Sarah Mullally’s Presidential Address in Belfast, 28 June 2026
‘Our task this week is not simply to determine what changes we may wish to make. It is first to listen.’
Sarah Mullally, Belfast, 28 June 2026[1]
About this series
Between 28 June and 4 July 2026, the Anglican Consultative Council met in Belfast to discuss the Nairobi–Cairo Proposals, the most serious attempt in decades to reorder the Anglican Communion. This series of ten essays examines what happened there and what it means. The first four deal with the meeting itself: the opening address by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the language she used to describe those who were asking for a decision, the resolutions that were passed, and the way the Council was conducted. The fifth reads the account of an insider, the historian Andrew Atherstone. The last five turn to the Global South Fellowship, the conservative provinces of the South that chose to remain within the Communion.
Every essay returns to a single question, the question of the book from which they spring. The Anglican Communion has a common standard: Scripture, as received in its formularies. Who guards that standard when someone departs from it? In Belfast the question hung over the whole week, though it was seldom asked aloud.
The first day
The Nairobi–Cairo Proposals sought, among other things, to ‘decenter the Archbishop of Canterbury’s role in its structures’.[2] The holder of that office, Sarah Mullally, was presiding over the Council that was to discuss them.
On the first day, before any debate, the Archbishop delivered her Presidential Address. This essay argues that the address fixed the rules for the whole discussion that followed. It does not claim that the decision had been taken in advance, because nobody can prove that. It claims something that can be shown with the text in hand. By the time the conversation began, the range of what could be decided had already been fenced in, and those who wished to go further would not succeed.
What it says and what it leaves unsaid
The address runs to some 1,700 words. About 1,280 of them develop the theme of the meeting, ‘Called to One Hope’. The final 440 deal with trust, and they are the ones that matter for what came afterwards.[3]
Its silences are more revealing still. The proposals that were to be discussed appear only once, in a line of thanks to the commission that prepared them.[4] Canterbury appears only when the Archbishop recalls her own installation.[5] The text never uses the words doctrine, marriage or authority. The President of a Council that was about to debate her own office said not a word about that office.
Six rules before the game
In the final part of the address there are six statements which, taken together, set the order of the week in advance.
The first defines the participants. There are matters before us, and matters to come, says the Archbishop, ‘on which faithful Anglicans hold differing convictions’.[6] The phrase sounds generous. But it settles something that was in dispute. If everyone is equally faithful, the disagreement is not about the faith. It is a difference of opinion within the same family, and neither side can ask for the other to be corrected.
The second defines the wound. Trust, she says, is fragile. In some places it has been wounded, and in others it has been tested ‘by distance, misunderstanding, or disappointment’.[7] All three causes are relational. The address mentions no specific decision: neither the 2003 consecration in the United States nor the blessings approved in England in 2023. For the Global South Fellowship, communion is impaired because certain provinces have departed from the historic teaching on marriage.[8] The address chose a different explanation, and took it for granted.
The third rules out the remedies that were to be discussed. ‘We cannot simply vote trust into existence.’ And later: nor should we imagine that structural decisions alone can heal what is relational and spiritual.[9] The Nairobi–Cairo Proposals were structural proposals. On the first day it was declared that structures do not heal and that voting is of no use for what matters most.
The fourth assigns a place to anyone who wants a decision. Hope, says the Archbishop, cannot be created through ‘anxiety, fear or urgency’. The temptation for any family under pressure is to seek ‘immediate solutions’.[10] Whoever later asked for a decision had been described in advance as someone driven by anxiety or fear, or tempted by haste. The provinces of the South, which have been waiting for an answer since 2003, will hardly recognise their requests as a search for immediate solutions.
The fifth sets the task. ‘Our task this week is not simply to determine what changes we may wish to make. It is first to listen.’ To learn, to pray, to study Scripture, to understand one another better, to create the conditions in which trust may grow.[11]
The sixth sets the timetable. Because God is faithful, there is no need to act from fear or from anxiety, nor to imagine that the future of the Communion rests solely in the Council’s hands. We can ‘take the time necessary to discern well’.[12]
There is a seventh element, subtler than the rest. Speaking of the Church as a body, the Archbishop acknowledges that we live in a body that is ‘messy’, and says that we seek to be the body God intended ‘with sacrificial compromise’, aware of our weaknesses.[13] The weakness Paul speaks of in 2 Corinthians 12 is his own. In the address it becomes a communal virtue: accepting, in a spirit of sacrifice, a body in which contrary teachings live side by side. The sacrifice being asked for, in practice, is that of those who are asking for a decision.
The missing faith
The theme of the meeting came from Ephesians 4:4, ‘called in one hope’. The next verse reads ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’. A few verses later, Paul explains that Christ gave pastors and teachers so that the Church would not be carried about by every wind of doctrine, but, speaking the truth in love, would grow up into Christ (Ephesians 4:14–15). The address took hope from the passage. It left out faith and truth.
Six days later, the delegates corrected that omission. An amendment from the South American delegate Joaquín Philpotts added to the final resolution that the Communion’s divisions are partly caused by disagreements about ‘the one faith’, citing Ephesians 4:4–6.[14] What the President did not say, the Council said.
From the first day to the last
What followed the address matched it point for point.
On 2 July, after hearing feedback from the discussion groups, the Archbishop spoke again. She said that work was needed on describing who Anglicans are, but that ‘maybe we are not quite there yet’. She repeated that the solutions ‘may not be structural’.[15] The final resolution, drafted by the Standing Committee of which she is a member, received the proposals as ‘resources’ for continuing discernment, quoted in its fourth clause the address’s line about trust, and deferred decision-making to 2029.[16] The essays that follow examine that text and how it was arrived at.
The framework of the first day and the outcome of the last are one and the same.
What must be acknowledged
An honest critique must acknowledge, to begin with, that the address contains valuable pages. Its reflection on hope, born of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and grounded in the incarnation and the resurrection, is Christian and moving.
Nor does the text close every door. The Archbishop said that difficult conversations were not to be feared, and that the task was not ‘simply’ to determine changes. Formally, the possibility of a decision remained open.
There is a still more important fact. Most of the Council already distrusted the proposals. According to The Living Church, the majority of the discussion groups were sceptical, chiefly for fear of losing Canterbury as the centre.[17] The address did not manufacture that majority.
What it did was something else. It gave the majority a spiritual language for not deciding, and left the minority in an awkward position. The delegate from the Province of the Indian Ocean, Berthier Lainirina, said as much on the final day: ‘It is very sad that we suppose that everything is OK when things are not OK.’[18] Within the framework of the first day, remarks like that sounded like urgency, and urgency had already been described as a poor counsellor.
A familiar style
The style of leadership on display in this address is recognisable. It speaks of listening, participation and shared discernment. Its tone is warm and pastoral. Yet before anyone else has taken the floor it has already said who the faithful are, what the wound is, which remedies will not work, and what attitude lies behind any call for a decision. It is deliberative in its language. In practice, by the time the conversation begins, the outcome has already been fenced in. It is authority that does not present itself as authority.
None of this requires an assumption of bad faith. The Archbishop may well have believed every word. But the problem does not depend on her intentions. A person whose authority was under discussion set the rules of the discussion, and did so in words so kind that to dispute them seemed uncharitable.
What the address left out
In her first paragraph, the Archbishop remembers in her prayers those who ‘have been unable to join us’.[19] Nigeria, Uganda and Rwanda were not absent because they were unable to attend. They chose not to come, heeding GAFCON’s call for ‘principled disengagement’ from the Canterbury instruments.[20] To name them as involuntary absentees is a kindly way of not hearing what their absence was saying.
The bishops gathered at Lambeth in 1920 wrote that the Anglican churches are not free to deny the truth, nor free to ignore the fellowship.[21] The Belfast address spoke a great deal about communion and nothing about truth. Paul, in the passage that gave the meeting its theme, held the two together: one hope, but also one faith, and the truth spoken in love. A meeting that begins by leaving out the faith already knows, before it starts, what it will not decide.
[1] Sarah Mullally, ‘Archbishop of Canterbury’s Presidential Address to the Anglican Consultative Council’, Belfast, 28 June 2026, archbishopofcanterbury.org (accessed 19 October 2026), para. 24. Hereafter Address, with paragraph numbers counted from ‘It is a joy to gather here in Belfast’.
[2] Mark Michael, ‘Mullally Calls ACC to Deepened Hope and Trust’, The Living Church, 28 June 2026.
[3] Author’s count of the published text. The transition comes at Address, para. 19: ‘But hope cannot grow without trust’.
[4] Address, para. 3: ‘I am particularly grateful for the work of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) for their work on the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals (NCPs)’.
[5] Ibid., para. 5: ‘At my installation in Canterbury on the Feast of the Annunciation’.
[6] Ibid., para. 23: ‘There are matters before us and matters that will come before us in the years ahead, on which faithful Anglicans hold differing convictions’.
[7] Ibid., para. 21: ‘trust is fragile. In some places it has been wounded. In others it has been tested by distance, misunderstanding, or disappointment’.
[8] Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, statement on ACC-19, published 6 July 2026: ‘impaired communion with those Provinces that have departed from the Communion’s historic teaching on marriage’.
[9] Address, paras 21 and 23: ‘We cannot simply vote trust into existence’; ‘But neither should we imagine that structural decisions alone can heal what is relational and spiritual’.
[10] Ibid., paras 21 and 22: ‘nor can we create hope through anxiety, fear or urgency’; ‘The temptation for any family under pressure is to seek immediate solutions’.
[11] Ibid., para. 24: ‘It is first to listen. To learn. To pray. To study scripture. To deepen our understanding of one another. To create the conditions in which trust may grow and hope may flourish’.
[12] Ibid., paras 25 and 26: ‘we need not act from fear. We need not act from anxiety. We need not imagine that the future of the Communion rests solely in our hands’; ‘we can take the time necessary to discern well’.
[13] Ibid., paras 17 and 18: ‘we live in a body which is messy’; ‘it is with sacrificial compromise and aware of our own weaknesses and shortcomings that we seek to be the body God created us to be’.
[14] Anglican Consultative Council, Resolutions of the Anglican Consultative Council, Belfast, 2026, Resolution 2, clause 5: ‘our present divisions in the Anglican Communion are partly caused by disagreements about the “one faith”’. On the authorship of the amendment: Andrew Atherstone, ‘Hope for the Communion? Reflections on the Anglican Consultative Council’s 2026 Meeting’, The Living Church, 8 July 2026.
[15] Mark Michael, ‘Mullally on Nairobi-Cairo Proposals: “We’re Not There Yet”’, The Living Church, 2 July 2026. The wording in full: ‘maybe we are not quite there yet’; ‘Our solutions to where we are may not be structural’.
[16] Resolutions, Resolution 2, clauses 1, 4 and 7(b): ‘as resources for the continuing discernment’; ‘report back and decision-making at ACC20’.
[17] Mark Michael, ‘ACC Members Doubtful About Nairobi-Cairo Proposals’, The Living Church, 30 June 2026.
[18] Quoted in David Paulsen, ‘ACC Leaves Archbishop of Canterbury’s Role Unchanged in Ongoing Talks on Anglican Identity’, Episcopal News Service, 4 July 2026.
[19] Address, para. 1: ‘I am aware that there are some who have been unable to join us and I hold them and you in my prayers’.
[20] Atherstone, ‘Hope for the Communion?’. On the absences: Paulsen, Episcopal News Service: ‘again were absent at ACC-19’.
[21] Encyclical letter of the 1920 Lambeth Conference, quoted in Lambeth Commission on Communion, The Windsor Report 2004, p. 38: ‘They are not free to deny the truth. They are not free to ignore the fellowship’.
