The Future of the Anglican Communion? part 1

Summary: This article analyses the significant developments emerging from the March 2026 GAFCON gathering in Nigeria arguing that a key feature of its Abuja Affirmation is not what it includes, but what it omits: any reference to the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA). This “is…a significant missing piece of the complex Anglican Communion jigsaw” because GSFA and GAFCON have shared overlapping leadership and previously articulated “complementary roles” in resetting the Communion.

Drawing on GAFCON’s own Kigali 2023 commitments—which heralded renewed partnership, with GAFCON as a mission movement and GSFA as the ecclesial body tasked with “establishing doctrinally based structures within the Communion”—the article highlights how Abuja marks a departure from that shared vision. It traces the path to Abuja, showing how a subset of GAFCON leaders, largely from provinces long disengaged from the Instruments of Communion, drove the shift.

It then explores two major developments in The Abuja Affirmation relating to GAFCON’s leadership: the dissolution of the Primates Council in favour of a new Global Anglican Council, and a new requirement that GAFCON leaders must practise “principled disengagement” from all Canterbury-led Instruments.

The article shows that GAFCON has redefined its identity and leadership boundaries, placing pressure on GAFCON provinces that continue to engage with Communion structures. This may result either in a depleted Canterbury-aligned Communion or a reduced GAFCON leadership, while GSFA will likely continue developing its own distinct ecclesial vision within a reconfiguring global Anglican landscape.

A second article will explore the alternative visions for the Communion, arising from the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals of the Communion itself, and the alternative vision of the GSFA.

Andrew Goddard writes: The recent gathering of GAFCON in Nigeria has already received a fair amount of attention, including even from the BBC News. Some of it has been supportive (for example pieces by Martin Davie and Anglican Futures), others much more critical (as with Tim Wyatt and Gavin Drake and Gerry Lynch). Attention has, unsurprisingly, focussed on two areas. Firstly, the surprise announcement during the gathering that they had revised their original plan to recognise one of the GAFCON Primates as primus inter pares (widely seen as an alternative leader to the Archbishop of Canterbury for Global Anglicanism) and instead created “A Council to Lead the Communion”. Secondly, the confirmation in the final Abuja Affirmation communique that, this time in line with their October 2025 Martyrs’ Day Statement (MDS), they were now presenting themselves as the Global Anglican Communion (GAC). 

These actions, particularly the latter, were often contrasted with the Anglican Communion’s own proposed reforms to its structures, the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals (NCP) a supplement to which—following the annual meeting of IASCUFO (the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order)—was published shortly before GAFCON met. Indeed, both Anglican Futures and, in much more detail, Martin Davie have described the situation now as one of being offered two alternative visions of the Anglican Communion.

What such analyses have not recognised is the significance of what is missing from the Abuja Affirmation: any reference whatsoever to the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA). GSFA’s leaders last met and issued a communique back in January (which similarly did not reference GAFCON, its recent MDS, or the imminent meeting in Nigeria). This “dog that did not bark” in Nigeria is, however, a significant missing piece of the complex Anglican Communion jigsaw on at least two counts:

1. the recent history and respective roles of GSFA and GAFCON with their overlapping membership and leadership, and
2. GSFA offer a third vision of the future for global Anglicanism, distinct from both the NCP developed within the Instruments, and GAFCON’s new GAC.

This understanding of Anglican life in communion is already embodied in the GSFA’s Cairo Covenant produced back in 2019 and formally inaugurated in June 2024.

I plan to explore those three contrasting theological visions in the second article, here the focus is on GAFCON and GSFA and what has happened in Nigeria and its implications for GAFCON and global Anglicanism.

GAFCON and GSFA: The longer story

Before setting out the recent situation I should probably sketch the longer history and, for the sake of transparency, note my own changing relationship to it. I was initially cautious and concerned about the launch of GAFCON which was announced at the end of 2007, sharing many of the questions and concerns raised by some in the wider Global South. I therefore regretted its meeting in Jerusalem in June 2008 shortly before the Lambeth Conference and the decision of many there (notably Uganda, Nigeria and Rwanda, all of whom had independently intervened in North American Anglicanism in previous years) not to attend that gathering. This first meeting (GAFCON I) produced the historic Jerusalem Declaration and Jerusalem Statement which has continued to be the core of GAFCON’s theological position. Since then, various developments have led me to form a still cautious but more positive view of GAFCON’s role within global Anglicanism. I attended, with a strange combination of both delight and at times discomfort, the two most recent major GAFCON gatherings prior to this one in Nigeria, those in Jerusalem (GAFCON III, June 2018) and Kigali (GAFCON IV, April 2023). These were much larger gatherings than Nigeria 2026 with respectively 1,950 representatives and 1,302 delegates attending, compared to the 347 bishops and 121 lay and clerical leaders who participated in Abuja.

GAFCON and GSFA: Clarifying closer partnership

One of the most distinctive and encouraging features of GAFCON in Kigali, just under three years ago (17-21 April 2023), was the strong and widespread desire for, and then welcome of, closer working relationships between GAFCON and GSFA whose respective primatial leaderships already had a significant overlap. That partnership was reported in the Kigali Commitment communique under the heading “Resetting the Communion”. This embraced language which appeared in the communique from the GSFA Primates Steering Committee who, in contrast to many within GAFCON, attended but did not participate fully in the 2022 Lambeth Conference. That document committed GSFA to resetting the Communion (5.9, 5.11, 6.1, 6.7(k), 7.1). GSFA then reaffirmed this, a few months before GAFCON’s meeting in Rwanda, in its significant Ash Wednesday Statement of February 2023 responding to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s support for Prayers of Love and Faith. It stated, 

With the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury forfeiting their leadership role of the global Communion, GSFA Primates will expeditiously meet, consult and work with other orthodox Primates in the Anglican Church across the nations to reset the Communion on its biblical foundation. We look forward to collaborating with Primates and bishops in the GAFCON movement and other orthodox Anglican groupings to work out the shape and nature of our common life together and how we are to keep the priority of proclaiming and witnessing to the gospel of Jesus Christ in the world foremost in our life as God’s people. Together with other orthodox Primates, we will seek to address the leadership crisis that has arisen because for us, and perhaps by his own reported self-exclusion, the present Archbishop of Canterbury is no longer the ‘leader’ of the Communion and no longer the Chair of the Primates’ Meeting by virtue of his position.

This then led to what was reported in the GAFCON Kigali communique:

We were delighted to be joined in Kigali by leaders of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) and to host a combined Gafcon-GSFA Primates meeting. Together, these Primates represent the overwhelming majority (estimated at 85%) of Anglicans worldwide.

Even more significantly, the section continued to confirm in writing the clarification which had been articulated during the Conference as to the distinctive callings of the two bodies:

The leadership of both groups affirmed and celebrated their complementary roles in the Anglican Communion. Gafcon is a movement focused on evangelism and mission, church planting and providing support and a home for faithful Anglicans who are pressured by or alienated from revisionist dioceses and provinces. GSFA, on the other hand, is focused on establishing doctrinally based structures within the Communion.

This distinction had been described in terms of GSFA being an ecclesial body (reflected in the long history of the Global South as a recognised grouping within the Communion) and GAFCON being a mission movement. After setting out the shared common ground and “united commitment of both groups”, this section of the GAFCON statement concluded:

We welcome the GSFA’s Ash Wednesday Statement of 20 February 2023, calling for a resetting and reordering of the Communion. We applaud the invitation of the GSFA Primates to collaborate with Gafcon and other orthodox Anglican groupings to work out the shape and nature of our common life together and how we are to maintain the priority of proclaiming the gospel and making disciples of all nations.

Resetting the Communion is an urgent matter. It needs an adequate and robust foundation that addresses the legal and constitutional complexities in various Provinces. The goal is that orthodox Anglicans worldwide will have a clear identity, a global ‘spiritual home’ of which they can be proud, and a strong leadership structure that gives them stability and direction as Global Anglicans. We therefore commit to pray that God will guide this process of resetting, and that Gafcon and GSFA will keep in step with the Spirit.

In the light of this Kigali statement the recent Abuja Affirmation is significant not only in its failure to even mention GSFA but its clear determination to implement what in 2023 GAFCON recognised as the role of the GSFA—“establishing doctrinally based structures within the Communion”. This outcome, and how it was reached, raise a number of serious questions about what has happened.

GAFCON: The Road to Abjua

The gathering in Abjua was announced “on behalf of our Primates Council” by the Chair of the GAFCON Primates Council, Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda, on 10^th July 2025. It was described then as a “Mini-Conference” for “all global orthodox bishops and their wives” and the plan was that “Gafcon primates and senior leaders will assemble before the conference for preliminary meetings, plus we will invite some senior bishops to a special, one-day, pre-event”. A “Solemn Summons” was then issued by the Archbishop on 13^th September 2025 which stated “the next six months are crucial for our global Church” and claimed that the gathering “may be the most important assembly of authentic Anglicans since Gafcon reset the Communion at Jerusalem in 2008”. This was reaffimed in his 3^rd October statement on the appointment of the new Archbishop of Canterbury.

Rejecting the new Archbishop, this surprisingly first claimed that “the majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy” before alleging that “Bishop Mullally has repeatedly promoted unbiblical and revisionist teachings regarding marriage and sexual morality”. With hindsight, one can see here the first explicit sign that the Kigali agreement was being abandoned and GSFA sidelined when it was claimed “The reset of our beloved Communion is now uniquely in the hands of Gafcon, and we are ready to take the lead” (italics added).

Then, two weeks later, in another statement (what has become known as the Martyrs Day Statement or MDS) from Archbishop Mbanda, it was announced “Our Gafcon Primates gathered” and “resolved to reorder the Anglican Communion”. The soundbite heading given to this was that “The Future Has Arrived”. This rather grandiose, and theologically questionable, claim apparently arose from picking up the “F” for Future in the acronym GAFCON with reference to the future of “GA” ie Global Anglicans. 

It soon became clear from 

• the The Living Church’s  podcast and various reports, particularly this by Mark Michael and John Sandeman, 
• the interview with Archbishop Mbanda on The Pastor’s Heart and 
• Stand Firm’s interview with GAFCON General Secretary Bishop Paul Donison),

that the gathering which produced this major initiative was not in fact a full formal meeting of the GAFCON Primates Council which Archbishop Mbanda chaired. The October gathering from which the MDS appeared had been called two months previously by Archbishop Mbanda. It involved only some of the Council (predominantly or solely those new provinces never in the Communion or provinces which have stayed away from Communion gatherings to which they were invited since 2008) and various other selected guests including long-retired former GAFCON leaders such as Peter Akinola from Nigeria and Peter Jensen from Sydney. The statement this group produced was then put to a hastily convened short online meeting of the Primates’ Council. This met less than an hour before the public release of the MDS which was signed off by those invited and able to attend.

GAFCON: Abuja

The Abuja gathering which reaffirmed the majority of the MDS appears to have been predominantly a similar subset of the whole GAFCON leadership and wider movement.

The GAFCON website lists its 12-member Primates Council. These are in two broad categories: Primates whose provinces are members of the official Anglican Communion structures and Primates who lead new Anglican provinces. There are 

• 9 GAFCON Communion provinces (Rwanda, Congo, South Sudan, Uganda, Nigeria, Myanmar, Kenya, Alexandria, Chile) and 6 of these (Congo, South Sudan, Uganda, Myanmar, Alexandria and Chile) lead provinces which are also among the 13 covenanted members of GSFA. The other 3 (Rwanda, Kenya and Nigeria) are listed as “provinces part of the Global South” (as is another key GAFCON player, the Diocese of Sydney)
• Of the remaining 3 GAFCON Primates who lead new Anglican provinces (Brazil, REACH-SA, ACNA), 2 of these non-Communion GAFCON provinces (ACNA and Brazil) are also covenanted GSFA members. This significant overlap between the GAFCON and GSFA leadership further highlights the strangeness of the lack of reference to GSFA.

I understand that although other provinces in that first “Communion Primates” group of GAFCON leaders had bishops present in Abjua, the only Primates from the first group present at Abuja were Rwanda, Nigeria and Uganda of which only the last is a covenanted member of GSFA. These are the three GAFCON provinces which have consistently refused invitations to attend meetings gathered by the formal Instruments of Communion for the last two decades. The provinces of the 347 bishops present is unknown but it is clear that there was, unsurprisingly, a very large contingent from the host province of Nigeria which reportedly has 148 dioceses (although Wikipedia reports higher numbers).

This question of who was represented at Abuja (and earlier in Sydney for the MDS) is important not because of what it reveals about the current relationship between GAFCON and GSFA but because of the two significant developments in relation to GAFCON’s own future governance that were announced in the Abuja Affirmation. 

Restructuring and Redefining GAFCON: A new conciliar structure

Firstly, the MDS had stated as its eighth and final commitment that

We shall form a Council of Primates of all member provinces to elect a Chairman, as primus inter pares (‘first amongst equals’), to preside over the Council as it continues “to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).

As noted, above, to the surprise of many and speaking of a late night “movement of the Holy Spirit”, a statement was issued on 5^th March which stated that the GAFCON Primates had “dissolved the Primates Council” and created instead not a “Council of Primates” but rather a new Global Anglican Council. This would include not just Primates but bishops, clergy and lay leaders and was described as a more “conciliar” structure. It was also announced that the Chair and Vice-Chair of the previous Primates Council now held those roles in the new Council supported by the same General Secretary

A number of elements of this restructuring remain unclear. In particular, given that it appears barely half the previous Council were present, how the previous Council formally dissolved itself and constituted the new body. The wider membership of the new Council and how they were chosen has also not been clearly explained (the GAFCON website continues, over two weeks later, to display the old Council of Primates structure and membership. The exact rationale for this shift in governance is also unclear. It did, however, mean that it could be stated that “True conciliar bodies don’t really function with a ‘first among equals’ in the same way” as a rationale for abandoning that plan. Other possible reasons for not following that path might have included the fact so many GAFCON Primates were absent, ACNA’s current problems in relation to its senior leadership, and the difficulty of choosing in Nigeria to give one Primate such a novel and significant status at this time.

Restructuring and Redefining GAFCON: An obligatory break with the Instruments

Secondly, and even more significantly, the MCD had stated (point 5)

Provinces of the Global Anglican Communion shall not participate in meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, including the ACC, and shall not make any monetary contribution to the ACC, nor receive any monetary contribution from the ACC or its networks.

This reappears in the Abuja Affirmation under the heading of “Principled Disengagement” with one important change: a new distinction between the terms of GAFCON membership and GAFCON leadership. It is stated

While our fellowship in the Global Anglican Communion is based on assent to the Jerusalem Declaration, leadership in the Global Anglican Communion requires a principled disengagement from the Canterbury Instruments. Leaders who hold office in the Global Anglican Communion must not attend future Primates’ Meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor attend the Lambeth Conference, nor attend ACC meetings or participate in Commissions of the ACC, nor personally approve financial contributions to the ACC. It is also expected that they will not receive financial assistance from compromised sources….A full and public disengagement from these structures is necessary…Office holders in the Global Anglican Communion who continue to participate in any Canterbury Instruments will not be able to continue in this role (italics added).

This distinction and in particular the new conditions for “office holders” and those in “leadership” represents a major new development. Once again questions arise as to how and by whom this decision was made. This is not only because it is a new requirement much more relating to the ecclesial task of “establishing doctrinally based structures within the Communion” which GAFCON in Kigali acknowledged was not its primary role but rather that of the GSFA.

More particularly, there are questions given it seems all those Primates (and most of the bishops) present were those who either are not invited to such meetings or have in conscience previously refused such invitations. In particular, the gathering did not include precisely any of those GAFCON Primates who have attended such meetings in the recent past nor, for example, most of the bishops from GAFCON Provinces who decided they could in conscience attend Lambeth 2022. 

There has always been a strong “disengagement” constituency within GAFCON and its voice has been heard at times in its various communiques. Many, but certainly not all, of those bishops and Primates in Jerusalem at the original 2008 GAFCON did not attend the Lambeth Conference a few weeks later. Ten years on and back in Jerusalem, the 2018 gathering urged the Archbishop of Canterbury to follow certain principles in issuing invitations for the next Lambeth Conference and stated,

In the event that this does not occur, we urge Gafcon members to decline the invitation to attend Lambeth 2020 [the expected date pre-Covid] and all other meetings of the Instruments of Communion.

This was, note, only an exhortation and, once again, the GAFCON bishops were not of one mind with many (along with most from the wider non-GAFCON Global South) continuing to be engaged, albeit in a differentiated manner, in the 2022 Conference and other Instruments. The 2023 Kigali Statement, while emphasising the failures of the Instruments, rejecting the proposal of learning to walk together in ‘good disagreement’, and insisting on the need to “reset” the Communion, drew back from even urging, let alone requiring, non-attendance.

In practice, once again, at the Primates Meeting in Rome in May 2024, some GAFCON Primates attended and others in principle did not. One GAFCON Primate (Kenya) has continued to serve as the Primate from Africa on the Primates’ Standing Committee and wider Standing Committee of the Communion, another GAFCON (and GSFA) Primate (Alexandria) has continued serving on IASCUFO as it has worked on the NCP.

The longstanding position of GAFCON has therefore been that what unites it at every level, including its leadership, is simply assent to the Jerusalem Declaration. This is part of being, in the words of the Kigali Commitment, “a movement focused on evangelism and mission, church planting and providing support and a home for faithful Anglicans who are pressured by or alienated from revisionist dioceses and provinces”. Other matters, including how one should relate to the historic Communion Instruments, have been effectively treated as adiaphora. Decisions about attendance were, in other words, to be left to the consciences of individuals and/or the collective decision-making processes of each province.

Initially the small gathering that produced the MDS, and now the larger but still far from fully representative gathering in Nigeria that produced the Abuja Affirmation (which appeared, unlike previous statements from GAFCON gatherings, as if signed off by the Council’s Chair), have unprecedentedly redefined this. They have announced significant new requirements that will now be held to be necessary for GAFCON leadership. In effect, the meeting in Nigeria took the first part of its biblical text, Joshua 24:15 (“Choose this day whom you will serve…”), and said to many who have long served in GAFCON leadership, including members of its now-disbanded Primates Council, “you now have to choose between continuing to lead us and continuing to meet with them”.

Paradoxically, however, it appears that the theological rationale given for this “principled disengagement” stance is not being applied in relation to the much closer, legally structured, forms of communion found within rather than between Anglican provinces. Here the Abuja Affirmation reiterates what has been GAFCON’s historic position in relation to the Instruments by stating, “Gafcon has always acknowledged that it is a matter of conscience, when rejecting the authority of revisionist leaders, as to whether one remains or not in a compromised ecclesial structure”.

Conclusion

In summary, much remains unclear for anyone seeking to understand and evaluate recent developments within GAFCON and their implications for GAFCON itself, the GSFA, and the wider Anglican Communion. 

It would appear, however, that, led by the Archbishop of Rwanda, those provinces within GAFCON that have never been part of the Communion or have been almost wholly absent from its Instruments for almost two decades have, supported by some of GAFCON’s initial founders, sidelined or bypassed GAFCON’s established structures. They have then replaced these with new leadership structures with new and narrower terms of membership. They have done so by reneging on the terms of closer partnership agreed with GSFA and strongly welcomed just three years ago by the GAFCON gathering in Kigali. 

The aim of all these changes seems to be to put the squeeze on those within GAFCON (and perhaps the wider GSFA) who—as part of their way of seeking to “reset” the Communion—have continued to engage with the Instruments and IASCUFO’s NCP as a contribution to the “reset”. Those Anglicans, despite sharing GAFCON’s stance on sexuality and the failings of the Instruments, and being committed to the Jerusalem Declaration, have effectively been told they need 

• either to cease and desist from such engagement and decisively walk apart from the “Canterbury Instruments” into the new Global Anglican Communion that GAFCON has unilaterally declared 
• or they will be removed from leadership in GAFCON. 

Unless something shifts, it would appear that these high stakes mean we will over coming years, or perhaps even months, see one of two broad outcomes taking shape.

On the one hand there could be a much-depleted Canterbury Communion if all of the GAFCON leadership (and perhaps others) align with the newly-declared Global Anglican Communion on the terms of the Abjua Affirmation ie separation from involvement in the traditional Instruments.

On the other hand, there could be a significantly smaller and narrower GAFCON, certainly in terms of its leadership and perhaps its wider membership, if some GAFCON Primates and provinces are unwilling to accept these new terms.

Either of these outcomes, particularly the latter, could be combined with the continuing development of the GSFA taking up its aim, as a primarily ecclesial body, of “establishing doctrinally based structures within the Communion”. These would be structures that deepen the GSFA’s own covenantal common life while remaining engaged, at a lower and differentiated degree of communion, with the wider historic Communion as it too reconfigures itself in response to a new Archbishop of Canterbury and to whatever decisions its forthcoming Belfast Anglican Consultative Council (June 27 to July 5) makes in relation to the NCP’s proposed reforms. 

Revd Dr Andrew Goddard is Assistant Minister, St James the Less, Pimlico, (where his wife Lis Goddard is vicar) Tutor in Christian Ethics, Westminster Theological Centre (WTC) and Tutor in Ethics at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He is a member of the Church of England Evangelical Council (CEEC).