By David Virtue, Virtueonline.
Sarah Mullally has chosen her stage with care. When the primates of the Anglican Communion gather in Johannesburg from 28 February to 5 March next year, it will be her first Primates’ Meeting as Archbishop of Canterbury.
She has taken it to the one African province whose archbishop shares her mind on sexuality, whose leadership welcomed her appointment, and whose ties to the Episcopal Church run back decades and run deep, in friendship and in money.
Give her credit. It is a shrewd piece of choreography. The first woman to sit in the chair of Augustine, hosted on African soil by the church of Desmond Tutu, in a democratic South Africa the primates have not visited since 1993, when apartheid was still dying. The photographs write themselves. The message is plain: Africa is not all Abuja and Kampala. There is another Africa, and it is glad to have her.
It was meant to be a showcase. Within forty-eight hours of the announcement, the showcase cracked.
The Synod Said No
On 23 September the Provincial Synod of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa voted down a motion that would have allowed members in committed same-sex unions to be prayed for within the province. The margin was 78 to 71, with 10 abstentions. A second motion, asking for a distinct liturgy for the LGBTQ+ community, fell more heavily still, 98 to 61.
Note where that second motion came from: the Diocese of Johannesburg. The diocese that will welcome the primates next February could not carry its own proposal through its own synod.
This was Archbishop Thabo Makgoba’s final synod as Primate, the last push of a campaign that has run for a decade. In 2016 the synod rejected blessings and licensing of clergy in same-sex civil marriages, and Makgoba said he was “pained.” In 2023 his bishops could not agree to bless same-sex unions and settled instead for drafting prayers. In 2024 the synod turned down blessings again and reaffirmed that marriage is between one man and one woman for life. Now, at the very end, it has refused even the prayers.