Editor’s Note: This essay is part of an extended series, February 10-21, focused on the related subjects of the succession at Canterbury and the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals crafted by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order.
In seeking to understand and evaluate the new Nairobi-Cairo Proposals (NCP) developed by the IASCUFO for the future shape of the Anglican Communion, it is helpful to set them in the context of the recent history of such proposals. The NCP can be seen as the fifth significant attempt to address the challenges that have arisen in relation to matters of faith and order as a result of differences over human sexuality among Anglicans globally.
The Longer History, 1867-2003
These five different phases and approaches have, of course, a much longer backstory that is impossible to trace here. The calling of the first Lambeth Conference by the Archbishop of Canterbury was so controversial that the Archbishop of York declined the invitation to meet in 1867. Its context included matters of faith and order surrounding Bishop John Colenso and there were major questions of how this new (was it in some sense synodical?) international structure would relate to the Church of England as the established church under the Crown.
Subsequent Lambeth Conferences regularly addressed faith and order matters relating both to the Communion’s identity (as in the famous Resolution 49 of the 1930 Conference, which NCP proposes to update), ecumenical relationships, and the interface between these as in relation to South India. Although not without difficulties, there developed a common understanding of the churches having a shared “Catholic and Apostolic faith and order” (Resolution 49) and the need for mutual accountability and restraint in relation to developments touching on faith and order.
The development of what became known as the Instruments of Communion sought to order, sustain, and deepen this common life. In addition to the Lambeth Conference and the Archbishop of Canterbury, these other instruments are the Anglican Consultative Council (from Lambeth 1968, meeting first in 1971) and the Primates’ Meeting (from Lambeth 1978, meeting first in 1979).
Tensions were navigated over women priests (Lambeth Conference 1978) and women bishops (Lambeth Conference 1988) that, with the help of the Eames Commission (see 1997 Monitoring Group Report) and The Virginia Report,. These efforts enabled sufficient consensus that the developments were acceptable within recognizable shared bounds of Anglican diversity and an agreement to maintain the highest degree of communion across different practices in a period of reception. As a result, although disagreements within and between provinces were strong and interchangeability of ministry between provinces was impaired as some provinces could not receive women priests or bishops ordained elsewhere in the Communion several things did not happen as a result of this situation. There were no calls for discipline or expulsion from the Anglican Communion. There were no widespread declarations by provinces of impaired or broken communion with other provinces. There were no decisions not to invite people to Communion meetings or decisions to stay away from such meetings. There was no creation of new Anglican churches outside the formal Communion that were recognized by member churches of the Communion instead of the existing Communion province.
The story in relation to same-sex unions was very different, despite attempts to reach consensus at the Lambeth Conferences of 1978 and 1988, and most famously in Resolution 1.10 of Lambeth 1998, followed by often forgotten International Conversations. Unilateral actions disregarding the consensus in 2002-03, initially in North America, and other provinces’ responses to these unilateral actions, were the immediate backdrop to the four precursors to the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals.
All of this has taken place in the context of the rapidly changing composition of global Anglicanism with decline in the historically dominant Western churches and Global South growth, especially in Africa.
Phase One: The Windsor Report, 2004
The 2004 Windsor Report from the Lambeth Commission on Communion described how the “The overwhelming response from other Christians both inside and outside the Anglican family” to the blessing of same-sex unions and consecration of a bishop in such a union “has been to regard these developments as departures from genuine, apostolic Christian faith” (para 28). It therefore sought apology for these actions and moratoria on them (and, likewise, a cessation of cross-provincial interventions in response to them). The Windsor Report further asked those involved to “consider in all conscience whether they should withdraw themselves from representative functions in the Anglican Communion” (para 144). It famously concluded by warning, “Should the call to halt and find ways of continuing in our present communion not be heeded, then we shall have to begin to learn to walk apart” (para 157).
Over several years of attempting to implement Windsor’s proposals, it became clear that its calls were not going to be heeded and the Instruments were largely impotent. This contributed to the creation of the new province of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), its recognition by many Communion provinces, the forming of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), and significant non-attendance at the Lambeth Conference 2008.
This first phase of the Windsor reaction can be seen as a valiant attempt to blow the whistle on developments and encourage all the Communion’s member churches to return to the old pattern of mutual accountability and restraint within the historic shared Anglican Communion faith and order. It clearly failed.
Phase Two: Anglican Communion Covenant, 2004-12
In addition to the immediate calls for apology and moratoria, Windsor recognized the need, longer term, for a more explicit articulation of, and commitment to, a shared faith and order: “the adoption by the churches of the Communion of a common Anglican Covenant which would make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection which govern the relationships between the churches of the Communion” (para 118).
Its own draft, interestingly in the light of NCP’s opposite move, proposed a much greater role for the See of Canterbury (“The Archbishop of Canterbury shall decide all questions of interpretation of this Covenant”).
After various drafts and discussion at the Lambeth Conference 2008, the final text in four parts (with affirmations and commitments) was published in December 2009 for provinces to discuss and, it was hoped, accept. It was, however, already clear — most fully in Archbishop Rowan Williams’s “The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today” (June 2006) — that this would likely lead to some differentiation within the Communion between those committed to a shared faith and order developing the historic understanding and a wider, looser body:
We could arrive at a situation where there were “constituent” Churches in covenant in the Anglican Communion and other “churches in association,” which were still bound by historic and perhaps personal links, fed from many of the same sources, but not bound in a single and unrestricted sacramental communion, and not sharing the same constitutional structures.
The Covenant faced opposition from both those who wished for a stronger more confessional statement of faith (represented by GAFCON) and those who wished for a weaker ordering of the Communion without any potential “relational consequences which may specify a provisional limitation of participation in, or suspension from” the Instruments (Covenant, 4.2.5).
Although a number of provinces have covenanted together, this approach was effectively terminated as a solution for the wider Communion by the failure (in March 2012) of sufficient Church of England diocesan synods to give it the support it needed to be debated by General Synod. In effect this was the Church of England saying that it would not support this proposed pattern of faith and order that was based upon and developing that which historically shaped the Communion and thus would not be a “constituent” member of the Communion.
This meant that, given the Communion was defined as churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, this common faith and order and Windsor’s constructive attempt to restructure the Communion by means of the Covenant had also now practically failed as a path to hold the member churches together. Many thought the Communion would simply fall apart as a result, an outcome perhaps already signaled by many primates not attending Archbishop Williams’s final Primates’ Meeting in Dublin in January 2011.
Phase Three: Reconciliation with Structural Consequences, 2013-16
On becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in March 2013, Justin Welby therefore faced major challenges in the Communion. As an expression of one of his key aims — reconciliation — he and his wife, Caroline, visited all primates in their provinces. As a result of this work, to widespread astonishment, he convened a gathering in January 2016 (the longest gap, by far, between Primates’ Meetings) which no primates boycotted (although Uganda left early) and to which ACNA’s archbishop was also invited.
Without reference to the preceding phases described above, a new path was charted that did implement a degree of differentiation and “relational consequences” for those whose commitment to developing the church’s doctrine had by this time extended to the doctrine of marriage, meaning that, as the primates acknowledged, there was now “significant distance between us”:
It is our unanimous desire to walk together. However given the seriousness of these matters we formally acknowledge this distance by requiring that for a period of three years The Episcopal Church no longer represent us on ecumenical and interfaith bodies, should not be appointed or elected to an internal standing committee and that while participating in the internal bodies of the Anglican Communion, they will not take part in decision-making on any issues pertaining to doctrine or polity.
Rather than echoing Windsor on having to learn to “walk apart,” the statement spoke of how certain actions “impair our communion.” The next Primates’ Meeting in 2017 described this in terms of “a clear decision to walk together while acknowledging the distance that exists in our relationship.” In practice, however, what Archbishop Welby had described in terms of “not a sanction, but a consequence” was not obviously implemented. This led to further frustration among many that this third approach of all staying together, but with some degree of internal differentiation in relation to faith-and-order matters, had also failed.
It was in this context that the Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA) revived the idea of expressing a common faith and order by means of a covenant, adopting a new covenantal structure at its Cairo meeting in October 2019. Some accused this action of undermining or even schismatically breaking away from the Communion, accusations GSFA denied.
Phase Four: Acknowledged Diversity with No Structural Consequences, 2022
The failure to follow through on the logic of Phase Three was further evident in the decision, in contrast to 2008, to invite all bishops (even bishops in same-sex marriages) to the next Lambeth Conference. Once again, many stayed away in 2022, while others in the GSFA attended, but many of them were unable to share in communion and were clear (as in a communiqué toward the end of the conference) that there needed to be a “reset” of the Communion.
During that same Lambeth Conference, there was considerable confusion about the “Call” that addressed sexuality. The mode of a “Call” was to replace “resolutions” to express the conference’s mind. Archbishop Welby, in first a letter and then remarks to the conference, effectively presented an alternative approach to that which had been agreed upon back in 2016. The letter appeared to rule out “sanctions, or exclusion” and to embrace the reality that “we have a plurality of views,” reiterating the Call’s wording that “As Bishops we remain committed to listening and walking together to the maximum possible degree, despite our deep disagreement on these issues.” In his address, Welby stated, “I neither have, nor do I seek, the authority to discipline or exclude a church of the Anglican Communion. I will not do so.” He further said of the Call that “it states the reality of life in the Communion today.”
While these statements could have been simply descriptive, many took them as, in effect, the Archbishop seeking to declare unilaterally the matter of human sexuality one of adiaphora within the life of the Communion, that a range of views were now held to be valid, and there should be no structural changes. This was in stark contrast to the three phases described above. His subsequent support in early 2023 for developments in the Church of England contrary to historic Communion teaching on sexuality seemed to support the interpretation that Archbishop Welby was indeed making a unilateral determination on teaching, practice, and the nature of the Anglican Communion. The difficulty was, however, that many primates, as signaled in the Ash Wednesday response to the C of E’s actions from many GSFA primates, could not accept Welby’s judgments. They believed that the divisions had serious implications for Anglican faith and order, and the sweeping turn to an interpretation of the issues as adiaphorous was unacceptable. They wrote:
the Church of England has departed from the historic faith passed down from the Apostles … she has disqualified herself from leading the Communion as the historic “Mother” Church …The GSFA is no longer able to recognize the present Archbishop of Canterbury … as the “first among equals” Leader of the global Communion … He has sadly led his House of Bishops to make the recommendations [that] … run contrary to the faith & order of the orthodox provinces in the Communion whose people constitute the majority in the global flock.
It was against this backdrop that, at Anglican Consultative Council-18, held in Ghana in February 2023, a paper was presented on “Good Differentiation” and a resolution passed on the matter leading to the publication in December 2024 of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals.
Where are we now?: Nairobi-Cairo Proposals
Perhaps unsurprisingly some (such as the Evangelical Fellowship of the Anglican Communion, EFAC) have seen the NCP as a formulation of Archbishop Justin’s Phase Four. There is acknowledged diversity, no structural consequences in any of the forms proposed in the previous three phases, the language of “making room for each other”, and nothing required or even requested of those who have introduced innovations. I think, however, this is a wrong reading for at least three reasons.
Firstly, there is the proposed change in relation to the see of Canterbury. Communion churches would no longer be defined supremely as “in communion with the see of Canterbury” but rather one of their many characteristics is simply “historic connection” with the see (paras 76-81 and Appendix). Alongside this language of historic connection is the proposed broadening of personal leadership to include a rotating ACC Presidency and a greater role for the Primates’ Standing Committee (paras 82-89). Although some of the motivation for this “pertains to the identity and ideals of the Anglican Communion in a post-colonial era” (para 85), this monumental structural consequence also arises due to recent developments in the Church of England on marriage and sexuality (para 7) and its earlier failure to embrace the Covenant’s articulation of the Communion’s historic faith and order (see Phase Two outlined above).
Secondly, in contrast to Phase Four, it is very explicitly acknowledged that the diversity is therefore not on unimportant matters but relates to faith and order. It is proposed that the Communion’s first characteristic no longer be that member churches “uphold and propagate the Catholic and Apostolic faith and order as they are generally set forth in the Book of Common Prayer as authorised in their several [now “distinct”] Churches” but simply that they “seek to” do this. This is because “full communion is not possible at present” and “some marking of the diminishment—variously described as division, wound, or impairment—is appropriate” (Para 31).
In summary, the truth is that “Anglicans disagree about aspects of the one faith and order” (p. 42, Appendix point 3). The faith and order “consequences” of Phase Three are now being borne not by a few innovating provinces (or requested of individual bishops as in Phase One). Nor are they being implemented by opting in or not to a covenant (Phase Two). Rather, the whole Communion’s relationship to “Catholic and Apostolic faith and order” is being redefined, in part because the serious consequences are now seen by many provinces to apply to Canterbury as well.
Thirdly, those within the Anglican Communion who do still recognize each other as upholding and propagating historic faith and order apart from the Instruments of Communion are recognized and honored. Here the GSFA Covenantal Structure is particularly singled out as an example of such “intensification of communion within and between churches” (para 8) and “a helpful contribution to the discernment of doctrinal and ethical truth within the Anglican Communion” (para 56). The “hope of re-articulating and deepening an Anglican consensus about catholic and apostolic faith and order” (para 13) sought in earlier phases remains, but the truth is acknowledged that the Anglican Communion as a whole Communion cannot presently achieve this consensus.
It may well be that these proposals enable the Communion to continue with its current membership and reformed Instruments but to become more like the “churches in association” Archbishop Rowan Williams described in Phase Two.
By comparison, the GSFA covenant provides for a majority of the Communion the “single and unrestricted sacramental communion” and shared faith and order that the Anglican Communion Covenant sought.
Andrew Goddard is assistant minister at St. James the Less, Pimlico, London and tutor in Christian Ethics at Ridley Hall, Cambridge and Westminster Theological Centre.