The leadership of the Anglican Church in Nigeria issued a statement on Tuesday taking issue with the appointment of Bishop Sarah Mullaly as the first Archbishop of Canterbury, making her the first female leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
Mullaly, a 63-year-old former nurse, was named last week in a move that threatened to split the more conservative Asian and African churches away from Canterbury. The previous archbishop, Justin Welby, resigned almost a year ago after an inquiry found he failed to inform the police about serial sexual abuse by a volunteer at summer camps.
Mullaly’s critics say she is not distant enough from Welby and the scandal that brought him down and her politics are too liberal for much of the Anglican Communion, to say nothing of conservative resistance to a female archbishop. Women have only been priests in the Anglican faith for about 30 years and the Communion was only held together in the 1990s with promises they would not become bishops, much less the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Anglican Church in Nigeria was first out of the gate in formally denouncing the appointment of a female archbishop, calling it “devastating” and “insensitive to the conviction of the majority of Anglicans who are unable to embrace female headship in the episcopate.”
“More disturbing that Bishop Sarah Mullally is a strong supporter of same-sex marriage as evidenced in her speech in 2023, after a vote to approve the blessings of homosexuals when she described the result as a moment of hope for the Church,” continued the statement from the Most Reverend Henry C. Ndukuba, Archbishop, Metropolitan, and Primate of the Church of Nigeria.
“It remains to be seen how the same person hopes to mend the already torn fabric of the Anglican Communion by the contentious same-sex marriage, which has caused an enormous crisis across the entire Anglican Communion for over two decades,” the statement said.
“This election is a further confirmation that the global Anglican world could no longer accept the leadership of the Church of England and that of the Archbishop of Canterbury,” the statement declared.
Archbishop Ndukuba said the Church of Nigeria would “uphold the authority of the Scriptures, our historic creeds, evangelism and holy Christian living, irrespective of the ongoing revisionist agenda, believing our Lord Jesus Christ has built His church and ‘the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’”
The Church of Nigeria’s statement concluded by encouraging “all faithful brothers and sisters in the Church of England who have consistently rejected the aberration called same-sex marriage and other ungodly teachings” to stand firm in their beliefs.
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