By George Conger, Anglican Ink.
The Anglican Church of South America, led by its primate, the Most Rev. Brian Williams, Bishop of Argentina, has issued a strong endorsement of the Nairobi–Cairo structural reforms while warning that the real crisis in global Anglicanism is doctrinal, not institutional. At the same time, Bishop Williams’s visible role at GAFCON’s Abuja gathering shows the province aligning with the orthodox Global South while not formally joining the new Global Anglican Council.
South America’s response: reform welcomed, doctrine flagged
In its official “Response of the Anglican Church of South America to the Nairobi–Cairo Proposals and their Supplement,” the province thanks the Inter‑Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) for the “care, theological reflection, prayer and ecclesial commitment” behind the Nairobi–Cairo Proposals (NCP) and their Supplement. It emphasizes that its observations “do not arise from resistance to change, but from a desire to contribute constructively to discernment about the future of the Communion.”
South America describes the Anglican Communion as “a gift to be cared for, strengthened and renewed for the sake of the gospel and for the mission of the Church of Christ in the world,” grounded in a shared inheritance of faith, liturgy, mission, and episcopal order. That language reflects the province’s conservative theological background—Scripture‑centered, mission‑focused, wary of Western innovations—while signaling its desire to remain in conversation with more liberal provinces rather than disengage.
Backing Nairobi–Cairo’s structural reforms
On IASCUFO’s structural proposals, the Williams‑led province is firmly in the reform camp.
South America welcomes updating the Communion’s description in NCP §§73–76, saying paragraph 76 “represents more adequately the contemporary reality of the Anglican Communion as a communion of autonomous and interdependent churches united by a shared inheritance of faith, mission and common life.” It supports replacing a strictly juridical bond with Canterbury by the phrase “historic connection with the See of Canterbury,” arguing this recognizes Canterbury’s historical, spiritual, and relational importance “without making that relationship the sole constitutive criterion of belonging or communion.”