Explainer: Archbishop of Canterbury and the GSFA
by Tim Wyatt, Religion Media Centre:
[…] Anthony Poggo, a former bishop in South Sudan — who, as secretary-general of the Anglican Communion, heads its central office in London — also issued a response.
He said he was saddened by the GSFA primates’ position but welcomed their “frankness and candour”. He noted their position on sexual ethics was shared by the “vast majority” of Anglicans worldwide, but reiterated that the recent synod vote in England had not changed the CofE’s doctrine on marriage.
At the ACC meeting in Ghana, representatives present from 39 of the 42 Anglican churches agreed to seek to “walk together” and “learn how to accommodate differentiation patiently and respectfully”, Bishop Poggo added. A commission had been formed to discuss theological questions around the communion’s structure and how decisions would be made and the GSFA was welcome to share its views with this body, he said.
Finally, he said the Archbishop of Canterbury had asked him to call a meeting of all the Anglican primates and was open to that gathering discussing his own role in the communion if the other primates wanted that.
What will happen next?
Constitutionally and legally, the GSFA does not have the power by itself to remove Justin Welby from his position of leadership nor to introduce any other reforms to the communion structures. Any reforms would need to be approved not only by the Archbishop, but also the three other “instruments of communion”, the four historic centres of authority in Anglicanism: the archbishop, the Lambeth Conference, the ACC, and the Primates’ Meeting.
However, given Archbishop Justin Welby’s comments in Ghana and the growing upset among conservatives, it seems likely, at the very least, that the Archbishop of Canterbury always being the “first among equals” is now up for debate. One proposal sometimes mooted would be to switch to a rotating presidency, where each primate took on the leadership of the communion for a period.
In what now seem highly prescient comments at the ACC, Justin Welby said: “Let me be clear about one thing: I will not cling to place or position as an instrument of communion. The role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the See of Canterbury, is an historic one. The instruments must change with the times. I hold it very lightly, provided that the other instruments of communion choose the new shape; that we are not dictated to by people, blackmailed, bribed to do what others want us to do, but that we act in good conscience before God.”
When the initial row over consecrating gay bishops erupted under Rowan Williams’s archiepiscopate, his solution was to set up an Anglican covenant. This would be a binding agreement between different churches over what they would and would not do without the consent of the others, but it foundered in his own General Synod and when rejected in the mother church of England, it was swiftly dropped. Ever since, there has been no clear structure for handling theological disagreements between member churches.
As each of the member churches in the communion are functionally independent, the GSFA cannot force the CofE (or indeed any other church that has gone further and introduced gay marriage) to recant and return to traditional doctrine. When the American and Canadian churches voted over same-sex marriage a few years ago, they were subjected to minor sanctions — described in the communion as “consequences” — which saw them barred from representing the communion in international meetings for a time. However, these sanctions have not been repeated for the Church in Wales, which brought in similar gay blessings to those just approved in England in 2021.
It does seem likely that the trickle of conservative priests and parishes seceding from the CofE over sexuality will increase because of the LLF blessings. Many of these have already sought oversight from breakaway bishops consecrated by conservative Anglican archbishops overseas, and the GSFA’s communiqué explicitly invites more of this development.
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