Clergy from a conservative grouping of the Anglican Church are meeting this week in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, to choose a rival to the first female Archbishop of Canterbury.

The UK’s Sarah Mullally will officially be installed as the leader of the world’s Anglican communion at a lavish ceremony later this month but her appointment has divided opinion in Nigeria, and elsewhere.

Many conservative Christians believe that only men should be consecrated as bishops.

The Vining Memorial Church Cathedral in Nigeria’s main city Lagos was full of women in gold, green and purple “geles” or headwraps and men resplendent in white-flowing “agbada” robes for its weekly highlight, the Sunday service.

Some of the hymns and liturgy were the same as those sung by Anglicans around the world, but there were also differences, like the upbeat worship music that had the congregation dancing in the pews.

Some congregants, like Bunmi Odukoya, were supportive of the appointment.

“The work of God is an individual thing. If you’re called – you can be a man, you can be a woman – you need to fulfil the calling of the Lord,” he told the BBC.

Others, like Uche Nweke, strongly disagreed: “I don’t think it’s Christian. When you look at the Bible and the apostles, there was no woman in there, so a woman being the head of the Anglican church in England, I don’t think it’s going to go well.”

In addition to being the most senior cleric in the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury is also “primus inter pares” – or first among equals – of the primates of the worldwide Anglican Communion, meaning she is the spiritual leader of almost 95 million Anglicans.

At its four-day meeting that has just started in Abuja, Gafcon, which describes itself as a global movement of “authentic Anglicans, guarding God’s gospel”, plans to elect its own “first among equals”, just weeks ahead of Archbishop Mullaly’s installation at Canterbury Cathedral.

The move threatens to turn divisions within the global church into a full-on split.

“This is a schism, even if they don’t want to say that,” Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford in England, told the BBC.

“This is a set of leaders, all male, going to a conference in Africa to assert [an] identity which no longer satisfies many Anglican churches – that is an all-male episcopate calling the shots.”

Gafcon was formed in 2008 in response to theological differences within the Anglican Communion over the issue of same-sex unions.

In recent years those divisions have deepened, and in 2023 the group rejected the leadership of the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, over proposals to bless same-sex couples, a position also held by his successor, Dame Sarah.

The group says it speaks for the majority of the world’s Anglicans, although that is contested.

It does draw much of its support from Africa, but the view on the continent is by no means monolithic.

For example, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, and Kenya’s first female bishop Emily Onyango, both celebrated Sarah Mullally’s appointment.

And while Gafcon accuses the Church of England of maintaining a colonial relationship with churches in the Global South and imposing its more progressive views, some of the organisers of this week’s conference are based in the Americas and Australia, where the organisation also has a presence.

In October last year, Gafcon resolved to “reorder the Anglican Communion”, refusing to take part in meetings convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and encouraging members to cut remaining ties with the Church of England.

The group said It had not left. Instead it claimed that it was the true Anglican Communion.

The election of its own global spiritual leader will bring the Church a step closer to an irrevocable split, and is “a very aggressive thing to do”, said Prof MacCulloch, who is an Anglican.

The Anglican Communion is made up of 42 provinces in 165 countries around the world. Each has its own system of governance, but they share heritage, and ways of worshipping.

“We see ourselves as a family of autonomous, yet interdependent churches,” Bishop Anthony Poggo, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, told the BBC.

It is the third largest Christian denomination after Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church, giving its leaders a huge platform when speaking about issues such as climate change, human rights, or efforts for global peace.

Churches within it support each other spiritually and in terms of resources through what are known as companion links.

“These are examples of very positive things that we get out of this relationship,” Bishop Poggo tells the BBC.

While there is no formal constitution, it is held together by four “Instruments of Communion”, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Proposals to broaden the leadership of the Anglican Communion to better reflect its global nature will be discussed at the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in June. But that is one of the instruments that Gafcon no longer recognises, so its members will not be there.

According to Bishop Poggo, any church or province that wants to leave the Communion ought to follow the process by which they joined, but in reverse.

“We need to go through our existing processes, namely, a standing committee, or the synods that we have in each of the provinces, rather than doing it outside of these processes.”

So what happens when one part of the family refuses to do so, but behaves as if it has left?

“There is not much you can do,” concedes Bishop Poggo, adding: “It saddens us.”

The relationship between the first Anglican church and the rest of the world is looking increasingly precarious. But there are still some who value the connection with Canterbury.

Despite disagreeing with the Church of England’s more liberal view, Nigerian youth pastor Alexander Olasinde says that the connection to the Church of England still matters to him

“All of us [as Christians] have one goal, and that is to make [it to] heaven. We need to find a common ground,” the 34-year-old told the BBC.

“If we continue in this trend we’ll have grudges, unsettled issues between us. So how do we even make it to heaven?” (BBC)

Update news