Two of the Anglican Communion’s most progressive member churches offered mixed signals about the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals for restructuring the Anglican Communion in formal responses issued during the first week of December. The statements by the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil and the Scottish Episcopal Church are the first to be published by churches of the Communion since the proposals’ release in December 2024.
The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO), which wrote the proposals, plans to propose them for adoption at next summer’s meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC).
The Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil’s December 7 statement praised the proposals’ attempt to chart a path for postcolonial Anglicanism, and their goal of a “more plural catholicity,” while expressing concerns about weakening the Archbishop of Canterbury’s role and fostering competition between conservative and progressive regions.
The Scottish Episcopal Church’s December 1 statement made some positive comments about the proposals’ recasting of the 1930 definition of the Anglican Communion, but is more negative in tone. It strongly criticizes the “English focus” of the proposals’ description of Anglican identity and argues that their decision to root Anglican unity in baptismal fellowship instead of full Eucharistic communion could create “an Anglican federation.”
‘A More Plural Catholicity’
“The Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil (IEAB) welcomes the Nairobi–Cairo proposals as a serious and necessary theological and ecclesiological effort to address the crisis of unity within the Anglican Communion,” the Brazilian statement begins. It praises the spirit of the proposed reforms of the Anglican Communion’s definition and structures, describing them as responding to the Communion’s divisions “through dialogue, attentive listening, and shared discernment, rather than through disciplinary sanctions or institutional rupture.”
It commends the goal of the proposals, which it describes as “a decentralised and inclusive communion of churches, faithful to the Gospel and open to the action of the Spirit, capable of sustaining a ‘historic and solidarity-based communion’ that holds together past and future without preserving or reinforcing colonial models of authority.”
Stressing the important place of “liberation theologies and decolonial perspectives” in its vision, the Brazilian church acclaims the transition away from basing Anglican unity on “an institutional bond with Canterbury” as “a gesture of liberation” and “an opening toward a more plural catholicity.”
Yet it also acknowledges that “a change in language alone does not guarantee the overcoming of colonial and Eurocentric hierarchies,” and said that some internal contributions it had received questioned “whether the proposals might merely redistribute power symbolically without tackling structural inequalities of representation, resources, and voice between the Global North and South, as well as between majority and minority groups within provinces.”
It also says that there should be a clear commitment to “the representation of women, LGBTQIA+ people, Indigenous peoples and other indigenous and original peoples in decision-making bodies,” and “explicit safeguards against any form of discrimination and against the use of the instruments of communion to sanction churches for their pastoral commitment to inclusion.” The Brazilian Church amended its canons in 2018 to allow for same-sex marriage, the first Latin American Anglican church to do so.
The Brazilian response is especially positive about the proposed new definition of the Anglican Communion, which it says “consolidates and updates an already-matured understanding within the Communion concerning the relationship between local autonomy and interdependence.” It praises the new definition’s articulation of the full autonomy of the Communion’s member churches and the “rootedness of each church in its cultural, social and missional context,” which moves the Communion, it says, “towards a more universal, plural catholicity, embodied in diverse local realities.”
The response provides a detailed critique of the reforms proposed to the Communion’s structure. It welcomes the shift toward “dispersed authority” signaled in the diminishment of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s role in the Communion’s governance, but expresses some concerns about delegating the leadership of the Anglican Consultative Council and Primates’ Meeting to a different Anglican primate.
In ecumenical relations, the Brazilian church believes that the Archbishop of Canterbury will “continue to be the most expressive representation of the Anglican Communion,” and is concerned that the introduction of the rotating presidency will create “confusion concerning who speaks for the Anglican Communion,” which “could weaken the public visibility of Anglican unity in an already fragmented context.”
The Brazilian church is also wary of any shift of the Primates’ Meeting away from its current role “as a space of dialogue, reciprocal listening, and shared discernment” toward becoming “a deliberative and disciplinary body with normative powers over the entire Communion.” A Primates’ Meeting with some disciplinary powers was a reform suggested by the 2004 Windsor Report, but it is not part of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals.
Still, the Brazilian church stressed it is important that the Communion guard against any “unclear expansion of power” for the Primates’ Meeting that could create “imbalances among the instruments of communion,” especially a weakening of the ACC, which it describes as “the primary instrument of unity in the Communion.”
The response also poses several concerns about proposals to establish a rotating presidency for the ACC. It fears that “the election of regional president from among the primates may open space for political and theological disputes between blocs of provinces,” and that the ACC president could become a “presiding archbishop” who rivaled the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representational role and sought to advance the agenda of a particular power bloc within the Communion. It also urges that the ACC not “lose its own institutional and missional dynamism,” and its special charism as “a collegial consultative and decision-making body.”
The Brazilian church suggests that the proposed six-year term for the president may need more evaluation, and that the president’s election should be “transparent and safeguarded against ideological or regional blocs.” It adds that safeguards should ensure that the rotating presidency not be granted “disciplinary or executive authority over the ACC” and that the selection for the president should be led by the ACC, “with strong lay participation and guarantees of balance in terms of gender, sexual orientation, ethno-cultural origin and region.” It also suggests devoting the 2026 ACC meeting to presenting the proposals, and taking three more years to discuss them before taking action on any reforms.
‘Setting Up an Anglican Federation’
The Scottish Episcopal Church’s Primus, the Most Rev. Mark Strange, said that he welcomed the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals in the press release announcing the church’s formal response.
“The Proposals are welcomed because they seek to find ways of upholding the collegiality of the Anglican Communion,” Strange said. “The joy of sharing a full sacramental life with such a remarkably diverse Communion is something I cherish and something we need to strive for. Diversity mustn’t be allowed to become division.”
But the church’s full 15-page response to the proposals is largely negative. A lengthy section critiques the summary of the Anglican history in the proposals’ preamble, which it calls “England-centric,” and inattentive to the anomalous position of the Scottish church, which didn’t adopt the Articles of Religion until the 19th century, and whose historic liturgies predate the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
The response pans the phrase “a historical connection with the See of Canterbury” in the proposed definition of the Anglican Communion on similar grounds, arguing that the phrase describes some churches that aren’t Anglican (like Methodist churches) and doesn’t apply to bodies like the Lusitanian and Spanish Reformed Episcopal churches that developed independently and entered communion with Canterbury later.
The Scottish church says that the proposals’ explanation for what it means for churches of the Anglican Communion to be part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church was “helpful” and built upon recent ecumenical theology. It also welcomes their “strong call to continue to walk together despite disagreements.”
But it says the proposals’ treatment of Anglican identity is imprecise. It says GAFCON’s October announcement of an alternative Global Anglican Communion, which may include churches that are also members of the Anglican Communion as defined by the Anglican Consultative Council, creates a situation that the final version of the proposals could not ignore.
It also criticizes the proposals for failing to clarify the situation of churches “that claim to be Anglican” but are not member churches of the Communion, like the Anglican Church in North America. The GAFCON-founded Anglican Convocation in Europe has five congregations in Scotland, and several of them are former Scottish Episcopal churches.
The Scottish church concedes that worldwide Anglicanism has experienced many decades of “impaired communion,” dating to the 1970s decision of some member churches to ordain women. It also admits the current definition’s phrase grounding of Anglican identity in communion with the See of Canterbury “has for some time been aspirational rather than a description of reality.”
Yet it strongly criticizes the proposals’ move to make baptismal unity and a common tradition central to Anglican identity instead of full eucharistic communion. Despite the proposed new definition’s goal of “seek[ing] interdependently to foster the highest degree of communion possible one with another,” the Scottish response said:
Regrettably, the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals appear to concede that the churches of the Anglican Communion should not be expected to be in communion with each other. This would appear to be setting up an Anglican Federation rather than an Anglican Communion.
Because the canons of some member churches retain communion with the See of Canterbury as a central feature, the Scottish church suggests that the Anglican Communion will inevitably devolve into “a two-tier Anglican organisation, in which some churches view themselves as being in communion with one another, and others view themselves as more loosely associated.”
It describes the proposal for a rotating presidency of the Anglican Consultative Council and Primates’ Meeting “plausible,” but notes several difficulties, including the resources for such a position and the relation of the president to the London-based Anglican Communion Office. The regions of the Communion need to be more clearly defined, it adds, and the ACC’s constitution needs to be amended to specify the steps for electing such a president and the extent of that president’s powers.
‘Evolving Developments’
IASCUFO issued a communiqué on December 11 at the conclusion of four days of meetings in Rome. “We considered the responses received since publication in Advent 2024 and noted that further responses are anticipated. In response to this welcome feedback, supplementary work was explored in preparation for reporting to ACC-19 at its meeting in Belfast in June-July 2026,” IASCUFO said.
IASCUFO’s chair, Bishop Graham Tomlin of the Church of England, told The Living Church that in addition to the Scottish and Brazilian responses, the commission had discussed a response from the conservative Global South Fellowship of Anglicans (GSFA), which has not yet been made public. Archbishop Justin Badi Arama of South Sudan, the GSFA’s chair, said in a September 29 pastoral letter that the group had submitted its response to IASCUFO in July.
According to Bishop Pierre Whalon, the Theology Committee of the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops is gathering a series of essays on the proposals written by bishops with diverse perspectives. These have not yet been published and the Episcopal Church has not prepared a univocal response.
IASCUFO also said it had given additional consideration to “the collegial ministry of the Archbishop of Canterbury within the Communion,” and had reviewed proposals to amend the ACC constitution. It promised to publish additional resources about “these evolving developments to our Proposals” before next summer’s ACC meeting.
Covenant, TLC’s online journal, published a series of essays on the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals in February.
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and also writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.
