Anglican Consultative Council members seemed largely skeptical about recommendations for altering a venerable description of the Anglican Communion proposed by its faith and order body during presentations from table groups on June 30, the third day of meetings for ACC-19 in Belfast.
The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, released in December 2024 by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order, suggest removing the phrase “in communion with the See of Canterbury” as a primary marker of Anglican identity.
In the proposals’ updated description, “historic connection with the See of Canterbury” is listed as one of several gifts that bind Anglicans together as “they seek interdependently to foster the highest degree of communion possible with one another.”
ACC members discussed a question about Anglican identity and the revised description in 17 table groups for about 45 minutes. Then a representative from each group summarized the perspectives that were shared. While several spokespersons said that there was a strong division at their tables on the issues, most commented negatively.
‘What Binds Us?’
“If we take away what we understand about the See of Canterbury and the primacy of Canterbury, what is our rallying point; what binds us?” asked Archbishop Kay Goldsworthy of the Anglican Church of Australia.
Canon Jane Evans of the Church of England said that her group had focused on the image of the Anglican Communion as a family. “The Archbishop of Canterbury is the parent, and when the offspring grow up and become independent, they still want that relationship with the parent. … Our whole identity is the connection with our parents, but that doesn’t mean the parent dictates to us.”
She added that “one group member said that if we dilute the relationship with Canterbury, we take away the reason for being Anglican. We might as well be something else.”
The Rt. Rev. Riscylla Shaw | Neil Turner for ACO
“We felt that in the 1930 description, the words ‘mutual loyalty’ are very important. And when we take out ‘mutual loyalty,’ it becomes transactional, because it’s about services rendered and connections made, counsel offered,” said Bishop Riscylla Shaw of the Anglican Church of Canada.
Shaw suggested that the proposals “seem to be an agenda to become individual churches. Every province goes its own way with no head church, and the concern is that this disperses authority and allegiance.”
Glenn Moore, an ACC member from the Church of Ireland, said that his group was concerned about the proposed description’s use of “the highest degree of communion possible,” a common phrase in ecumenical theology that has been used in numerous recent Anglican Communion texts to describe the intention to maintain fellowship even when disagreement prevents eucharistic communion.
“We were concerned about ‘the highest degree of communion,’ and we felt that that would be open to interpretation, and ultimately it could lead to everyone having their own definition of what communion is,” Moore said.
“We could find that in a number of years we would be having more issues because everybody will have their own interpretation of what it is to be in communion.”
‘Communion in Faith No Longer Exists’
A few African ACC members spoke up in support of the proposals. The Rev. Zablon Bundi of the Anglican Church of Kenya said that his group welcomed the proposals, because if they were adopted “the Anglican Communion would be rooted more in the apostolic tradition instead of the See of Canterbury.”
The Very Rev. Berthier Lainirina | Neil Turner for ACO
“We agree that though this redefinition is not perfect, it’s the way forward. The problem is, to be in communion with the See of Canterbury is very problematic at this time,” said the Very Rev. Berthier Lainirina of the Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean.
“Whether we like it or not, there have already been many provinces who cannot accept being in full communion with Canterbury because being in full communion means a communion of faith, and communion of faith no longer exists because Canterbury has departed from ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.’ So, what remains is historic: historic connection with Canterbury. That’s why we say this is the way forward.”
Other speakers questioned the timing of the proposals. “There is a strong feeling that there’s a need for more time to discuss and reflect and digest them,” said Archbishop Hosam Naoum of the Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East.
“One question was posed: ‘What will we as Anglicans gain or lose if we do or do not approve these proposals?’” Naoum said.
An additional session to discuss the proposals is scheduled for Thursday. ACC members are invited to draft resolutions based on them, which will be debated and considered for adoption on Saturday.
Prayer and Work for the Environment
In an afternoon session, ACC members received presentations about how Anglicans are responding to environmental crises in prayer and action during a session chaired by Presiding Bishop Marinez Rosa dos Santos Bassotto of the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil.
The Rev. Rachel Mash of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, the chair of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network, encouraged Anglican churches to celebrate the Feast of Creation, a September 1 ecumenical observance rooted in Eastern Orthodoxy that was officially added to the liturgical calendar of the Revised Common Lectionary in May. The Episcopal Church’s General Convention formally endorsed the concept of the feast in 2024.
The feast, Mash said, came at “a kairos moment for the church” and drew attention to “the neglected role of Christ in the mystery of creation.”
The Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, Chair of the Anglican Indigenous Network, addresses the Anglican Consultative Council | Neil Turner for ACO
The Rev. Rachel Taber-Hamilton, the Chair of the Anglican Indigenous Network and a priest of the Diocese of Olympia, made a presentation about a Marian chapel that she created at Trinity Episcopal Church in Everett, Washington, where she serves as rector.
The chapel’s decoration is based on a famous Fra Angelico fresco of Christ appearing after his resurrection to Mary Magdalene. Drawing on John 20:14–15, the fresco casts Christ as a gardener with a hoe over his shoulder and his life-giving blood dripping onto a flowering meadow.
The chapel, Taber-Hamilton said, invites people into an encounter with the risen Christ and invites them to ponder, “What is Christ asking of you as a collaborator with him in the spiritual work of renewing the world and caring for all?”
ACC member Ethel George from the Anglican Church of Melanesia noted several ways that the Communion Forest initiative is “kindling the fire and reshaping the mindset” of her church. At the Pentecost 2025 celebrations of the province’s Golden Jubilee, seedlings were distributed for planting trees on Vanuatu’s Pentecost Island. Members of the Melanesian Brotherhood, she added, are creating a Communion Forest conservation area on the island of Ambae.
The Ven. Andrew Orr of the Church of Ireland’s Diocese of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross said that his diocese has been planting six trees for each new confirmand in an attempt to begin the reforesting of Ireland, the European Union’s least-wooded country.
New Provincial Responses to the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals
Additional responses to the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals have also been released by the Anglican Church of South America and the Anglican Church of Canada in the last week. They echo some of the praise and concerns shared by ACC members during Tuesday’s session.
The South American province, which has been involved in Anglican realignment in the past and has a firm commitment to traditional teaching about human sexuality, was largely positive about the proposals in its response, calling them “a serious and valuable effort to respond to real challenges currently facing the Anglican Communion.”
The province said that the proposals’ recasting of the place of the See of Canterbury “appropriately recognizes the historical, spiritual and relational importance of Canterbury within the life of the Communion, without making that relationship the sole constitutive criterion of belonging or communion.”
It also says that the proposal that the Archbishop of Canterbury share some of her convening role with the Communion’s regional primates “represents a natural development of the collegial dimension of Anglican life and an appropriate response to the increasingly global character of the Communion.”
At the same time, the statement suggests that the Communion’s deepest problems are not really affected by these proposals for reforms to its structures.
The Communion’s deep divisions, it says, “did not arise primarily because of deficiencies in the structures of the Communion. They arose because provinces have reached profoundly different conclusions regarding matters that affect doctrine, Christian ethics, biblical interpretation, theological anthropology and the moral teaching of the Church.
“For this reason, structural reform alone cannot resolve the present situation. The Communion faces not only an institutional challenge, but also a theological one.”
The more progressive Anglican Church of Canada’s briefing paper on the proposals set them in the context of other Communion-wide attempts to deal with deep disagreement over human sexuality, including the Windsor Report and Anglican Communion Covenant.
The proposals represent, the paper suggests, “a deliberate effort to step back from some earlier attempts to develop a juridical authority at the Communion level and instead encourage a loosening of the structures to allow for greater diversity amongst member Provinces while still retaining international structures of collegiality and consensus building.”
In evaluating the proposals’ suggestions about the Archbishop of Canterbury, the paper acknowledges that “the default centrality of the Church of England within the Communion has become increasingly complex,” but questions “what corresponding steps might be taken in other areas to uphold and deepen communion along spiritual and relational lines” if the centrality of Canterbury is diminished.
It also expresses concern about the delegation of Communion-wide roles by the Archbishop of Canterbury to other primates, urging that this “not be framed as a weakening of the ABC.”
“Having an historic, apostolic, and sacramental/episcopal office that serves as both a symbol and means of unity in the Communion has long been understood as an integral feature of the Anglican ecclesiological way. For a whole host of reasons—intra-Anglican and ecumenical alike—it seems very important not to discard this,” it concludes.
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.