NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — Weeks before the Rt. Rev. Sarah Mullally is officially installed as the first female archbishop of Canterbury, a group of conservative Anglican prelates known as GAFCON renamed their body the Global Anglican Communion and elected a set of leaders to exercise “principled disengagement” from the archbishop and the historic center of Anglicanism in England.
The four-day Global Anglican Future Conference meeting in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, that ended Friday (March 6) was expected to elect a rival to the Archbishop of Canterbury — its own “first among equals” among its bishops to convene and guide them. Instead, it elected Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, the Anglican primate of Rwanda, as the chairman of the newly constituted Global Anglican Council, a body consisting of primates, advisers and “guarantors.”
Archbishop Miguel Uchôa, the archbishop of the Anglican Church in Brazil, will be deputy chairman, and Bishop Paul Donison, a Canadian-born American bishop, the general secretary.
“We recognize that there is still much work to be done by the Global Anglican Council …,” said the communique issued by the group on Friday.
The meeting, dubbed the G26, had the theme, “Choose this day, whom you will serve,” a passage from the Bible’s Book of Joshua in which the Israelites were challenged not to follow false gods. Leaders from the Global South, including 347 Anglican bishops and 121 …