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The Global Anglican Future Conference elected Rwandan Archbishop Laurent Mbanda as chairman of a newly formalised Global Anglican Council in Abuja on Thursday, completing a structural separation from the Canterbury-led Anglican Communion that conservatives have pursued since 2008 and accelerated sharply since the appointment of Dame Sarah Mullally as the Church of England’s first female Archbishop of Canterbury in October.
Approximately 300 bishops and 100 clergy and lay leaders from across the communion gathered at St Matthias House in Abuja — the headquarters of the Church of Nigeria — from March 3 to 6 for the G26 conference, which GAFCON spokesman the Reverend Canon Justin Murff described as “the most consequential structural development since the 1867 Lambeth Conference.” The four-day gathering brought together representatives from a global network of 10 provinces that GAFCON claims represents at least half of the world’s 85 million Anglicans, though independent studies have placed the figure at closer to 50 to 60 per cent.
Bishop Paul Donison announced the election result at the conference, confirming that Mbanda had been chosen unanimously.
“Today, GAFCON is leading the Global Anglican Communion,” Mbanda declared. “As has been the case from the very beginning, we have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion.” The source article’s characterisation of Mbanda’s role as not being *primus inter pares* contradicts GAFCON’s own published framework. GAFCON’s own communiqué from October 2025 stated that the provinces would elect a chairman as “first among equals” to lead the council of primates — a formulation consistent with the traditional Anglican usage of the Latin phrase, and one that GAFCON has not publicly retracted.
The theological basis for the separation was set out in GAFCON’s October 16, 2025 declaration, which formally rejected the four “Instruments of Communion” — the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Primates’ Meeting — as having “failed to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion.” The declaration announced that the Anglican Communion would be “reordered, with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible.” Provinces joining the Global Anglican Communion are barred from participating in meetings convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury and are prohibited from making financial contributions to the Anglican Consultative Council.
Church of Nigeria Primate Archbishop Henry Chukwudum Ndukuba told the opening service of G26 that GAFCON had prayed for a turnaround among Canterbury’s leaders but, having failed, was declaring that “the future has arrived.” He said the church of God would continue, “not built on institutions of Canterbury, nor on the personality of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but rather returning, bringing back the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, to be the centre of our life, our teaching and our practices.”
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Mullally’s election last October immediately triggered sharp condemnation from Mbanda, who said Canterbury had “chosen a leader who will further divide an already split Communion” and repudiated her spiritual authority.
“For over a century and a half, the Archbishop of Canterbury functioned not only as the Primate of All England but also as a spiritual and moral leader of the Anglican Communion,” Mbanda said. Conservative bishops and clergy accused Mullally and other leaders of abandoning biblical authority to support the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of women as bishops — positions GAFCON has consistently described as departures from the 1998 Lambeth Conference Resolution I.10, which affirmed that sexual relations are appropriate only within heterosexual marriage.
Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, emeritus professor of the history of the Church, said the move to elect a rival spiritual head in Nigeria was effectively a schism, even if not explicitly labelled as such. GAFCON leaders, however, have consistently contested that framing, arguing they are proposing a reformed communion rather than a new one. The distinction carries significant ecclesiastical weight: a reformed communion claims continuity with the Anglican tradition and asserts that Canterbury, not GAFCON, has departed from it; a schism acknowledges rupture and creates two separate bodies with contested claims to the same heritage.
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The Canterbury-aligned Anglican Communion has been developing its own parallel response to the widening rift. A commission chaired by Bishop Graham Tomlin proposed reforms in which the Archbishop of Canterbury would share many leadership roles with primates from other nations — proposals described as years in the making, with some revisions announced on the Monday before G26 opened. The proposals go before the Anglican Consultative Council for review this summer. Tomlin said he did not know whether the reform package would affect GAFCON’s deliberations but argued that radical breaks were historically very hard to mend.
“The history of the church tells us that when we do make radical breaks from one another, it’s very hard to mend those walls, and this is a way of hopefully keeping us together,” he said.
The Anglican family traces its roots to the Reformation-era founding of the Church of England in the sixteenth century, when Henry VIII broke with Rome over the question of papal authority over royal marriage. It spread globally alongside British colonial expansion and missionary activity before large-scale local leadership emerged in Africa and Asia over the twentieth century. The Church of Nigeria, which hosts GAFCON’s current conference, is one of the largest Anglican provinces in the world, with an estimated 20 million members. The Anglican Church in North America, formed by conservatives who broke from the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada, also participates in GAFCON, extending the network’s presence in the Western hemisphere.
Mullally is scheduled to be formally installed as Archbishop of Canterbury later this month.
