by American Anglican Council
This article is based on a BBC article, written on Gafcon’s G26 Council, which can be found here.
“Clergy from a conservative grouping of the Anglican Church.” That is how the BBC chose to describe those gathered this week for the GAFCON Council in Abuja. The phrase is technically convenient, but it obscures a basic reality: this so-called “conservative grouping” represents roughly three-quarters of the world’s Anglicans.
One would expect a reporter stationed in Lagos to be aware of the Church of Nigeria, the largest province in the Anglican Communion and one of the primary hosts of this gathering. To describe the movement represented here as merely a “grouping” suggests either unfamiliarity with the global Anglican landscape or a willingness to frame the story in a way that minimizes its significance.
The BBC article also implies that the GAFCON movement is reacting primarily to the appointment of Dame Sarah Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury. Anyone actually present in Abuja would know otherwise. This council was scheduled long before her appointment. On the second day of the gathering, GAFCON General Secretary, the Rt. Rev. Paul Donison, made the point plainly: the issue is not the archbishop’s gender, but the theological direction of the Church of England and other Western provinces that have departed from historic Anglican teaching.
If the BBC genuinely believes this moment is about the gender of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it suggests either a serious misunderstanding of the situation or a refusal to listen to what leaders here have repeatedly said.
The article also quotes Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of Church History at Oxford, who describes the gathering as “a set of leaders, all male, going to a conference in Africa to assert an identity which no longer satisfies many Anglican churches.” That claim raises an obvious question: which Anglican churches, exactly?