NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — Weeks after the appointment of the Rt. Rev. Sarah Mullally as the leader of the Anglican Communion, conservative Anglican prelates in Africa have rejected the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury and have proclaimed their own network of conservative churches the official voice of Anglicanism.

“The majority of the Anglican Communion still believes that the Bible requires a male-only episcopacy. Therefore, her appointment will make it impossible for the archbishop of Canterbury to serve as a focus of unity within the Communion,” said the primates’ statement, released shortly after Mullally’s appointment Oct. 3. 

The primates’ newest statement, Oct. 16, asserted that the members of the network, known as GAFCON, were “not leaving the Anglican Communion because we are the communion.”

Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda, the chairman of GAFCON’s Primates Council, said in an Oct. 16 statement that the new arrangement would restore the original structure of the communion as a fellowship of autonomous provinces “bound together by the formularies of reformation,” referring to the founding documents of the Church of England in the 16th century as it broke with Catholicism.

The new communion will be proclaimed and celebrated at the G26 Bishops’ conference in Abuja, Nigeria, from March 3-6, Mbanda told RNS in an Oct. 17 interview on WhatsApp. “The final ties with Canterbury are now severed. GAFCON is the Global Anglican Communion.” 

It is not clear exactly what action will follow from the statement, which reprises rhetoric from earlier declarations. Most Anglicans live in the Global South, and particularly in Africa, where more than 63 million baptized Anglicans reside, compared to about 23 million in Europe. Of the Anglican Communion’s 46 provinces and other member churches, 12 are in Africa. Seven of these are represented on GAFCON’s 12-member Primates Council. 

But some African Anglican bishops were not aware of the GAFCON move or had not been following the developments. 

“As far as I know, the Kenyan Province is still in the Anglican Communion because the constitution has not changed. The synod has to sit and authorize the move from the Anglican Communion,” said Bishop Alphonce Mwaro Baya of the Mombasa Diocese, part of the Church of Kenya, which is aligned with GAFCON.

The GAFCON statement urges all provinces to change their laws to “remove any reference to being in communion with the See of Canterbury and the Church of England,” and not to “participate in meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury,” or the Anglican Consultative Council, a coordinating body. It proposes that a new chairman of the communion, to be elected by a new Council of Primates, would replace the archbishop of Canterbury as the “first among equals” of the world’s Anglican bishops.

The churches of Rwanda, Nigeria and Uganda and all members of both GAFCON and the Anglican Communion have not participated in worldwide meetings since 2016, and some churches, Mbanda noted, already have no formal recognition of Canterbury. 

“It may be a process for some, while others have already done it or never had it. Take for example, Nigeria has done it. The Anglican Church of America, Brazil and Rwanda had no reference to it,” said the archbishop.

GAFCON — the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans — was formed in 2008 as the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, largely in response to the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire and the recognition of same-sex unions in some churches. The ordination of women has also been an issue for some GAFCON leaders, though some accept women as clergy.

Besides the 12 GAFCON-aligned provinces in the Anglican Communion, several other GAFCON members, including the Anglican Church of North America, have been created since the network was created in 2008.

Some African provinces cheered the appointment of Mullally as the first woman to rise to the post in 1,400 years of the church. “We heartily welcome the announcement and look forward to working with her as we all try to respond prophetically and pastorally to what God is up to in God’s world,” said Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town, South Africa.

According to Mwaro, the question of whether a female can lead the church had been overtaken by time, noting that Mullally’s appointment was an elevation to a higher office, not a holy order. “She was already a bishop,” he said, and “depending on the needs, any candidate can be ordained as long as they meet the criteria of the province.”

But Mbanda said the fellowship could no longer continue to be in communion with those who had abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority.

“In the absence of such repentance, we have been prayerfully advancing towards a future of faith, Anglicans, where the Bible is restored to the heart of the communion,” said Mbanda. “Today, that future has arrived.”