Evangelical Australian Anglican Bishop Shreds Nairobi-Cairo Proposals

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD I www.virtueonline.org I June 15, 2026

Efforts to reframe and restructure the Anglican Communion are little more than rearranging chairs on the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) deck and will not bring about the unity their architects hope to achieve.

The Rt. Rev. Glenn Davies, bishop of the GAFCON Diocese of the Southern Cross, has delivered a stinging critique of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals, arguing that the historic understanding of the Communion as a fellowship bound together by Holy Scripture is being sacrificed on the altar of provincial autonomy. At the heart of the dispute lies the redefinition of marriage by revisionist provinces—a departure from both Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer that Davies says the report largely ignores.

Writing ahead of ACC-19, which meets in Belfast later this month, the former Archbishop of Sydney acknowledged the considerable work undertaken by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO). Yet he contends that the Commission's central premise is flawed. By focusing on what Anglicans still share rather than confronting the doctrinal boundaries of Anglican orthodoxy, the report minimizes the very issues that have fractured the Communion for more than three decades.

Davies argues that the proposals fail to address the fundamental crisis surrounding marriage and sexuality. Instead, they seek to preserve institutional relationships while avoiding the theological questions that have driven provinces apart.

The bishop reserved particular criticism for the proposed revision of Resolution 49 of the 1930 Lambeth Conference, long regarded as the defining description of the Anglican Communion. While welcoming the reduced emphasis on communion with the See of Canterbury, he believes the revised language weakens the Communion's doctrinal foundation.

The original resolution spoke of churches that "uphold and propagate" the Catholic and Apostolic faith. The Nairobi-Cairo revision proposes that member churches merely "seek to uphold and propagate" that faith. Davies sees the change as far more than a matter of wording.

"Clearly, this is an admission that not all Churches do uphold and propagate the Catholic and Apostolic faith and order," he wrote.

He further argues that what earlier generations assumed—that Holy Scripture is the ultimate standard of faith and doctrine—has been diluted by an increasing emphasis on provincial autonomy. Provinces that have authorized same-sex marriage and blessings have, in his view, departed from both Scripture and the teaching of the Book of Common Prayer while remaining within the structures of the Communion.

Davies also addressed proposals to broaden Communion leadership beyond the Archbishop of Canterbury. While sympathetic to concerns about the Communion's colonial legacy, he questioned whether governance reforms address the real issue. Changing who chairs meetings, he argues, cannot resolve a crisis rooted in doctrine.

For Davies, the Communion's divisions were not caused by administrative structures but by theological departures from historic Christian teaching.

Strip away the language of renewal, reconciliation, and walking together, and the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals amount to a simple proposition: doctrine divides, so lower the doctrinal bar.

Davies will have none of it.

The crisis in the Anglican Communion was never Canterbury. It was never colonialism. It was never governance. It was the rejection of biblical teaching by provinces determined to rewrite Christian doctrine on marriage and sexuality.

The proposals do not solve that problem. They accommodate it.

ACC-19 should reject them.

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