(Analysis) The 2025 Story of the Year in religion is obviously the surprise May 8 election of the first Pope from the United States, Leo XIV. The second-place story, less publicized but important, is the Oct. 16 proclamation of a planned split among the world’s 97 million Anglican Christians over their anguishing dispute on the Bible and sexual morality.

All “orthodox” bishops are summoned to Abuja, Nigeria, next March 3-6 to formalize the breakup, elect a leader, and fix next steps.  But who will show up? 

The long-evolving conflict reached this breaking point two weeks after 2025’s number-three story occurred, the appointment of Sarah Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury. She will both head the Church of England and be the titular leader of the Anglican Communion, which consists of 42 self-governing national branches. For some, her ascent adds the divisive issue of female clergy to the biblical debate. 

The coming break was announced by bishops of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), founded in 2008 and currently chaired by Rwanda’s Archbishop Laurent Mbanda. Their statement rejects Canterbury’s leadership and related international institutions, and boldly insists this is not a schism because “we have not left the Anglican Communion; we are the Anglican Communion” — now to be renamed the “Global Anglican Communion.”   

Regarding Mullally, GAFCON contends that “the majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy,” so it’s “impossible” for her “to serve as a focus of unity.”

But “more concerning” is her support for England’s 2023 decision to provide church blessing rituals for same-sex couples (while some seek to next sanction marriages). GAFCON believes Mullally thereby violated her consecration oath to banish “erroneous doctrine contrary to God’s Word.” 

Anglican Communion headquarters in London issued a bland response that invited delegates to a regularly scheduled consultation in Northern Ireland next June 27-July 5 to discuss 44 pages of proposals for revised “structure and decision-making,” though with no clear plan to solve “our differences and disagreements.” 

If GAFCON’s plan succeeds, this will reflect the reality that Anglicanism is now dominated by largely conservative former missionary churches in the “Global South” of Latin America, Asia, and especially Africa. The “World Christian Encyclopedia” says that in 1970, early in the post-colonial era, the world’s 48.3 million Anglicans included 8.4 million Africans. By the turn of the 21st Century, the 77.5 million Anglicans included 41.4 million Africans. As of 2020, Anglicans totaled 97.4 million, with 63.6 million in Africa. 

The baptized on-paper membership of the mother Church of England, 23 million, is similar to the 22 million in the Church of Nigeria that is hosting the March confab. But active Nigerian churchgoers vastly exceed England’s average Sunday attendance, which has fallen to 574,000.

Three GAFCON branches alone, Nigeria, plus Uganda and Kenya, claim 42 million believers, and the organization incorporates 16 other Anglican church bodies and agencies. 

Among these is the small Anglican Church in North America, formed in 2009 by traditionalists who left the Episcopal Church, the Communion’s U.S. branch, and its Canadian counterpart.

GAFCON’s general secretary, Bishop Paul Donison, is a Canadian leading a congregation in Plano, Texas, and ACNA Archbishop Stephen Wood serves on GAFCON’s governing council. (Wood is currently on leave, facing charges of sexual and other misconduct that he denies.) 

Some history: As recently as 1998, a conference of all the world’s Anglican bishops overwhelmingly endorsed a policy statement that rejected “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture.” While the church must “minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation,” the bishops stated, they consequently “cannot advise the legitimizing or blessing of same sex unions nor ordaining those involved in same gender unions.” 

Five years later, America’s Episcopal Church initiated global conflict by consecrating the Communion’s first partnered gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson. In 2016, the Anglican Church of Canada consecrated partnered gay Bishop Kevin Robertson.

Last June, the Church in Wales (separate from England’s church) elected partnered lesbian Archbishop Cherry Vann as its new leader. Churches in Brazil, New Zealand, Scotland and South Africa also have liberal policies. Together, these seven branches encompass some 7% of Anglicanism.   

The Associated Press reported that GAFCON’s Oct. 16 proclamation was written by leaders gathered in Australia, with some joining by Zoom, but it’s possibly significant that not all council members participated. Indeed, one GAFCON council member, Archbishop Georges Titre Ande, says his church in Congo will not leave the Anglican Communion. 

The major complication: As of this writing, the other traditionalist alliance, the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, has not embraced GAFCON’s breakup. GSFA unites 12 national Anglican branches with 16 other Anglican entities and 15 agencies and schools. There’s some overlap between the two groups’ constituencies, and GSFA’s chairman, South Sudan Archbishop Justin Badi, serves on GAFCON’s council. 

When England authorized same-sex blessings, GSFA withdrew recognition from the Archbishop of Canterbury as world leader and pledged to collaborate with GAFCON. Notably, the GSFA response to Sarah Mullally’s appointment did not cite her gender, only her beliefs on “marriage and sexuality.”

Virtueonline.org, a conservative Anglican news and commentary site, reports feelings within GSFA that GAFCON acted too hastily without enough consultation with other traditionalists, and says “GSFA emphasizes process and consensus-building, while GAFCON prioritizes decisive action.” 

The Anglican Church of Australia typifies the perplexities. It maintains loyal ties with Canterbury. Yet Australians have been key GAFCON leaders, currently including Archbishop Kanishka Raffel of the large Sydney diocese. The national church just elected an evangelical, Archbishop Mark Short, as its new head, and many bishops agree with GAFCON’s sexuality belief, as do substantial numbers, perhaps a majority, of the clergy and lay members. 

It seems conceivable that a year from now, world Anglicanism might be reconfigured, officially or de facto, into three segments: the old Anglican Communion centered on Canterbury, GAFCON turned the new Global Anglican Communion, and some or most GSFA types in limbo, both thoroughly alienated from Canterbury and unwilling to join GAFCON in decisively cutting that historical bond.

This commentary, which originally appeared at Religion Unplugged, does not necessarily reflect the views of The Roys Report.

Richard Ostling, a contributor to Religion Unplugged, is a former religion reporter for the Associated Press and former correspondent for TIME Magazine.