from Anglican Futures
The Anglican Communion is made up of forty-two autonomous provinces who are meant to work together. They are aided in this by four ‘Instruments of Communion’, of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is one. It is no secret that for decades the Anglican Communion has been riven with disagreement over the authority of the Scriptures and the inability of the Instruments of Communion to maintain discipline and uphold Anglican doctrine.
Today, at the Installation of the Most Revd Sarah Mullally as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, the extent and seriousness of that division was laid bare. All the pomp and ceremony could not hide the fact that the leaders of twelve of those forty-two provinces had refused to attend the service.
More importantly, those twelve provinces represented the leadership of the vast majority of Gafcon and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) and by any reckoning the majority of the world’s Anglicans. Those who stayed away were:
- The Most Revd Dr Samy Fawzy Shehata, Archbishop and Primate of Alexandria
- The Most Revd Enrique Lago Zugadi, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Chile
- The Most Revd Dr Georges Titre Ande, Primate of the Anglican Church of the Congo
- The Most Revd Gilbert Rateloson Rakotondravelo, Archbishop and Primate of the Indian Ocean
- The Most Revd Jackson Ole Sapit, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya
- The Most Revd Stephen Than Myint Oo, Archbishop of the Church of the Province of Myanmar
- The Most Revd Henry Chukwudum Ndukuba, Primate of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)
- The Most Revd Dr Laurent Mbanda, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda
- The Most Revd Dr Titus Chung, Archbishop and Primate of the Church of the Province of South East Asia
- The Most Revd Ezekiel Kondo Kumir Kuku, Archbishop and Primate of Sudan
- The Most Revd Justin Badi Arama, Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan
- The Most Revd Samuel Stephen Kaziimba Mugalu, Primate of the Church of Uganda
Other primates may have been unable to attend due to illness or problems caused by the war in Iran, but no reason was given by Lambeth Palace for the absence of these twelve men. For those familiar with the story the reason was clear because they had each already given due warning in either the Abuja Affirmation or the Ash Wednesday Statement.