It has only been a short while since Gafcon (Global Anglican Future Conference) issued the Abuja Affirmation, declaring that “reordering the Anglican Communion is now necessary”.
Concerning that Communion, Gafcon also claimed to have “restored its original structure as a fellowship of autonomous provinces bound together by the Formularies of the Reformation.”
For Anglicans across the world, that statement landed very differently. For some, it amounted to the Anglican world tilting on its axis; for others, it was condemned as an illegitimate power grab. The reason for those differing reactions is that Western Anglicanism and the Global South operate with two fundamentally different understandings of what communion is, how it is maintained, and how it can be impaired.
Churchill & Arday: Double standards?
In 1898, the young Winston Churchill rode with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman, later describing the charge as a desperate …