The Anglican Crisis: Lessons on Authority and Unity

When Authority Fails: The Anglican Crisis and the Future of Synodality

There are moments in history when events beyond the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church nevertheless assume the character of a parable—an enacted warning, a lived demonstration of principles whose consequences might otherwise remain abstract. The March 2026 gathering of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Abuja stands as such a moment. It is not merely an internal Anglican development. It is a revelation. It is the spectacle of an ecclesial body attempting to reconstruct unity after having first surrendered the very principle by which unity is sustained.

And it is precisely for that reason that Catholics must attend to it—not with curiosity, but with seriousness.

For what is unfolding in Anglicanism is not a passing crisis. It is the terminus of a long experiment. It is the end-point of a model of ecclesial life in which authority is dispersed, doctrine is mediated through process, and unity is conceived not as a shared submission to truth, but as a negotiated coexistence of divergent convictions. It is, in a word, synodality without sovereignty.

To grasp the significance of this moment, one must begin at the foundation.

Anglicanism, since its rupture with the Apostolic See under Henry VIII and its theological reconfiguration under Thomas Cranmer, has existed without a magisterium capable of binding belief with finality. Its unity has never been secured by a living authority endowed with the charism of truth, but rather maintained—precariously—through a synthesis of Scripture, inherited tradition, reasoned judgement, and synodical deliberation.¹

Such a system can endure only so long as its internal tensions remain dormant. It depends upon restraint, upon a tacit willingness not to press differences to their logical conclusions. It presumes a shared moral and doctrinal horizon that need not be explicitly enforced because it is culturally assumed.

But once that shared horizon dissolves, the system has no means of recovery.

This is the reality now confronting the Anglican world.

For decades, disputes over doctrine—most visibly in the realm of moral theology—have exposed the inability of Anglican structures to adjudicate truth. Appeals have been made to common teaching, most notably in the Lambeth Conference 1998 Resolution I.10, which reaffirmed the perennial Christian understanding of marriage and sexual ethics.² Yet such resolutions, lacking binding force, have proved incapable of constraining those provinces that have chosen to depart from them.

A teaching that cannot be enforced is not, in the end, a teaching. It is a preference.

The ensuing decades saw repeated attempts to preserve unity through process. The Windsor Report called for repentance and restraint, warning with almost prophetic clarity that failure to heed such counsel would lead to separation.³ The proposed Anglican Communion Covenant sought to establish a framework of mutual accountability.⁴ Yet both initiatives foundered on the same reef: they could exhort, but not command; they could propose, but not bind.

In the absence of authority, process becomes performance.

Into this widening fracture stepped GAFCON, seeking to preserve doctrinal integrity through confessional clarity. Alongside it emerged the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), representing a substantial portion of global Anglicanism and aspiring to construct more stable ecclesial structures among those committed to historic faith and order.⁵

For a brief moment, it appeared that a coherent response might be forged.

At Kigali in 2023, GAFCON and GSFA articulated a shared vision—distinct yet complementary. GAFCON would continue as a movement of mission and confession; GSFA would undertake the more demanding task of ecclesial construction, seeking to rebuild structures capable of sustaining doctrinal unity.⁶ It was, implicitly, an acknowledgment that zeal alone cannot substitute for order, and that proclamation without governance cannot preserve the Church.

Yet what was glimpsed at Kigali has been undone at Abuja.

The Abuja Affirmation of March 2026 is remarkable not only for what it declares, but for what it refuses to acknowledge. Nowhere in its text is GSFA mentioned.⁷ This silence is not an omission of detail; it is a statement of intent. It signals that GAFCON has ceased to view itself as one partner within a broader effort of ecclesial renewal and has instead assumed for itself the role of architect, judge, and centre.

What had been cooperation has become consolidation.

The structural changes announced in Abuja give concrete form to this shift. The dissolution of the Primates Council and its replacement with a new Global Anglican Council—presented as a more “conciliar” body—raises immediate questions. By what authority was this transformation enacted? How was the previous structure dissolved? Who determined the composition of the new body? These questions remain unanswered, and their absence is itself instructive.

For conciliarity, when severed from clear and recognised authority, does not produce unity. It produces opacity.

More consequential still is the introduction of a new requirement for leadership: “principled disengagement” from all Canterbury-led Instruments.⁸ What was once a matter of prudential judgement is now a condition of office. Those who continue to participate in the historic structures of the Anglican Communion are no longer eligible to lead within GAFCON’s newly defined body.

Thus the movement, originally conceived as a confessional fellowship, has assumed the character of a jurisdiction—drawing boundaries, imposing conditions, and demanding allegiance.

Yet even as it does so, it reveals the impossibility of its task.

For while disengagement is now mandatory at the global level, GAFCON continues to permit continued participation in local and provincial structures that may themselves embody the very doctrinal errors it seeks to resist. The principle is applied selectively because it cannot be applied universally. Authority is asserted, but not grounded; discipline is imposed, but not consistently.

This is the inevitable consequence of a system in which authority is constructed rather than received.

And it is here that the lesson for Catholics becomes not merely instructive, but urgent.

Within the Catholic Church, there is today an increasing emphasis on “synodality”—a term that, in its traditional sense, denotes the ordered collaboration of bishops under the headship of the Roman Pontiff, but which in contemporary discourse is often expanded to suggest a broader redistribution of authority, a heightened role for local assemblies, and a more dialogical approach to doctrinal and disciplinary questions.

The most advanced expression of this trajectory is found in the German Synodal Way, whose proposals have included significant revisions to moral teaching, ecclesial governance, and the exercise of authority.⁹ These proposals are framed in the language of listening, discernment, and responsiveness to contemporary realities. Yet beneath this language lies a more fundamental reconfiguration: the relocation of authority from the universal to the local, from the magisterial to the synodal.

The Anglican experience reveals the end of that road.

When authority is diffused, disagreement becomes structural.
When doctrine is subjected to process, truth becomes provisional.
When unity is redefined as coexistence, communion dissolves into fragmentation.

This is not conjecture. It is now visible reality.

The Anglican Communion no longer exists as a coherent ecclesial body. It has become a field of competing claims—multiple “communions,” overlapping jurisdictions, divergent theologies—each asserting continuity, none capable of commanding universal assent. What remains is not unity, but multiplicity; not communion, but contest.

And beneath this multiplicity lies a deeper absence.

For where there is no final authority, there can be no final word. And where there is no final word, there can be no enduring unity.

The Catholic Church, by contrast, possesses within her constitution the principle that Anglicanism lacks: a visible, hierarchical, and divinely instituted authority capable of binding the faithful in matters of faith and morals.¹⁰ This authority is not an optional feature of ecclesial life. It is its foundation. It is the guarantor of unity, the safeguard of truth, and the condition of communion.

To weaken that authority—whether by decentralisation, by the elevation of local synods, or by the redefinition of doctrine as the product of process—is not to renew the Church. It is to expose her to the same centrifugal forces that have torn Anglicanism apart.

The language of “walking together” may inspire. The rhetoric of listening may console. But without a final arbiter of truth, such processes cannot resolve disagreement. They can only defer it—until, as in Anglicanism, it becomes irreconcilable.

The events in Abuja therefore stand as a warning inscribed not in theory, but in reality.

They show what becomes of a Church when authority is replaced by negotiation, when doctrine is mediated by consensus, and when unity is sought without submission to truth. They reveal the multiplication of structures where once there was one, the proliferation of voices where once there was a single teaching, and the emergence of competing communions where once there was a claim—however imperfect—to unity.

And perhaps most tellingly, they reveal the eloquence of silence.

For in omitting GSFA, GAFCON has spoken volumes. It has revealed the breakdown of a shared project, the emergence of rival centres, and the impossibility of sustaining unity without a principle capable of binding all parties.

The lesson is unmistakable.

If the Church ceases to speak with one voice, she will soon find herself unable to speak at all.

Paul Avis, The Identity of Anglicanism (London: T&T Clark, 2007), pp. 45–68.
Lambeth Conference 1998, Resolution I.10, “Human Sexuality.”
The Windsor Report 2004 (London: Anglican Communion Office), para. 157.
The Anglican Communion Covenant (Ridley Cambridge Draft, 2009; not adopted).
Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, official communiqués and covenantal texts, 2019–2024.
GAFCON, Kigali Commitment, April 2023.
GAFCON, Abuja Affirmation, March 2026.
Ibid., section on “Principled Disengagement.”
German Synodal Way, official resolutions and texts, 2019–2023.
Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, §§18–25; Vatican I, Pastor Aeternus (1870).

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