Global Anglican ties are under stress. It's unclear if they're at the breaking point.

After decades of fierce controversies over sexuality and theology in the Anglican Communion, some leaders of a conservative coalition say it’s time to make a final break from what has long been one of the world’s largest Protestant church families

After decades of fierce controversies over sexuality and theology in the Anglican Communion, some leaders of a conservative coalition say it’s time to make a final break from what has long been one of the world’s largest Protestant church families.

That would make a slow-growing Anglican schism complete — if it happens.

But how many church provinces go along with the rupture remains to be seen. Some of the communion’s largest and fastest-growing churches in Africa belong to the conservative group that announced the break — known as the Global Anglican Future Conference, or Gafcon. But several member churches have been silent on the plan, weeks after it was announced.

Gafcon’s announcement came shortly after the October appointment of Bishop Sarah Mullally as the first woman to be archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Communion’s symbolic spiritual leader. Many in England and other Western countries hailed this as a historic breaking of a stained-glass ceiling.

But leaders of Gafcon criticized the appointment, as did some other bishops. Some said only men should be bishops, but their bigger criticism was her support for some LGBTQ+-inclusive policies — the key fault line in the communion.