The glaring absences from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s installation

Wednesday saw the installation of the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Dame Sarah Mullally at Canterbury Cathedral.   

At the beginning, the Dean of the Cathedral, the Very Rev David Monteith welcomed the congregation to a “truly global gathering”. Later he installed her within the Chair of St Augustine, with the prayer that she might “by God’s grace be an instrument of communion, and fellowship in Christ throughout the Anglican Communion”.

To the casual onlooker, these words would appear fitting for such a ceremony. Yet to those that have followed the history of the Anglican Communion over the past forty years that they had a hole ring. And those keeping a careful eye on the procession noted that the leaders of sixteen provinces were missing.

There are forty-two provinces within the Anglican Communion, every one is autonomous they usually are supposed to work together aided by the Instruments of Communion. The primates of twenty-four provinces got here to welcome the brand new Archbishop of Canterbury, and two others, Pakistan and Burundi, sent representatives. Another three, Jerusalem, Melanesia and the Acting Primate of Papua New Guinea, had sent their apologies on account of travel issues brought on by the war within the Gulf.

It would seem that twelve primates, greater than 25% of them, had refused to attend the service. It was the primates of Alexandria, Chile, Congo, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Rwanda, SE Asia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda who absented themselves. Given this, the explanation is obvious, for these are the leaders of Gafcon and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA).  

For greater than twenty years the GSFA has called for the Anglican Communion to undergo God’s word and discipline those provinces, including the Church of England, who they perceive to have “departed from the historic faith passed down from the Apostles.” For this reason, they can not recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury because the “first amongst equals leader of the worldwide Communion”.

Last month in Abuja, Nigeria, Gafcon went a step further and announced that there was “a shift of the stewardship of the Anglican Communion from the Canterbury Instruments to the Global Anglican Communion”.  Rather than seeking to Canterbury for leadership, these provinces will look to a newly formed Global Anglican Council to make sure that true communion might be present in submission to God’s word.

Sadly, Wednesday’s Installation, glorious because it appeared in all its pomp and ceremony, was not a “truly global” gathering. The real story is that the representatives of the overwhelming majority of the world’s Anglicans have turned their back on Canterbury and are searching for latest ways of maintaining the “fellowship of Christ throughout the Anglican Communion”. 

Susie Leafe is director of Anglican Futures, an organisation that gives pastoral and practical support to orthodox Anglicans.