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) 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.

The timing is striking. While Gafcon leaders meet to reaffirm their vision for Anglican unity and identity, the Communion’s official institutions are considering their own attempt to address the fractures that have defined Anglican life for nearly two decades. Whether these efforts represent parallel responses to the same crisis, or competing visions of Anglicanism’s future, remains an open question, but we suspect a purposeful step to undermine Gafcon’s G26 conference. We’ve seen this before in the Church of England, and that battle is moving onto the world stage.

At the first press briefing of the gathering in Abuja, the Rev. Canon Justin Murff, Communications Director for Gafcon, addressed a question that 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 the movement 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 the Western churches, he 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,” Murff said. “It is not designed to show what we oppose but what unites Gafcon.”

For many within the movement, the declaration has increasingly functioned as a theological centre of gravity for Anglicans who believe the Communion has struggled to address doctrinal divisions that have widened in recent decades. “It has become a basis of communion across boundaries,” Murff said, noting that it provides theological grounding for cooperation, and, at times, cross-provincial oversight, among churches that share the same doctrinal commitments. Murff insisted that Gafcon does not see itself as creating a new church. Instead, he suggested that many within the movement believe they are preserving the historic faith of Anglicanism even as the Communion’s institutional structures struggle to respond to theological conflict. “We are the Anglican Communion,” he said, describing the movement as committed to “defending the faith as the Word of God has taught and commanded.”

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While we wait for Gafcon to announce a new leader of the Global Anglican Communion, we take a look at the alternatives. https://t.co/T8P6kpxpLQ

— Anglican Futures (@AnglicanFutures) March 5, 2026

O God, who through thy Son Jesus Christ hast promised help to man according to his faith: Grant us the freedom of the children to taste the food of eternal life, and to share with others what we ourselves receive; through the merits of the same thy Son, our Lord.

A beautiful Oak Tree as the sun sets on another day. Love the shape of it, nature certainly know how to paint the best pictures! pic.twitter.com/B8ZkXrlQZV

— MarburyBirds (@MarburyBirds) March 4, 2026

And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light. If any man has ears to hear, let him hear.” And he said to them, “Take heed what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For to him who has will more be given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

–Mark 4:21-34

Sunrise over the misty farmland this morning. #Shropshire #Weather #Sunrise pic.twitter.com/TZJnToGxRp

— Steven Keating (@Aneedtopaint) March 5, 2026