Since the 1990s, the Anglican Communion has struggled with controversy regarding homosexuality in the church. In 1998, the 13th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops passed a resolution "rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture". However, this is not legally binding. "Like all Lambeth Conference resolutions, it is not legally binding on all provinces of the Communion, including the Church of England, though it commends an essential and persuasive view of the attitude of the Communion." "Anglican national churches in Brazil, South Africa, South India, New Zealand and Canada have taken steps toward approving and celebrating same-sex relationships amid strong resistance among other national churches within the 80 million-member global body. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has allowed same-sex marriage since 2015, and the Scottish Episcopal Church has allowed same-sex marriage since 2017." In 2017, clergy within the Church of England indicated their inclination towards supporting same-sex marriage by dismissing a bishops' report that explicitly asserted the exclusivity of church weddings to unions between a man and a woman. At General Synod in 2019, the Church of England announced that same-gender couples may remain recognised as married after one spouse experiences a gender transition. In 2023, the Church of England announced that it would authorise "prayers of thanksgiving, dedication and for God's blessing for same-sex couples."
Same-sex marriage has been legal in South Africa since the Civil Union Act, 2006 came into force on 30 November 2006. The decision of the Constitutional Court in the case of Minister of Home Affairs v Fourie on 1 December 2005 extended the common-law definition of marriage to include same-sex spouses—as the Constitution of South Africa guarantees equal protection before the law to all citizens regardless of sexual orientation—and gave Parliament one year to rectify the inequality in the marriage statutes. On 14 November 2006, the National Assembly passed a law allowing same-sex couples to legally solemnise their union 229 to 41, which was subsequently approved by the National Council of Provinces on 28 November in a 36 to 11 vote, and the law came into effect two days later.
Ernest Urban Trevor Huddleston was an English Anglican bishop. He was the Bishop of Stepney in London before becoming the second Archbishop of the Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean. He was best known for his anti-apartheid activism and his book Naught for Your Comfort.
David Stuart Sheppard, Baron Sheppard of Liverpool was a Church of England bishop who played cricket for Sussex and England in his youth, before serving as Bishop of Liverpool from 1975 to 1997. Sheppard remains the only ordained minister to have played Test cricket, though others such as Tom Killick were ordained after playing Tests.
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, known until 2006 as the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, is the province of the Anglican Communion in the southern part of Africa. The church has twenty-five dioceses, of which twenty-one are located in South Africa, and one each in Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and Saint Helena. In South Africa, there are between 3 and 4 million Anglicans out of an estimated population of 45 million.
Alan Michael Lapsley, SSM is a South African Anglican priest and social justice activist.
The Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church of South Africa (REACH-SA), known until 2013 as the Church of England in South Africa (CESA), is a Christian denomination in South Africa. It was constituted in 1938 as a federation of churches. It appointed its first bishop in 1955. It is an Anglican church and it relates closely to the Sydney Diocese of the Anglican Church of Australia, to which it is similar in that it sees itself as a bastion of the Reformation and particularly of reformed doctrine.
Robert V. Taylor is a priest in the Episcopal Church USA and an activist for social justice. He was installed in 1999 as dean of St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle, making him the first openly gay Episcopal dean in the United States and, at the time, the highest-ranking openly gay priest in the Episcopal Church.
Allister Haddon Sparks was a South African writer, journalist, and political commentator. He was the editor of The Rand Daily Mail when it broke Muldergate, the story of how the apartheid government secretly funded information projects.
Desmond Tutu was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid and human rights activist. He was Bishop of Johannesburg from 1985 to 1986 and then Archbishop of Cape Town from 1986 to 1996, in both cases being the first Black African to hold the position. Theologically, he sought to fuse ideas from Black theology with African theology.
Philip Welsford Richmond Russell, was a South African Anglican bishop.
Kay Maree Goldsworthy is an Australian bishop of the Anglican Church of Australia. She is the current archbishop of Perth in the Province of Western Australia. Upon her installation as archbishop, on 10 February 2018, she became the first female archbishop in the Anglican Church of Australia. Previously, she served as diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Gippsland in the south-eastern Australian state of Victoria.
Margaret Brenda Vertue is a retired South African Anglican bishop. She was the second woman to be elected as a bishop of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and of the whole African continent, as the diocesan bishop of the Anglican Diocese of False Bay.
The Tutu House is a house on Vilakazi Street in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, that was the home to Desmond and Leah Tutu. The house is registered as part of Johannesburg's historical heritage.
Aelred Stubbs was an Anglican priest and monk, influential in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa during the 1970s.
George Duncan Buchanan was a South African Anglican bishop.
Saint Mary's Cathedral, officially the Cathedral Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, is the cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of Johannesburg, South Africa. In late 2015 Xolani Dlwati was appointed as the dean until 27th of November 2022.
John Derek Stubbs was the dean of studies of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa from 1991 until 1999, and thereafter he was the dean and archdeacon of Grahamstown, from 1999 until 2006. Prior to that, Stubbs worked as a priest at the Church of the Heavenly Rest, in New York City, U.S.
Nomalizo Leah Tutu is a South African activist and the widow of Desmond Tutu.
Ubuntu theology is a Southern African Christian perception of the African Ubuntu philosophy that recognizes the humanity of a person through a person's relationship with other persons. It is best known through the writings of the Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu, who, drawing from his Christian faith, theologized Ubuntu by a model of forgiveness in which human dignity and identity are drawn from the image of the triune God. Human beings are called to be persons because they are created in the image of God.
