Episcopal leaders offer perspectives on Nairobi-Cairo proposals in collection of essays

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal leaders have released a collection of essays offering perspectives on the Nairobi-Cairo proposals, which will be taken up this summer by the Anglican Consultative Council as it considers structural reforms to the Anglican Communion.

The Nairobi-Cairo proposals, named for the cities in which they were first drafted, were released in December 2024 and revised this month by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order, or IASCUFO. The commission is recommending two primary reforms, focused on how the Anglican Communion is defined and the way it assigns leadership in certain representative bodies.

On March 9, The Episcopal Church unveiled a 157-page document collecting 11 essays and two pastoral reflections on the proposals, in response to Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s call to the House of Bishops’ Ecclesiology Committee. Contributors include members of that committee as well as the Task Force on the Anglican Communion and Countering the Colonial Mindset, which was created to fulfill a resolution passed by General Convention in 2024.

“The Nairobi-Cairo Proposals: Voices in Response from The Episcopal Church” was edited by Bishop Mark Edington, who leads the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe and was one of nine bishops who contributed to the collection. Edington said in a foreward that the essays are not intended as an official churchwide response to the proposals.

“What this volume reveals is deep reflection on the part of leaders in the church in both episcopal and parochial ministry, as well as in academe, to a newly envisaged Anglican Communion as described in the proposals,” he said.

The authors include current and retired bishops, a seminary professor, a university professor, two parish priests and a member of the presiding bishop’s staff. The full collection can be accessed here.

The Nairobi-Cairo 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 and the Anglican Church of Canada that are more progressive on issues of LGBTQ+ inclusion.

The Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order, or IASCUFO, issued its initial draft of the Nairobi-Cairo proposals in December 2024 and issued a supplemental revisions in March 2026.

The first proposal offers an updated statement of what binds the 42 autonomous 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 Anglican Consultative Council, the Primates’ Meeting and the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops. The office of the archbishop of Canterbury is considered a fourth Instrument of Communion.

The Anglican Consultative Council, or ACC, is scheduled to meet June 27-July 5 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, hosted by the Church of Ireland. It will be the first meeting convened by Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, who serves as ACC president.

Each Anglican province is invited to send two or three representatives to the ACC. The Episcopal Church’s representatives are Puerto Rico Bishop Rafael Morales Maldonado; the Rev. Ranjit Mathews, canon to the ordinary of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, and Yvonne O’Neal, a lay leader from the Diocese of New York.

This meeting of the ACC will be closely watched for which provinces send representatives. The Anglican provinces of Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda have refused to participate in past Anglican Communion meetings. More recently, those provinces have pressed the conservative leaders of other Anglican provinces to separate from the existing Anglican Communion and forum a new coalition through a movement known as GAFCON that has been influenced by schismatic former Anglicans.