CONCERN that the Nairobi-Cairo proposals for reform of the Anglican Communion risk “institutionalising instability and chaos” was voiced at a symposium in Cambridge on 4 June.
The Revd Dr Jeremy Morris, a former national adviser for ecumenical relations, was among a number of speakers who criticised the proposals, arguing that they risked entrenching divisions.
The proposals were first published by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) in December 2024 (News, 6 December 2024).
The report warned of “the real prospect of the fragmentation, or even dissolution, of the Communion over the coming years if we do not pay urgent attention to matters of ecclesiology”, and outlined two proposals.
The first was that the description of the Anglican Communion agreed at the 1930 Lambeth Conference should be revised, emphasising member Churches’ autonomy and replacing the description of the Churches being “in communion with the see of Canterbury” with a reference to their “historic connection” with Canterbury.
The second proposal — introducing a rotating presidency of the Anglican Consultative Council — was changed in a supplementary paper published in February. This recommended instead that the Archbishop of Canterbury invite the regional Primates to share his or her ministry in a collegial way, and to begin to think about formalising such an arrangement in a kind of council.
The Dean of St Davids, the Very Revd Dr Sarah Rowland Jones, a member of IASCUFO, told the symposium that the proposals intended to look “with honesty and integrity at how we don’t sweep disagreements under the carpet. And how is it that all who wish to keep holding to one another best do so, to fullest possible extent within the Communion family.”
Their “unusual” honesty was praised by the Revd Mark Chapman, Professor of the History of Modern Theology at the University of Oxford, who regarded them as “recognising that communion is already broken in many places”.
They would relieve the Archbishop of Canterbury from “having to feel responsible for the divisions and conflicts of the Communion”, he said. “Reducing the role to one of historic or symbolic significance is a sane and practical settlement.”
Dean Rowland Jones emphasised that the eucharist remained “the bedrock of our common life”. But some speakers expressed concern about the proposals’ emphasis on baptism.
“In substituting a sort of sliding scale of decrees of union building up from baptism, in place of a clear standard of full communion, they risk institutionalising instability and chaos in relations in the Anglican Communion,” Professor Morris warned.
He spoke of the “evident absurdity” of accommodating “bitter” internal divisions over same-sex relations within the Church of England without breaking communion, while applying a “different standard” to those divisions within the Communion.
“The appeal to honesty is disingenuous,” he said. “Communion is frequently broken in the Orthodox world yet interchurch relations may remain fluid and reparable as a consequence. . . There are no easy solutions. But I do not think that stepping back from full communion is the right way.”
A concern that the proposals represented giving up on full communion and entrenching division were echoed by other speakers.
“Things can change,” the Revd Dr Paul Avis, Honorary Professor in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, said. “I would like to leave it like that, and work on a human basis guided by the Holy Spirit to see things change over the years, rather than set it in stone at this stage.”
The Revd Andrew Atherstone, Professor of Modern Anglicanism in the University of Oxford, argued that the proposals were good for the Church of England, given the need for “a revolution in our Anglican ecclesiology that stops privileging England as the centre of the Communion”.
The Bishop of Butere, in the Anglican Church of Kenya, the Rt Revd Rose Okeno, heard in the proposals “a sincere desire to strengthen rather than weaken our communion life as Anglicans”.
The aims underpinning the proposals were disputed. The Revd Dr Charlie Bączyk-Bell, who convened the symposium, spoke of being “disturbed” by how murky the conversation could be. “At times the language of decolonisation is used when it seems clearer to me that this is really about solving the gay issue,” he said.
The Bishop of Missouri, the Rt Revd Deon K. Johnson, warned: “This singular focus on gender and human sexuality that is at the heart of some of these proposals runs the risk of reducing the theology of the Church solely to be concerned with the area between the knees and the navel rather than seeking to follow Jesus faithfully.”
The proposals are due to be discussed at the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Belfast later this month.
This week, Dr Bączyk-Bell said that he had organised the symposium, having been “dismayed by the lack of conversation and debate” on the proposals taking place in the Church of England.
“I hope the proposals are rejected in their current form, and that more deliberate attention is paid to the importance of decolonisation in and of itself, without getting caught up in questions around same-sex relationships,” he said.