The Wisdom of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals: A Response to Paul Avis

Andrew Goddard writes: There are multiple visions for the future of the Anglican Communion. One, being offered by Gafcon, is found in the Abuja Affirmation. Another is found in the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals (NCPs) developed by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith, and Order (IASCUFO), which will be considered by the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Belfast this summer.

Both of these visions are attempts at addressing our fractured common life and witness. The NCPs have recently been strongly rejected by Paul Avis, a Church of England scholar and ecumenist, in a Church Times essay. Avis sees the NCPs as “deeply troubling” and having “seismic consequences for the Anglican Communion,” indeed meaning “the Communion would not be a ‘communion’ at all, as ecclesial communion has been universally understood: namely, as a eucharistic communion with an interchangeable ordained ministry.” Given Avis’ standing and signs that others in the Church of England, including leading bishops, are also concerned about the NCPs, it is important to understand and evaluate his arguments.

He opens with an account of IASCUFO’s mandate and here he fails to acknowledge a key element of the mandate that sheds light on his fundamental disagreements. The ACC resolution which he quotes not only referred to the need to “address our differences in the Anglican Communion” (3(a)). It also affirmed “the importance of seeking to walk together to the highest degree possible, and learning from our ecumenical conversations how to accommodate differentiation patiently and respectfully.”

This recognition of the need to acknowledge degrees of communion among the churches of the Communion and to accept we now have to consider some form of “good differentiation” (the resolution’s title), learning from ecumenical conversations, is part of the mandate. It seems Avis is unwilling to countenance these steps as regrettable necessities even as he recognizes that the Communion is “currently fractured and dysfunctional.”

It could be argued that these steps have for some time been necessary, but they became even more pressing once a growing number of provinces in the Communion felt unable to continue in full communion with the see of Canterbury (a core feature of the historic 1930 description of the Communion) amid Prayers of Love and Faith as made clear in, for example, the 2023 Ash Wednesday Statement by Primates of the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA).

Avis begins his substantive critique of the NCPs by stating that “the core proposal is to demote the see of Canterbury and to promote the Primates instead” and even claims (without evidence) that the NCPs “exhibit an animus against the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury which is uncharitable” and that the report casts them “as the primary causes of disunity.”

In relation to Canterbury, Avis objects to deleting “in communion with the See of Canterbury” from the wording of the 1930 Communion description and replacing it with reference to churches having “a historic connection” with the see. He sees this proposal as arising because of a belief that “baptism, not holy communion, should be a sufficient future basis for the Communion” and rightly points out that we have a much thicker, richer and deeper understanding of ecclesial communion and that the Communion has claimed to embody this in its common life historically.

Avis claims the proposal is “that baptism should be sufficient for ‘communion.’” (italics mine).  The difficulty here is that he appears to be reading the NCPs as taking as normative and satisfactory what they rather present as the significant minimal degree of ecclesial communion that they trust and hope all the churches of  the Communion still recognize as existing between themselves, despite deep disagreements.

This then provides a theological basis for continued fellowship and, instead of “learning to walk apart” as we were warned may occur by The Windsor Report, “seeking to walk together to the highest degree possible.” It is similar to the point made by the Archbishop of York at the end of his speech in the first General Synod debate on Prayers of Love and Faith and then explored further in a New Directions article:

But our identity, surely, first of all is our baptismal identity. That is what unites us as the body of Christ. I want to say that water is thicker than blood, and because we belong to one another in Christ we have to have these conversations which can and will hold us together.

Many churches in the Communion thankfully have a much higher degree of communion with each other and in particular with Canterbury than baptismal communion. Furthermore, on the proposed new description of the Communion, all in the Communion are also committed to, among other disciplines,

• seeking to uphold and propagate shared Catholic and Apostolic faith and order
• recognizing they are bound together by “common counsel (of bishops and others” in conference” and
• seeking “interdependently to foster the highest degree of communion possible one with another.”

All this is much, much more than saying baptismal communion should be sufficient and nothing else really matters.

However, the reality Avis avoids addressing is that many churches within the Communion no longer have the degree of communion historically claimed and experienced with some other Communion churches. This includes for a growing and significant number of churches their degree of communion with the see of Canterbury. There is among the churches of the Communion tragically no longer what Avis seems to understand as necessary for the language of “communion” to be legitimately used at all: full eucharistic communion and episcopal collegiality

expressed by the mutual participation of Anglican bishops in episcopal ordinations, by the interchangeability of Holy Orders, and by the Lambeth Conference’s symbolically starting with a eucharist presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with whom all bishops of the Communion are expected to be “in communion.”

In critiquing the new proposed wording of “historic connection” to Canterbury, Avis appeals to how he thinks this would have been applied around the time of the first Lambeth Conferences (1867 and 1878). This, however, fails to recognizes that the whole point of the NCPs  is that they are a response to the Communion constantly changing (and sadly, often, in recent years for the worse), hence the inadequacy of the 1930 resolution’s description. As Rowan Williams said 20 years ago,

There is no way in which the Anglican Communion can remain unchanged by what is happening at the moment. Neither the liberal nor the conservative can simply appeal to a historic identity that doesn’t correspond with where we now are.

Avis’ argument here is even weaker when he claims that 150 years ago the Episcopal Church in the United States would have been excluded because it “derives its episcopate from the Scottish Episcopal Church” and so lacks such a historic connection to Canterbury. While it is true that the first American bishop was consecrated in Aberdeen, this was not what was sought (unsurprisingly, given the historic links to England of the colonial church). The next three American bishops were all consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury after the Episcopal Church “fulfilled its pledge to the English bishops to defer consecrating any bishops in the United States until it secured three in the English succession” (David L. Holmes, A Brief History of the Episcopal Church, p. 55).

Even though there were three bishops in the United States—two of the English succession (White and Provost) and one of the Scots Non-Juror succession (Seabury), they waited for Madison to be consecrated in England before gathering the four American bishops to consecrate Thomas Clagget. The American Church’s episcopate has three times the links to England as it does to Scotland.

The second element of Avis’ critique—that “The NCPs aim to increase the authority of the Primates Meeting”—is also problematic. There are suggestions here that his opposition to the NCPs is shaped more by the first published form of the NCPs or even the earliest forms of the proposal (that the Primates’ Meeting elect its Chair), which were never published as they were rejected by the Primates. These have, as he notes, now changed in the recent revised proposals in the Supplement.

However, it is seriously misleading to describe this current form of the NCPs (which nowhere refers to “primacy”) as proposing that “a Primates’ Council would embody the primacy” and that it would be this council and not the Archbishop of Canterbury “which exercises the functions of the primacy.” Nowhere does Avis consider the arguments for the actual, more limited proposal. His claims about primacy in Anglican understanding being of a form that “needs to be recognizable and ‘findable’” and is “located at Canterbury” need to be put alongside the earlier emphasis that “The Archbishop of Canterbury lacks any power to direct the Anglican Communion or its member Churches.”

The reality is that the NCPs here are again partly arising out of issues he largely downplays or ignores, namely the need to face the reality of impaired communion with Canterbury for many churches and to become more representative and postcolonial in public Communion leadership. They are also both more modest than he portrays them and their rationale has more precedent in earlier discussions of the Instruments and the meaning of primacy (see, e.g., references in note 72and note 83 of the original NCPs, the only places where “primacy” is referred to).

It is in the short section “Invalid argument” that what appears to be a key driver in Avis’ approach is articulated. He first criticizes the NCPs for how they handle Gafcon and GSFA, two bodies he lumps together despite their being distinct and often significantly different in theological and political approaches. That distinction becomes clear in their different positions regarding the Abuja Affirmation (see my discussions here and here). Avis argues that their statements and actions are taken “at face value” and “meekly accepted as the agenda.” He even concludes by claiming that IASCUFO “has moved the goalposts” to allow Gafcon churches “to score.” This is then followed by these astonishingly strong and undefended assertions:

But there is no biblical, theological, or historical justification for separation on the grounds that one disapproves of certain actions of a Church, even actions deemed to be scandalous. The appeal to the example of the Reformers is invalid.

Avis must know that all those claims are highly contentious but also that his language of “separation” again appears to suggest a binary “united vs. separated” or “in vs. out” in relation to communion. Once again there is no recognition of degrees of communion between distinct churches within the one church. There is no recognition either of the reality of differentiation or distancing as sometimes justifiable responses within the mixed body of the church as it constantly struggles to uphold unity in the truth amid what is seen by some (in this case the overwhelming majority of Anglicans) as the appearance of doctrinal error or moral scandal.

This leads to the final area where Avis and the NCPs are approaching matters quite differently, almost working in contrasting paradigms. Avis seems to have a very clear and stark dividing line between “Anglican relations with Churches with which Anglicans are not in ecclesial communion” and “Churches with which they are in ecclesial communion.” He speaks of these as being “different in kind” and differing “essentially.” The problem the NCPs seek to address, however, is that we can no longer look at the list of churches that are part of the Communion and say that they are all “in ecclesial communion” with one another or even with the see of Canterbury.

In line with the section of their ACC mandate (to which Avis did not refer), the NCPs try to chart a path that does not simply abandon the goal of “ecclesial communion” and replace it with “baptismal communion” (his unwarranted fear and accusation).  Rather the NCPs seek  to allow our structures to evolve to encourage and enable the highest degree of communion possible. This involves “learning from our ecumenical conversations how to accommodate differentiation patiently and respectfully” by bringing insights from them  into the ordering of our global Anglican life, given that we are living in a time when we need to seek “the restoration of complete communion in faith and sacramental life” (to use the language of ARCIC that Avis quotes) withinthe Communion.

But what of the pragmatic question with which Avis ends, “Will it work?” Of course we cannot know, though Avis seems quite clear he does know that the NCPs won’t work. But his judgment is based on defining “work” as getting those provinces (basically Rwanda, Uganda, and Nigeria) that have ceased to participate in the Instruments to return. But that, though desirable, is not the litmus test to apply.

The NCPs will “work” if they can give time and space (see here Ephraim Radner’s helpful essay) to prevent other provinces from following their path. They will “work” if they can create a reformed Communion for continued (and where possible restored and deepening) communion and partnership with integrity. They will “work” if they can open time and ecclesial space for the necessary and hard conversations over the matters that divide us.

The GSFA provinces, representing a large proportion of Anglicans, have much to contribute in such a space. They are working, in their Cairo Covenant, to maintain the deeper ecclesial communion they feel they have been deprived of by recent developments within the existing Communion membership. They also appear (unlike the voices represented by the Abuja Affirmation from the currently dominant element within Gafcon) to be willing to work toward creating such a space with the wider historic Communion provinces and have much sympathy for the NCPs as a means of achieving it.

Avis, in his dismissal of the NCPs and his Canterbury-centric understanding of Anglicanism, fails to recognize this fact and its significance. Nor does he offer any alternative way of reforming the “structure and decision-making” of the Communion as requested by the ACC but instead dismisses “decision-making in the Communion” as “a pseudo-problem, a rhetorical fiction.”

Ultimately, Avis seems to be saying that the real problem lies with those Anglican churches that have not been able simply to accept what the Episcopal Church and other provinces, including now the Church of England, have done in recent years.

The NCPs have, in his view, made a mistake in seeking to respond to those who believe that those actions, in disregard of Communion consensus which was the fruit of the Communion’s episcopal collegiality, have impaired ecclesial communion. Rightly recalling the ideal of full ecclesial communion, he then misrepresents the NCPs as abandoning that gold standard (despite the Supplement once again strongly reaffirming it, e.g., in paragraph 7) and being satisfied with “a reductionist nature of ‘communion.’”

He describes the NCPs as “deeply troubling” without facing, let alone offering an alternative to, the truly “deeply troubling” reality: that the churches of the Communion no longer recognize in each other the degree of shared faith and order that they had in the past and which, as he knows from his years of ecumenical work, is an essential component if we are to embody that gold standard of full ecclesial communion in our common life.

To embrace Avis’ stance and dismiss the NCPs would be to ignore both the words of Archbishop Rowan Williams about not simply appealing “to a historic identity that doesn’t correspond with where we now are” and the warning words of the NCP Supplement as it draws to a close:

If we choose not to engage the need for change and try instead to maintain the status quo, we will in effect be refusing to engage honestly and constructively with our problems and increasing the likelihood of more acrimonious division. In view of this reality, we can take heart in recalling that the Church is ever reforming. Continual testing and exploring will be needed and must be anticipated, until our Lord returns. We must, therefore, hold our structures lightly, recognising their proper provisionality in service of the healing of the one Body (para 27).