Conservative Anglican leaders meet in Nigeria to elect a leader, fueling concerns of schism

NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — Conservative Anglican leaders gathering in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, are planning to unveil a original leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, even as Archbishop Sarah Mullally is role to be installed as the first female leader of the body later this month.

The Global Anglican Future Conference, a conservative Anglican circulate better known as GAFCON that has encouraged its provinces to lower ties with Canterbury and that rejects Mullally’s election, called the meeting to reorder the communion. During the four-day gathering, which began Tuesday (March 3), the global network of 10 provinces — representing at least half of the sector’s Anglicans — plans to formalize the Global Anglican Communion, which it announced in October, and to elect a original leader.

Mullally’s election in October further widened a rift within the 85 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion, which since the Nineteen Nineties has struggled with controversies around female leadership and same-intercourse marriage in the church. Conservative bishops and clerics with GAFCON accuse Mullally and other leaders of the communion of abandoning the inerrant Be aware of God to toughen the blessing of same-intercourse unions, ordain ladies folks bishops and elect Mullally archbishop of Canterbury.

Archbishop Henry Chukwudum Ndukuba, the primate of the Church of Nigeria, told those at the opening provider of the meeting this week that GAFCON had been calling and praying for a turnaround among the leaders of the Anglican Communion, however having failed, the network was declaring that the long race had arrived.

“You cannot assist God and mammon. Settle this day whom to assist. That is the wail and call of God,” he told the more than 400 archbishops, bishops, clergy and lay leaders attending the meeting, dubbed G26.

The clerics at G26 gape the meeting, whose main point of interest is in reforming the Anglican Communion as a complete, to be a pivotal second. GAFCON says it represents 85% of the sector’s practicing confessing Anglicans, although independent research have placed the number at nearer to 50%-60%. Regardless, GAFCON represents a significant share of Anglicans during the sector, with large populations in Asia and African international locations, including Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya.

Ndukuba said the church of God will continue to march on, no longer constructed on institutions of Canterbury, nor on the personality of the archbishop of Canterbury.

“Nonetheless rather, we are returning, bringing back the Be aware of God, the Holy Scriptures, to be the heart of our life, our teaching and our practices,” he said, warning that obedience to the authority of Scripture in all matters of faith, doctrine and practice may no longer be substituted.

“What we gape is the determination and the arrogance of the revisionists to impose their error in your complete church. They engage you in unending debates, dialogue and contentions and meetings, whereas driving and spreading their untrue teachings.”

Officials say the intention is no longer to create a original communion however to reorder the contemporary one.

“We are now taking ranks of leadership globally. A global church wants a global leadership,” the Rt. Rev. Paul Donison, general secretary of GAFCON, told Advent Cable Network Nigeria on Tuesday.

“I’m hoping out of these, the average Anglican, average Anglican believer, they can say we have been clear, that the understanding from the statements, right here’s the heart of leadership for our global church.

“They’re going to now no longer inspect back to a colonial structure that has long gone so far away from the gospel, instead we have original global buildings in the same Anglican Communion,” he added.

In October, GAFCON rejected the Instruments of the Anglican Communion, namely the archbishop of Canterbury, the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates Meeting, for failing to uphold the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican Communion.

Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda, the chairman of GAFCON, declared in an Oct. 16 statement that the Anglican Communion will probably be “re-ordered, with only one foundation of communion, namely the Holy Bible,” as the Global Anglican Communion.

This Global Anglican Communion may perhaps be led by a Council of Primates, with the provinces electing a chairman “as first among equals” to lead the council. A province that wants to develop into a member only wants to accede to the 2008 Jerusalem Declaration, which the clerics have in mind the standard identity for Anglicanism.

The Anglican provinces that join the Global Anglican Communion will probably be barred from participating in meetings called by the archbishop of Canterbury, including the Anglican Consultative Council, and are no longer allowed to make any monetary contribution to the ACC, nor obtain any monetary contribution from it or its networks.

“G26 is a summons to make room for Jesus afresh in the life of his Church, to pay attention again to his notice and to walk together in obedience and courage,” said Mbanda in his last Christmas message.

Uganda, the African nation with the largest population of Anglicans after Nigeria, has despatched a delegation of 52, including 41 bishops.

“We are gathered right here as Bible-believing Anglicans. … We glorify God for this time. We are all looking forward to what God is going to achieve for the communion. How he is going to reset the communion,” said Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba Mugalu in a short video message despatched to RNS.

Meanwhile, the Anglican Communion is moving to minimize the archbishop of Canterbury’s centrality, an acknowledgment that most Anglicans now live in the Global South. On Monday, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Team spirit, Faith and Expose released revised “Nairobi-Cairo proposals” ahead of the summer time ACC that aim to decentralize leadership and create a much less U.Okay.-dominated model.