The recent announcement that Dame Sarah Mullally will become the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury marks a watershed moment for the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion. While the British government hails this appointment as a historic milestone, many within the global Anglican family, especially those rooted in the Reformation heritage, receive this news with grief, concern, and renewed resolve to contend for “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).

Faith, Not Office, Defines Anglicans

From a Reformation Anglican standpoint, Anglican identity has never been grounded in Canterbury or any episcopal office. As Bishop Julian Dobbs of the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word (ACNA) recently reminded us, Anglicans are defined by “our faith: that we witness to Christ in a tradition whose unchanging rule is gifted us in the Scriptures, ‘the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints’ . . . interpreted through the historic formularies of the Anglican Church.” The true center of Anglican unity is not institutional hierarchy but the Word of God faithfully confessed in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-Nine Articles (1571), and the 1662 Ordinal.

As I have elsewhere argued, bishops are not the essence (esse) of the church but of its well-being (bene esse)—provided they remain faithful to Scripture and the Anglican formularies. Episcopacy rightly ordered is a blessing; unfaithful episcopacy, however, imperils the very gospel it is meant to guard. The essence of the church is the gospel itself, not episcopal office.

This is the conviction that animates the Center for Reformation Anglicanism (CRA). Our mission is to raise up and support leaders who will serve the church and the world with the gospel of grace and gratitude—leaders whose confidence rests not in shifting cultural winds but in the unchanging gospel of Christ crucified, buried and risen.

GAFCON’s Clear Witness

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) Primates Council, representing the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide, issued a pointed statement in response to Mullally’s appointment:

This appointment . . . abandons Anglicans who have remained faithful to the Scriptures, the historic teaching of the Church, and the faith once delivered to the saints.

It is essential to be clear about what this means. Since 2023, GAFCON has no longer recognized the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor does it see communion with Canterbury as the defining feature of Anglicanism. When GAFCON leaders speak of “the Anglican Communion,” they mean the global fellowship of churches bound together by the Scriptures and the Reformation formularies—not by submission to Canterbury. For this reason, the ACNA has never maintained a “church within a church” posture toward the Church of England. We are not and never have been in communion with Canterbury. The sad truth is that the Church of England has for some time been regarded by the global GAFCON movement as apostate. This point has been made clearly by Rev. Matt Kennedy, who noted that “GAFCON does not recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury’s authority. We are not in communion with Canterbury and never have been.”

The Preface to the 1662 Ordinal not only establishes the threefold order of ministers, but also requires that these offices be filled only by those who are duly examined, found fit, and publicly set apart by prayer and the laying on of hands. In other words, sound, examined, and qualified episcopacy is biblical and reverently to be continued for the good of the church. When those standards are ignored—as in the appointment of an unfit archbishop—the church’s well-being is not preserved but imperiled.

And the Ordinal’s service for the ordination of an Archbishop makes plain the purpose of that office. In the Examination, the bishop-elect is charged to uphold the sufficiency of Holy Scripture for salvation, to “teach and exhort with wholesome doctrine, and to withstand and convince the gainsayers,” and “with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s word.” At the climactic moment, as the Bible is placed in his hands, he is exhorted: “Give heed unto reading, exhortation, and doctrine. . . . Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf. Feed them; devour them not.” In other words, bishops exist to serve the church by faithfully preaching the Word, feeding the flock, and guarding the sacraments. When bishops abandon that charge, they cease to promote the church’s well-being and instead undermine it.

This is precisely why the issue before us is not episcopacy itself but unfaithful episcopacy. The 1662 Ordinal provides a faithful pattern of what bishops are meant to be: men who are qualified, sound in doctrine, diligent in guarding the truth, and faithful shepherds of Christ’s flock. But when those standards are ignored, as in the appointment of an unfit archbishop, the result is not the preservation of the church’s well-being but its peril.

GAFCON Ireland likewise echoed this solidarity, commending Archbishop Laurent Mbanda’s global statement and reminding Anglicans that “Your God reigns” (Isaiah 52:7) even when ecclesiastical institutions falter.

Why This Appointment Grieves

The disappointment expressed across the Communion is not rooted in prejudice but in theology. As the Australian Church Record editorial put it:

We are saddened by this decision . . . because it prioritizes political symbolism over biblical faithfulness and deepens the theological confusion already rife within the Church of England.

This perspective is widely shared. Dame Sarah Mullally’s record of supporting the blessing of same-sex unions—an endorsement that, in practice, functions as an affirmation of same-sex marriage—together with her advocacy of revisionist teaching on sexuality, are not minor issues of ecclesiastical policy. They strike at the heart of biblical authority and undermine the moral witness of the church. Her public pro-choice views are equally troubling, further eroding the credibility of her moral leadership by standing in direct opposition to the sanctity of life.

By contrast, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) has spoken with clarity and conviction on this matter. Canon 8, Section 3 of the ACNA Constitution and Canons affirms “the God-given sanctity of life from conception to natural death” and explicitly rejects abortion as incompatible with Christian teaching. The Church of Nigeria has responded with particular clarity, declaring its “spiritual independence” from the Church of England in light of this appointment, describing it as a “troubling moral decline.”

The Rt. Rev. Phil Ashey of the American Anglican Council underscores this point with particular force. He writes that Mullally’s appointment does not mark progress but “the final sunset of the See of Canterbury as the spiritual center of global Anglican unity.” For nearly five centuries, Canterbury functioned as the symbolic heart of Anglican identity, but this role has been irreparably lost. The election of an Archbishop who affirms doctrinal revisionism, Ashey argues, demonstrates that Canterbury has surrendered its moral and spiritual authority. The true center of Anglican orthodoxy now lies with GAFCON and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans, where the authority of Scripture, the creeds, and the 1662 formularies continue to bind the faithful. The future of Anglicanism is not in nostalgia for Canterbury but in the joyful work of building new wineskins for a renewed, global, gospel-centered Communion.

Holding Fast to Christ Alone

In such a moment, the temptation is either despair or accommodation. But authentic Anglicanism offers a different path: steadfast confidence in Christ and his Word. As Bishop Dobbs exhorted, “The treasure entrusted to us in the Gospel stands firm, even when earthly leaders and institutions falter. Our task continues unchanged: to proclaim Christ faithfully to the nations.”

David Virtue, longtime Anglican journalist, underscores the stakes: This appointment represents not simply an internal Church of England decision but “a disastrous signal” for the whole Communion, one that widens the breach between revisionist and confessional Anglicans.

The Way Forward

For those of us committed to the Reformation heritage, the way forward is not confusion but clarity, not compromise but confession. We stand with our global brothers and sisters in GAFCON, with faithful bishops like Julian Dobbs, with our own bishops in the Diocese of the Rocky Mountains (The Rt. Rev. Ken Ross, The Rt. Rev. Dr. Ben Fischer, The Rt. Rev. Canon Billy Waters (Elect), and The Rt. Rev. Thad Barnum), and with movements in Ireland, Australia, Nigeria, and beyond. The gospel of grace—proclaimed in Scripture, confessed in the formularies, and signified and sealed in the sacraments (baptism and the Lord’s Supper)—remains the true heartbeat of Anglicanism.

For this reason, we continue to insist on a qualified episcopacy: Bishops must be tested and held accountable by Scripture and the Anglican formularies. Faithful bishops are a gift for the church’s well-being, but unfaithful bishops are a danger to its very soul.

We grieve this appointment because we love Christ’s church and long for its leaders to guard the truth rather than surrender it. Yet we remain hopeful, for as GAFCON Ireland reminds us: “Your God reigns.” And as the apostle Paul assures us: “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58).

©John Fonville. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• John Fonville

  

  John Fonville, originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, is an ordained presbyter in the Anglican Church in North America, serving in the Diocese of the Rocky Mountains. He is the founder of Paramount Church, the Director of The Center for Reformation Anglicanism, and an author with Moody Publishing. John graduated from Gardner-Webb University (BA), earned his MDiv at The Master’s Seminary, and his DMin at Ligonier Academy. He and his wife, Kathryn, have six children.

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