about the growing fusion of faith, politics, and personality in American life. A nation already deeply divided does not need political messiahs—it needs leaders who remember the difference. END