Anglicans Declare Break From Canterbury, Launch New Orthodox Communion

In a shift for the worldwide Anglican faith, the newly formed Global Anglican Council has formally declared the existing structures of the Anglican Communion centered on Canterbury to have “failed” and announced the operational launch of a reordered “Global Anglican Communion” based on strict biblical orthodoxy.

The declaration, titled ‘The Abuja Affirmation,’ which was issued at the conclusion of the G26 conference, which drew 347 bishops and 121 lay and clerical leaders to Nigeria, framed the move not as a schism, but as a reordering and a return to the Communion’s roots.

The council in the statement read by the  chairman of the newly formed Global Anglican Council, Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda, declared the Canterbury-based leadership structure compromised and failed, accusing it of abandoning the authority of Scripture and normalising false teaching.

“The leadership of the Canterbury Instruments of Communion have failed to exercise discipline and maintain the biblical witness.

“Instead, these Instruments seek to hold together a confused communion of institutional co-existence, based on the fiction of ‘walking together’ with those who are walking away from the truth of the gospel,” Mbanda said.

The Affirmation explicitly targets the legacy of recent Archbishops of Canterbury, citing the authorisation of prayers of blessing for same-sex couples in the Church of England and the handling of sexuality debates at the 2022 Lambeth Conference.

The Council claimed that the moral authority of the historic See of Augustine has been severely compromised.

In a sharp rebuke of the current Archbishop of Canterbury, the council stated that his leadership on the “Living in Love and Faith” project, which produced resources for blessing same-sex civil marriages, directly contradicted the 1998 Lambeth Resolution I.10, which had upheld traditional teaching.

“The new Global Anglican Communion will be defined not by historical ties to Canterbury, but by assent to the 2008 Jerusalem Declaration, a document drafted by the conservative GAFCON movement that upholds the authority of Scripture and the Reformation formularies

“This is a confessional communion. True communion is a voluntary fellowship which at its heart is neither synodical nor legal,” he stated.

The conference marked a significant structural shift, announcing the dissolution of the GAFCON Primates’ Council and its replacement with the Global Anglican Council.

Archbishop Mbanda was elected as Chair, with Archbishop Miguel Uchôa as Deputy Chair and Bishop Paul Donison as General Secretary.

In a key provision with far-reaching implications, the Affirmation mandates principled disengagement for leaders within the new body. Office holders are forbidden from attending future Primates’ Meetings, Lambeth Conferences, or Anglican Consultative Council gatherings.

“Continued participation in these Canterbury-led meetings gives credence to the lie that it is possible to walk together despite deep disagreement with those who have abandoned biblical teaching,” Mbanda said.

While encouraging provinces to remove references to the See of Canterbury from their constitutions, the new body acknowledged this would be a lengthy legal process, that participation is instead defined by assent to the Jerusalem Declaration, a threshold open to provinces, dioceses, parishes, and even individuals.

Drawing on the conference’s theme from the Book of Joshua, Archbishop Mbanda concluded the statement with a firm declaration of intent.

“The theme of the G26 conference has been ‘Choose this day whom you will serve. Our Abuja Affirmation is that we and our global household of faithful Anglicans will also serve the Lord,” he said.

The move represented the culmination of a decades-long realignment within global Anglicanism, formalising a divide that has been widening since the first GAFCON conference in 2008.