After the Church of England shockingly appointed a woman as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, conservative Anglicans around the world split from the historic institution.
Sarah Mullally, the current bishop of London, is slated to become the top cleric in the Church of England next year, the first time a woman has held the historic office.
The Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, also known as GAFCON, will therefore cease to recognize the authority of Canterbury over their denomination.
NEW: The Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON) has essentially excommunicated the See of Canterbury after Sarah Mullally, who supports blessings for same-sex couples, was named Archbishop
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GAFCON said in an Oct. 16 statement from the Most Revd. Dr. Laurent Mbanda, the Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church of Rwanda, that the coalition first “gathered in 2008 in Jerusalem to prayerfully respond to the abandonment of the Scriptures by some of the most senior leaders of the Anglican Communion, and to seek their repentance.”
Central to this call to repentance has been concern over the appointment of women as clergy, since the Bible and the historic orthodox Christian tradition expressly reserves pastoral ministry to qualified men.
GAFCON therefore lamented, “In the absence of such repentance, we have been prayerfully advancing towards a future for faithful Anglicans, where the Bible is restored to the heart of the Communion.”
They reject the See of Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Council for failing to “uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion.”
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The statement declared that “as has been the case from the very beginning, we have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion.”
“Please pray that we will lead our Communion in prayerful submission to the Holy Spirit as we hear the voice of Jesus in his wondrous Scriptures, to the glory of God,” the statement added.
As noted by Baptist News Global, as many as 85 percent of the world’s 110 million Anglicans belong to GAFCON.
The report noted that the worldwide division in Anglicanism mirrors the split in the United States between the progressive Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church.
Mullally is not merely a self-professed female clergymember, but in her own words is a “pro-choice feminist.”
Christians across the world have lamented the development, noting that the office of Archbishop of Canterbury has been central not only to English history, but to the global spread of Christianity.
Leading figures in church history, from St. Anselm to Thomas Cranmer, have occupied the position.
The appointment of Mullally reflects a broader decline in British Christianity and adherence to the faith across the Western world, especially in Europe.
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