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Forward slash Friday.

Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson.

October has been a really tumultuous month for the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.

No sooner had the appointment of the first female Archbishop Canterbury, Sarah Malawi,

been announced than an enormous section of the Anglican Communion,

grouped together in a conservative fellowship called Gaffcom,

announced that it was basically withdrawing from fellowship and communion with the Archbishop

of Canterbury, with the Church of England, with the Lambeth Conference, but rather than leaving

the Anglican Communion had become the the Anglican Communion, had become the new Anglican

communion, dominated by such enormous churches as the Church of Nigeria, whose 22 million

members make it the second largest in the Anglican world. But also as part of this global

Anglican Future Conference, Gafcon,

Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Congo and Chile.

So actually, it would be pretty heavily African-dominated.

And the bono-condension, unsurprisingly, is homosexuality.

It was the General Synod's 2023 decision to sanction

standalone gay blessings in church, including of already married same-sex couples, that prompted

many provinces to declare themselves out of communion with Justin Welby.

...