Editor’s Note: This essay brings to a conclusion our extended series, February 10-21, focused on the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals crafted by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO). Christopher Wells serves as secretary of the IASCUFO.
Many thanks, indeed, to Covenant for organizing a serious and sustained discussion of the recently published paper of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order. I am truly grateful to Graham Tomlin (chair of IASCUFO), Andrew Goddard, Ephraim Radner, John Bauerschmidt, Benjamin Crosby, Francis Omondi, and George Sumner for their excellent essays over the last days.
In my role at the Anglican Communion Office, I work with IASCUFO and have been inspired to see the fruits of its collective labor. The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, put forward both by the commission and the Standing Committee of the Communion, hold a particular promise for the shared life of Anglican churches. I hope the next meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council will take them up with gratitude and joy.
The paper argues for a rearticulation of the “vocation” of the Anglican Communion (§§17, 75, 81, 99) to seek and serve the visible unity — and holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity — of the one Church, even as Anglican churches themselves continue to struggle with stubborn divisions. As Ephraim Radner and others note, there is a paradox here, at best, that only makes sense in the light of the one gospel of the one Lord and the pattern of his sacrifice. Nothing less than giving ourselves again wholly to him, and the form of his embrace and its demands, will yield the harvest for which we should continue to pray and labor.
For this reason, the paper toggles between a descriptive (and prescriptive) “honesty” (§§9, 38, 47, 99), taking note of difficult facts on the ground, and a hope-filled rereading of the Scriptures and God’s promises to see, again, what we are meant to be about. On all counts, there is much more to be said and done by Anglicans, should the Lord graciously permit and enable us to persevere in his wisdom and providence. We have made promises to one another, and to other Christians and churches, that bear following through, just as new agreements are needed in service of the gospel and the singular mission of Christ. On every count, the work and mission will subsist in the strength of God in fulfillment of the one faith and one baptism of the one Church (see Eph. 4).
—
Given this capacious biblical ecclesiology, what can we say about our specifically “Anglican heritage” and its missiological prospects among the nations and peoples of the world? From different perspectives and cultural situations, this is the good question of Benjamin Crosby and Francis Omondi, to do with the limits, contours, and “grammar” of Anglican faith and order, including its content and the possibility of its specification. Where does it come from? How rooted in, and limited by, the Church of England has it been or should it be?
Both Crosby and Omondi emphasize the profound extent to which the Church of England (and Englishness) shaped the faith and order of the emerging communion of Anglican churches. Both writers wonderfully excavate resolution 8 from the first Lambeth Conference of 1867, which stipulated that all churches of “the Anglican Communion” must “receive and maintain without alteration the standards of faith and doctrine as now in use” in the Church of England. Here we find a “Mother-Church” ecclesiology forthrightly asserted and assumed, that moreover was longed for and received by most of the churches of the Communion. Omondi notes the Episcopal Church’s careful narrating of indebtedness, continuity, and licit local variation in its founding narrative in the BCP of 1789, not least with reference to “any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship.”
Is there something else or more in “Anglican” faith and life? The 1920 Lambeth Conference marks a critical inflection point (corroborated at the conference of 1930), in its celebration of the appearance of “indigenous Churches in China, in Japan, in East and West Africa, in each of which the English members are but a handful of strangers and sojourners.” As the bishops continued: “The blessing which has rested upon” the work of the Communion “has brought it to a new point of view,” the more as “its centre of gravity is shifting.” Accordingly, the Anglican Communion “presents an example on a small scale of the problems which attach to the unity of a Universal Church. As the years go on, its ideals must become less Anglican [i.e., English] and more Catholic. It cannot look to any bonds of union holding it together, other than those which should hold together the Catholic Church itself” (all from §20 of the paper).
The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals channel this would-be comprehensiveness when, at the very start, they speak of an Anglican “story of the emergence of a family of churches, broadly born of common parentage in England, marked by a shared inheritance both from the Protestant Reformation and an earlier Western and Catholic patrimony.” The inheritance spans the pre- and post-Reformation periods; and the latter has ramified, historically and in principle, in the hope of a genuine inculturation, as proposed in contemporary missiology. God, who invented Christian mission, sent his Son, who in turn commissions his disciples in the power of the Spirit to “be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Anglicans have consistently maintained that a rightly articulated and defended faith and order is of the essence of the Church’s life hence non-negotiable. This has not meant that the faith or doctrine of Anglicans is peculiarly English. The 39 Articles, for instance, channel a continental consensus on grace and recount a reformed Augustinianism on sacraments and order that may be found in the Augsburg Confession and Calvin’s Institutes, inter alia, looking back to an era of apostolic authenticity and reliability. Crosby appreciatively highlights the text in the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals that mentions the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, Ordinal, and 39 Articles as sources of Anglican doctrine (§15; cf. 18). He hopes that the next generation of “conservative” and “progressive” Anglican leaders alike will respectively take “another look” at and “not write off” these formularies, which can, he says, “ground an Anglican identity thicker than institutional belonging.” Omondi notes that the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans has sought to ground its identity in just this way, by proposing that this corpus, if it is “received” and “recognized,” can enable a proper accountability of Anglican churches one to another alongside their inculturation and indigenization.
—
I concur with the doctrinal seriousness and ecclesiological ideals of these encouragements, which will need faithful resources of a sustained sort in coming decades if the Anglican Communion is to continue to contribute to the health and welfare of the one Church. In this work, I hope that we will not lose hold of Richard Hooker’s biblical and historical, hence ecumenical, view of the Church (Laws, III.i.10-11, 13), spread across the earth and organized in various locales into societies. “As the main body of the sea, being one, yet within diverse precincts has diverse names,” explains Hooker, “so the Catholic Church is in like sort divided into a number of distinct Societies, every of which is termed a Church within itself. In this sense, the Church is always a visible society of [persons]; not an assembly but a society.” Hooker mentions here as examples the churches of “Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, England, and so the rest,” all of which will find it necessary to organize (let the reader understand) an “Ecclesiastical Polity” (III.i.14). To be sure, one name on the foregoing list is not scriptural, but the thought takes flight from Acts 1:8. At some point, Canada and Kenya will come along, in the wake of England and others, and they too will need to do their best, which means they will strive to establish, as Hooker says, a “part” of the Church that is “sincere and sound.” Each church may, Hooker says, be more or less well “reformed,” at various points in its history. The call, therefore, is for each church in each locale to contend for an “orthodox” articulation of the one gospel of the one “Church of Christ” as Luther did, and as Rome may again in future — just as Judah, “having sometime been idolatrous became afterwards more soundly religious by renouncing idolatry and superstition” (III.i.10; cf. III.i.9).
Hooker articulates here avant la lettre a recognizably ecumenical ecclesiology of the Church of churches (to borrow the book title of Jean-Marie Roger Tillard). Culturally diversified, the Church is organized in varying “places” with associated “limits,” each “endued with correspondent general properties belonging unto them as they are public Christian societies” (Laws, III.i.14). If there is an incipient sense of ecclesial autonomy here, it is critical to note that Hooker is not providing an apologia for what we would call denominations. Of course, Hooker is writing in support of an established Church in England. This limit, however, is not a bug but a feature for the portability of his ecclesiology, because it presumes a biblical picture of a single Church, spread over the earth, prospectively incorporating every nation, tribe, people, and tongue (Rev. 7:9) and sharing together the one faith, with a “diverse” set of “traditions and ceremonies,” according to the diversity “of countries, times, and … manners” (Article 34). In this view, it is fitting not to lay upon the church in any place any “greater burden” (Acts 15:28) than, simply, “that nothing be ordained against God’s Word” (Article 34). I take it that this is what Francis Omondi is calling us to, as well, with reference to achieving, at once, indigenous adaptation and universal recognition.
Such a Hookerian catholicism is still assumed by the Lambeth conferences of 1920 and 1930 with reference to “full communion with the Church of England” (§12), namely, as Crosby notes, a communion in faith and not only in order. Because, however, the faith (and order) in question is “catholic and apostolic” and not Anglican, the very high bar has, by 1930, become an “eagerly” anticipated “time when the Churches of the present Anglican Communion will enter into communion with other parts of the Catholic Church not definable as Anglican …, as a step towards the ultimate reunion of all Christendom in one visibly united fellowship.” Yes, this one catholic and apostolic faith is “generally set forth in the Book of Common Prayer,” but not only there (all from LC 1930, resolution 49; cf. §76 of IASCUFO’s paper). In the Communion era of Anglicanism (no less than in the pages of Richard Hooker, as he casts his eye beyond England), one will look in vain in any text of the Lambeth Conference, or doctrinal commission, for a summons to other Christians or churches to come up higher into Anglican fellowship. Rather, the evangelical ethos of our intended contribution has been to profess an Anglican “incompleteness,” hence “not to commend” Anglicanism as “‘the best type of Christianity,’ but by its very brokenness to point to the universal Church wherein all have died,” in Michael Ramsey’s famous statement (quoted by IASCUFO at §60).
The point may be understood theologically, but it also bears a historical and geographic implication, to do with the summons to full visible unity of all Christians in each place. If the inculturated gospel can and must take on the accents and connotations of its various homes, these are not meant to be merely denominational, unless we now believe, as we have not before, that God calls specifically Anglican churches to perdure alongside other confessions and jurisdictions (see §§16-21). In a visionary passage of The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, the “ultimate insufficiency of Anglicanism” is invoked with reference to “the polycentric nature of Christian life and mission from the beginning — dispersed between Antioch, Alexandria, Rome, and Jerusalem, and never simply centralized” (§69). To note this is not to advocate an uncoordinated Church, in which many different doctrines might flourish round the world. Few injunctions are more basic in the New Testament than the insistence that Christians be of “one mind” (§43). Rather, IASCUFO is imagining that the “uncoerced emergence of relationships, including of full communion, which embrace both some members of the Anglican Communion and other ecclesial bodies — from, for example, Lutherans in the Porvoo Agreement, or GSFA partners, to GAFCON — has potential to enrich both Communion life and promote stronger links throughout global Christianity, whether those associations derive from doctrinal, missional, or geographical factors” (§69). Here, The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals suggest some helpful markers for an evangelical and catholic inculturation of the gospel with “one visibly united fellowship” in view (§§76, 91).
—
The prospect — and, again, vocation — of a mature “loyalty” should surely appear here on the to-do list of Christian and ecclesial love, as Bishop Bauerschmidt urges. The question of its invocation and approach, however, is interesting and not entirely clear in a divided Church. To what or whom, exactly, is loyalty being proposed? I say mature with Ephesians 4:15 in view, the framing text of the paper. As the commission writes: “Sharing our joys and sorrows, and extending mutual commitments where we can, is a sign and foretaste of maturing, interdependent communion that reflects a normative New Testament pattern” (§69). It may be helpful here to think of St. Paul’s feeding the Corinthian church with “milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready…. For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ and another, ‘I belong to Apollos,’ are you not all too human?” (1 Cor. 3:2,4). We can only “begin” again wherever we find ourselves, with humility and gratitude to God (§5).
IASCUFO’s proposed substitution of “mutual service” for “mutual loyalty” may perhaps be understood, therefore, as a step back in the expectation of two steps forward (§§76-78). Radner catches the spirit of the pedagogy by drawing repeated attention to the paper’s summons to a “dogged refusal to give up on each other, to remain in relationship despite deep and significant disagreement” (§45). Writ as an extended reflection on “speaking the truth in love” (§47), this part of the paper attempts to imagine what a shared commitment to holiness might look like when Anglicans are precisely divided about Christian expectations for right behavior. In addition to specific challenges to those who call themselves conservative and progressive, the paper urges all Anglicans “to serve and honour the other, even when distance or differentiation may be needed, as an implication of our commitment to making room for each other” (§48).
The notion of differentiation in communion marks a significant contribution and hope of The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, well described by Andrew Goddard in his historical survey and sketched constructively and creatively by Bishop Sumner. In the context of “profound differences and divisions between Anglicans,” and a deficit of “proper trust” (§99) — such that, in IASCUFO’s estimation, committing together to seek to uphold one faith and order is the current task (§76) — reinvoking loyalty straightaway might seem manipulative to some, as if conscientious concerns and complaints do not have their place. All must fall in line. To be sure, taken together, the four “binding characteristics” proposed in the revised letter c set forth an expectation of “common counsel in conference” (§78). Radner is right that this amounts to an expectation that all Anglicans “show up at a meeting,” something that we know not all have felt able to do. The invitation, therefore, is for Anglicans of varying views to see again in the meetings of the instruments an unconstrained space to be themselves; where, for instance, the contribution of the GSFA might be welcomed in the spirit with which it is intended, “in hopeful service of the unity and faithfulness of the Anglican Communion” (§56). Reiterating this thought, IASCUFO explored at its most recent meeting “how to ensure provision and full recognition for those who wish to remain within the Anglican Communion and yet question, for various reasons, its current structures” (“Communiqué,” Dec. 2024).
—
At a time when, perhaps, many Anglicans are at risk of abandoning their first love (Rev. 2:4), the urgent work of communion must focus on finding opportunities of encounter, by which strangers can again become friends. Bishop Sumner presents us with just this “vision.” As St. Augustine taught, you cannot love what you do not know. “But we see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death” (Heb. 2:9). Following his example, IASCUFO argues,
mutual service names an unobjectionable characteristic and calling of Christian obedience in love that may be given freely without expectation of return. Our Lord came not to be served but to serve. When Anglicans find themselves divided from one another or doubting whether they share fully all that they should, they can commit to humble and steadfast service of one another and the world, which demonstrates a proper loyalty of the deepest sort, in Christ. (Appendix)
Loyalty, therefore, returns and takes its proper place, in the soil of Christ’s sacrifice, in which “we are buried as seeds, that may, in time, ‘sprout and grow,’ we know not how (Mark 4:27)” (§46; cf. 29, 38).
May God give us the grace to repent, await his Word, and look for the promise of healing and new life in the single, visible fellowship of the one Body. He will show us “a still more excellent way” (1 Cor. 12:31).
Christopher Wells, PhD is Director of Unity, Faith and Order for the Anglican Communion. He oversees the Communion’s ecumenical relations and serves as secretary of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO). From 2009 to 2022, Dr. Wells was executive director and publisher of the Living Church Foundation.