The Bishop's Letter - 07/06/2026

One of the riches of being an Anglican is that we are part of an international family, the Anglican Communion. It is a global fellowship of 42 autonomous Member Churches (Provinces) and five Extra-Provincial areas, which unites millions of people across 165 countries. This international communion is most visible when the Bishops gather in Canterbury as they did in 2022, for the Lambeth Conference. In principle, the Anglican Communion is a rare sign of connectedness across our divided world. Now, I suspect the Communion does not rank that highly for most of us on our map of Anglican identity. Contact with Anglicans overseas is often limited, and when we do hear about the Communion it is usually in the context of uncertainty about its future. Some members of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON), in particular Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda, have ceased participating in Communion meetings. Others, particularly within the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA), are calling for reform, especially concerning the nature of ecclesial communion and the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury. At the end of this month, the Anglican Consultative Council meets in Belfast to explore these questions. Please hold the Communion in your prayers. Despite these issues (far more than can be adequately explored here), we rejoice in the partners we share. We have recently welcomed into our diocese the Revd Suchitra Behera, from the Church of Bangladesh, who is spending a year with us as an associate priest in the Radlett Team. Suchitra will also be available to speak across the Diocese, helping us learn from the experience of a minority Anglican Church in Asia. We will hear more at our June Diocesan Synod. At the St Alban’s Day Pilgrimage, we will be joined by Bishop Charles Davidson from our link Diocese of Guyana. This is down to our long-standing link with four Dioceses in the Caribbean. The Bishop of Linköping, Bishop Marika Markovits, has committed to being at the installation of Bishop Andrew later this year, an expression of our developing link that recently saw +Jane and others attending their Diocesan Synodal meeting in Sweden. Linköping is a Porvoo church in communion with the Anglican Communion. And there are many others, especially local parish links. As we pray for our Communion, let us rejoice in the links we have, and consider how we can further our oneness in Christ. On behalf of +Jane and all my senior colleagues, thank you once again for your witness as together we build Christ’s church that is both local and for all the world.

With prayer and best wishes,

The Right Revd Richard Atkinson Bishop of Bedford and Acting Bishop of St. Albans