by David Virtue, VOL
For nearly forty years, the Anglican communion has roiled over issues of human sexuality. It has been a remarkable period in the life of some 100 million Anglicans, most of whom were not interested in the topic, preferring to get on with the mission of the church, saving souls and discipling the nations.
Homosexuality came out of the West, and in all probability, it will die in the West, as the Global South faces more pressing issues of evangelism, persecution, and in some cases its very own survival.
While the Global South has yet to feel the full onslaught of modernity, there is every reason to believe that it will survive Western post-modernism as it focuses on the gospel above all else.
The number of Anglican Christians is growing by more than a million people every year, according to the respected scholar David Goodhew, visiting fellow of St John’s College, Durham University.
The online World Christian Database gives the best data on the current size of the Communion. Numbers last recorded in 2020 show that global Anglicanism has doubled in the past 50 years,” Goodhew reported in The Church Times. Anglican churches are those derived from the Church of England (C of E) through inherited doctrine and practises.
“As it continues to increase by about one million a year, there are about 100 million Anglicans, as of 2025. This is the result of massive growth in the global South, while Anglicanism in the global North has mostly shrunk. Talk of Anglicanism’s demise is the opposite of the truth.”
And that is why this “summoning” of GAFCON bishops next year to Nigeria is so important. The leaders could well ring down the changes on the state of the Anglican Communion, declare themselves fully out of communion with a shrinking Western church and the Church of England – the Mother Church – announce it fully apostate, and form a more perfect union with Anglican dioceses like the ACNA, AMiE and more.
It would be the final break which many believe has been coming on for a long time, and has now reached its apogee. There will be no more talk of inclusion, diversity, indaba, Windsor Reports, Covenants and compromise. That day is done.
It would not come as a surprise that the election of a lesbian archbishop to the Church in Wales was the final straw for orthodox Anglicans who see this act as a departure from Scripture, tradition and history.
GAFCON chairman Dr. Laurent Mbanda’s “summons” cannot be taken lightly; it indicates a depth of concern and has an ominous ring to it that cannot be ignored. We shall see.
I am posting this special report with just two stories on this remarkable call to arms.