She was appointed head of the Anglican Church on Friday and King Charles III has already sent a congratulatory message to her for the appointment.
An Anglican priest known for her overt support and advocacy for same-sex marriage has been appointed the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, to serve as spiritual leader for the over 85 million protestant church believers globally.
The 63-year-old Dane Sarah Mullaly, who is described as a theological liberal and was the first woman Bishop of London, is also the first woman archbishop of Canterbury. She is the former senior UK government advisor on nursing as government’s Chief Nursing Officer for London before taking up ministry work.
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She was appointed head of the Anglican Church on Friday and King Charles III has already sent a congratulatory message to her for the appointment.
Meanwhile, the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Rev. Dr. Stephen Samuel Kazimba Mugalu has issued a communication to his flock, expressing sadness at Mullaly’s appointment, saying, “I am writing to share the sad news that the Rt. Rev. Sarah Mullaly, the Bishop of London, has been appointed as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Our sadness about this appointment is her support and advocacy for unbiblical positions on sexuality and same-sex marriage that reveal her departure from the biblical doctrine”.
As a founding member of Gafcon, Dr. Kazimba noted, the Church of Uganda considers this appointment to further deepen the tear in the fabric of the Anglican Communion that began in 2003 with the TEC consecration as Bishop of a divorced father of two living in a same-sex relationship, and that the tear in the fabric of the Anglican Communion has now reached the highest level of the Communion. He added that there appears to be no repentance.” Make no mistake, this is a grievous decision at the highest levels of the Church of England to separate itself from the vast majority of the global Anglican Communion’, the most senior Protestant clergyman in Uganda lamented.
On behalf of Ugandan believers, he offered prayers for those in the Church of England who are disillusioned by this appointment and extended a hand of fellowship to them through Gafcon and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans.
Kazimba noted that as was declared in the 2023 Gafcon statement from Kigali, they no longer recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as having global authority and the office is certainly no longer an “Instrument of Communion, and that with this appointment, the Archbishop of Canterbury is reduced simply to the Primate of All England.
Likewise, he sadly pointed out, the Church of Uganda wants to assure Christians in the Church that, through Gafcon and the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans, they are part of a worldwide communion of Anglicans who continue to proclaim the historic and Biblical faith of Anglicanism – faithfulness to Christ and submission to the authority of Scripture.
“The future of Gospel-centred mission in our Anglican tradition is bright: ‘The fields are ripe for harvest; we pray for laborers to go into the harvest’: and as we declared at our 2018 Gafcon meeting in Jerusalem, we will proclaim Christ faithfully to the nations”, he said in conclusion.