Conservative Anglican leaders restructure the global religious body after 400 years

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) - Conservative Anglican leaders have restructured their organization, signaling a break from the traditions of the historic Anglican Communion as they seek to reorder the 400-year-old church group.

The Global Anglican Future Conference, or Gafcon, dissolved its Gafcon Primates Council and replaced it with the Global Anglican Council.

The new council will include primates, advisers and guarantors, made up of bishops, clergy and lay members, each with full voting privileges, Gafcon general secretary The Right Reverend Paul Donison said in a statement.

The announcement came during a meeting of the church's conservative leaders in Abuja, Nigeria's capital city, that drew 436 delegates from 48 countries representing over 180 dioceses from across the world.

"While the Chairman of the Council will be a Primate, he will not be primus inter pares (first amongst equals)," Donison said. "Believing that the current Instruments of Communion no longer meet the needs of the majority of Anglicans around the world, the Global Anglican Communion is to be led by a conciliar structure."

Gafcon leaders have opposed liberal trends such as same-sex marriage and the ordination of openly LGBTQ+ clergy in the Anglican churches of Europe and North America, including the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Divisions have widened so sharply over recent decades that some national churches stopped participating in Anglican Communion gatherings.

Archbishop Laurent Mbanda from Rwanda, who was unanimously elected as chair of the new Global Anglican Council, told the Advent Cable Network Nigeria, the televangelism arm of the Church of Nigeria, on Thursday that leaders within Gafcon's ranks must "reject those instruments that have not worked for us in the past."

One of the Anglican Church's instruments of leadership includes the Archbishop of Canterbury, currently Sarah Mullally, the church's spiritual head and the first woman in that position. Mullally has faced opposition in her role as leader of the church.

Last year, Mbanda called for a break from the historic communion as it's currently structured, declaring that "the Anglican Communion will be reordered."