By Mouneer Anis, First Things.
The Church of England has announced the appointment of Sarah Mullally as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. I had anticipated her appointment since the Church’s General Synod of February 2023, when Mullally led the motion to allow blessings for same-sex couples—a move strongly endorsed by Archbishop Welby. Her leadership in that moment made clear the trajectory that has now culminated in this appointment.
By choosing her, the Church of England has effectively distanced itself from the vast majority of Anglicans in the Global South, who have consistently upheld the traditional Christian teachings on marriage and ordination. Many had hoped for a path toward healing and reconciliation within the deeply fractured Anglican Communion. Instead, this decision appears to close that door and signals an affirmation of the unorthodox and unilateral direction taken by the Church of England and several other Western provinces.
The Church should not embrace every new trend or innovation that arises in the surrounding culture. While it is called to engage the world with love and understanding, it must also guard its spiritual identity and moral integrity. When the Church loses its distinctiveness, it risks blending into the world it is meant to transform. To remain faithful to its calling, the Church must discern carefully, accepting what aligns with the gospel and rejecting what contradicts it. Only by retaining this holy distinctiveness can the Church continue to be the salt that preserves and the light that guides a darkened world.
It is increasingly evident that the Church of England is following in the footsteps of the Episcopal Church in the United States—a path marked by progressive theological and ethical positions that are heretical and have widened divisions with the rest of the Anglican family.