A group photo of the delegates to the 18th Anglican Consultative Council held at the Accra Marriott Hotel, Accra, Ghana. Feb. 12-19, 2023. Photo: Neil Turner/Anglican Communion Office
[Episcopal News Service] The Anglican Communion may be poised for a reset, at least concerning the archbishop of Canterbury’s leadership role.
Two proposals, which will be taken up next year by the Anglican Consultative Council, or ACC, would adjust how the worldwide communion’s 42 autonomous, interdependent provinces relate to each other. The proposals, if adopted, would de-emphasize the Church of England and the archbishop of Canterbury as a “focus of unity” while elevating more geographically diverse leaders for the global network of Anglican and Episcopal churches.
These proposals were developed partly in response to longstanding theological divisions between some of the provinces, and it remains to be seen whether the proposed changes could mend what some conservative bishops have described as their “impaired” communion with provinces like The Episcopal Church that are more progressive on issues of LGBTQ+ inclusion.
The underlying goal is to maintain Anglican unity while allowing member provinces to stay true to their theological beliefs when they differ, said Bishop Graham Tomlin, who chairs the Anglican body that drafted the proposals.
“It is important to still remain committed to one another,” Tomlin, a Church of England bishop, told Episcopal News Service in a Zoom interview. He said his commission’s proposals “take serious the depths of our divisions but also take serious the call to unity that we find within the Gospel.”
Tomlin’s group, the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order, or IASCUFO, issued a 44-page report in December 2024 detailing its Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, named for the cities where they were drafted.
The first proposal offers an updated statement of what binds the 42 provinces to each other: “shared inheritance, mutual service, common counsel in conference, and historic connection with the See of Canterbury.” That final principle’s wording differs slightly from the Anglican Communion’s existing definition, which since 1930 has required member churches to be “in communion with the See of Canterbury,” commonly understood as the Church of England.
The second proposal seeks to broaden and diversify the leadership of three Anglican Communion bodies known as the “Instruments of Communion” – the ACC, the Primates’ Meeting and the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops. The archbishop of Canterbury is considered a fourth Instrument of Communion.
Under these changes, the archbishop of Canterbury would no longer serve as the ACC president; the presidency instead would rotate among leaders from the Anglican Communion’s five regions. The archbishop of Canterbury also traditionally has convened the Primates’ Meeting and Lambeth Conference; those bodies would be newly convened by the Primates’ Standing Committee.
Such changes “would add a welcome and overdue diversification to the face of the Instruments of Communion,” the IASCUFO report said. “The leadership of the Communion should look like the Communion.” The report added that Anglican leadership should reflect “the identity and ideals of the Anglican Communion in a post-colonial era.”
The Rev. Ranjit Mathews, one of three Episcopal Church representatives to the ACC, told ENS that he sees the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals as a positive step forward in inter-Anglican relations, particularly the acknowledgement that the face of the Anglican Communion is becoming more global than it was a century ago. An increasing number of Anglicans now live in what is known as the Global South – Africa, Asia, South America.
“I think the proposals are catching up to the reality of what the communion looks like,” said Mathews, who serves as canon to the ordinary of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut.
At the same time, many of those Global South provinces are pushing for structural changes to the Anglican Communion because their conservative leaders do not agree with the theology, doctrine and practices of more progressive provinces on human sexuality and other issues. Although most Global South provinces have pressed their objections in person at the ACC, Primates’ Meeting and Lambeth Conference, a few provinces’ bishops have refused for years to participate in any such gatherings attended by leaders of The Episcopal Church and other provinces that have consecrated gay and lesbian bishops and blessed or married same-sex couples.
In February 2023, theologically conservative Anglicans amplified their calls for structural changes after the Church of England’s General Synod endorsed a plan to offer same-sex blessings in England’s churches.
Days later, the ACC convened its latest meeting in Accra, Ghana. Then-Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, in his opening remarks, responded to the growing tensions by called for greater egalitarianism in how the Anglican Communion’s 42 provinces relate to each other. The Instruments of Communion “have never had either doctrinal or ethical authority, but they have moral force,” Welby said, and he asserted that they continue to offer “the way forward in mutual help where country comes after obedience to God.”
Later in the meeting, ACC members from 38 provinces, including The Episcopal Church, adopted a resolution on “good differentiation” that endorsed efforts “to explore theological questions regarding structure and decision-making to help address our differences in the Anglican Communion.”
After the ACC concluded its meeting, conservative archbishops issued a letter rejecting the continuation of the archbishop of Canterbury’s historic leadership role in the worldwide communion as the “first among equals.” In opposing the Church of England’s decision on same-sex blessings, they said they would “expeditiously meet, consult and work with other orthodox primates in the Anglican Church across the nations to re-set the Communion on its biblical foundation.”
Welby has since resigned over his handling of an unrelated scandal. The challenge of maintaining Anglican Communion unity is likely to remain a top priority when his successor is chosen, a process that is now underway.
In the meantime, IASCUFO is preparing its Nairobi-Cairo Proposals for presentation to the ACC at its next meeting, to be hosted by the Church of Ireland in June and July 2026. The commission did not specifically intend its proposals to address the concerns of the Global South bishops, Tomlin said, though the changes may allow all provinces to find ways to stay connected despite their differences.
“What we propose is not trying to solve the problems of the communion,” Tomlin told ENS. “What we are proposing is a structure that might give an opportunity for the communion to hold together while those problems work themselves out over time.”
Initial reactions to the proposals, however, have not dispelled uncertainty about the provinces’ ability to “walk together,” as Welby had encouraged them to do. Conservative bishops have expressed less interest in maintaining unity than in doctrinal conformity, based in their interpretation of Scripture as condemning homosexuality.
“We cannot walk together in sin,” South Sudan Archbishop Justin Badi said in a June 2024 address to the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, or GSFA, which he chairs. “Unless there is repentance by those who have gone astray, we cannot have unity at the expense of God’s life-giving truth.”
Though Badi spoke while the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals were still in development, the GSFA has not softened its position since the proposals’ release. They will be reviewed by the GSFA’s Faith & Order Commission to develop a response consistent with members’ shared beliefs, Badi said in a March 2025 message.
“In contrast to the IASCUFO recommendation of an ‘ecumenical’ pattern of Communion relationships,” Badi said, the GFSA “recognizes that the ‘fellowship of Christ’s religion’ requires the discernment of truth from error, of that which is according to Christ and that which is contrary to Christ.”
Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe has been more receptive to the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, which he thinks could help strengthen the Anglican Communion in its shared mission. “These relationships across the communion could be world-changing,” Rowe said in interview last month with The Living Church for its podcast.
The proposed changes “give us some really interesting things to think about,” Rowe said. “I really think the proposal of sharing primacy in a post-colonial context is really interesting, what that might mean and what’s the role of the ACC going forward. I think this is good work.”
Mathews, the Episcopal Church ACC member, expressed similar hope in his interview with ENS, including that all 42 provinces may return to the table to discuss the Anglican Communion’s future.
“I always hold out hope that members and member churches might come back and realize what a gift the communion is,” Mathews said. The proposals may not resolve any doctrinal differences, but “I still think it’s a movement forward.”
“The Episcopal Church is still going to show up as we are,” he continued. “How do we continue to extend hands to folks who do not agree with us or do not share an understanding around theology?”
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.