from American Anglican Council
As bishops and church leaders gather in Abuja, Nigeria for the 2026 GAFCON Council, another conversation about the future of the Anglican Communion is unfolding at the same time. The Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) recently announced that it will consider revised versions of the Nairobi–Cairo proposals later this year: structural reforms intended to rethink how the Communion is organized and how authority is exercised across its global fellowship of provinces. (You can read that announcement here.)
The timing is difficult to ignore. While GAFCON leaders meet to reaffirm their vision for Anglican unity rooted in the authority of Scripture and articulated in the Jerusalem Declaration, the Communion’s official institutions are advancing their own proposal for restructuring global Anglican leadership. Whether this represents a genuine effort to respond to the Communion’s long-standing divisions, or a strategic attempt to preempt the momentum of the GAFCON movement, is a question many observers are now asking.
This would not be the first time institutional leadership within the Communion has attempted to respond to pressure from the Global South with structural adjustments rather than theological clarity.
At the opening press briefing in Abuja, the Rev. Canon Justin Murff, Communications Director for GAFCON, addressed a question that has followed the movement since its founding in 2008: whether it represents a break from the Anglican Communion. “The goal is not to break apart the Communion,” Murff said. “This is a claim to continuum.” Murff emphasized that GAFCON continues to define itself through the Jerusalem Declaration, the theological statement adopted at the first GAFCON gathering in Jerusalem. Far from being merely a protest against developments in Western provinces, Murff said the declaration was intended to articulate what unites Anglicans who believe the Communion must remain rooted in the authority of Scripture. “We will be reaffirming and upholding the Jerusalem Declaration,” he said, reemphasizing that it is not designed to show what they oppose but what unites GAFCON.”