American and African Anglicanism

THREE AMERICANS were consecrated bishop in Africa last week, to serve congregations that have split from the Episcopal Church in the United States.

The two new Kenyan bishops are the Rt Revd Bill Atwood, from Texas, who is general secretary of the Ekklesia Society, which promotes conservative Anglicanism, and the Rt Revd William Murdoch, a former Rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Massachusetts. They were consecrated in Nairobi Cathedral to serve as assistant bishops in the Anglican Church of Kenya by its Primate, the Most Revd Benjamin Nzimbi .

The two vowed to “serve the international interests of the Anglican Church of Kenya, to serve clergy and congregations in North America under the Kenyan jurisdiction”.

The BBC reported that the ceremony was watched by a large congregation of Kenyans, and included archbishops and bishops from across Africa, and by the men’s friends and supporters from the US.

Archbishop Nzimbi told the Reuters news agency before the ceremony that the reason for the ordinations was that conflicts in the Episcopal Church in the US had left its congregations without pastoral direction.

“We are not undermining the authority of anybody. We are actually saving a situation of people who so much need it. Otherwise, if they are left on their own, they would be like sheep without a shepherd,” he said.

An African website, allAfrica.com, reported that the Archbishop hoped that the new bishops would be a temporary solution. “The fabric of the Anglican Communion has been torn by the actions of the Episcopal Church in the US. These conflicts affect us all, and we have a responsibility to address the areas that we are able to impact.”

The third US cleric to be made Bishop in Africa was the Rt Revd John Guernsey, former Rector of All Saints’, Dale City, Virginia. Bishop Guernsey, who was removed from the priesthood in the Episcopal Church at the start of August, was consecrated by the Archbishop of Uganda, the Most Revd Henry Orombi in Mbarara, Uganda, on Sunday.

“In Uganda, we have provided a home for refugees from Congo, Rwanda, and Sudan,” the Archbishop told Reuters. “Now we are also providing a home for ecclesiastical refugees from America.”

Bishop Guernsey told The Living Church that Uganda was “not building anything on its own; but we are working closely with Bishop Duncan and all our Common Cause partners towards a united and faithful Anglicanism in North America.” Bishop Duncan is the moderator of the conservative Anglican Communion Network.

Bishop Guernsey is the province’s second missionary bishop. The Rt Revd Sandy Millar, the former Vicar of Holy Trinity, Brompton, was consecrated by Archbishop Orombi in 2005 with London diocesan approval, and is licensed by the Bishop of London . Bishop Guernsey will have episcopal oversight of the 33 congregations in the US affiliated to the Church of Uganda.

Pushing Anglicanism to the precipice
Spin-doctors are dismantling the Anglican Communionin line with their political agenda, argues Pat Ashworth

SPIN-doctoring overreached itself — and fell flat on its face — two weeks ago with the publication of a pastoral letter purporting to be from the Archbishop of Nigeria, the Most Revd Peter Akinola, to his flock in Abuja .Should it matter that the bulk of it was written in the United States from the computer of Bishop Martyn Minns, and that revision, editing, and formatting took place over four days?

I believe it does. After our news story we were accused by the Nigerian director of communications of being “insulting and racist”. It has nothing to do with race but everything to do with language and politics, in a climate where the word “decision” is now drip-fed into every missive.

Brainwash us often enough with news that the Anglican Communion is on the brink of destruction, and we will all believe it: that is, until proof comes along that schism really is being orchestrated by a knot of people dedicated to keeping their supporters on message.

“Forced to choose”, “moment of decision”, “brink of destruction”, “the gravity of this moment” are phrases designed to turn a drama into a crisis, as US conservatives, with help from English friends, seek to sabotage next year’s Lambeth Conference.

Delete this: “The journey to unity has been long and agonising and needs to come to an end soon,” and substitute: “It now appears, however, that the journey is coming to an end and the moment of decision is almost upon us.” In the end, it doesn’t matter who made the change: the result was to ring the alarm bells louder.

LANGUAGE has changed noticeably. In 2000, the communiqué from the Primates’ Meeting in Porto was characterised by graciousness, patience, and humility. After a very difficult meeting, they warned that a “careful, patient and pastoral” process was not created by “the demonising of opponents or by overheated, politicised and polarised language in our conflicts”.

Even the Archbishop of Rwanda, the Most Revd Emmanuel Kolini, spoke in an interview of “a common language of reconciliation”, saying: “We shared the bread first and talked to each other.”

But the US lobbyists were already on the rise, hunting in a pack in Porto, but failing on that occasion to cut any ice in public with the Primates as a body. The conference room was off limits, and the Primates moved at speed and with minders — defensiveness that metamorphosed into paranoia the following year in Kanuga, when high security surrounded the meeting, and a 24-hour guard was mounted to keep the press and the lobbyists out.

Wind forward to the Primates’ Meeting in Newry in February 2005, in the wake of the consecration of the Rt Revd Gene Robinson in 2003, and the publication of the Windsor report. The tenor of the final communiqué from Newry, which requested the “voluntary withdrawal” of the US and Canadian Churches from the Anglican Consultative Council, was patently intended to appease the angriest voices.

“Many Primates have been deeply alarmed that the standard of Christian teaching on human sexuality . . . has been seriously undermined by the recent developments in North America. . . At the same time, it is acknowledged that these developments . . . have proceeded entirely in accordance with their constitutional processes and requirements.”

Lobbyists were no longer in the background but present in force at the Canal Court Hotel in Newry, in touch by mobile phone with Global South Primates inside the meeting, and discussing the business with them each evening. The meeting famously “leaked like a sieve”, and the Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Njongonkulu Ndungane, identified the emergence of new language within Anglicanism — a “sub-text of hatred”.

Every Communion-related meeting since has been hyped to await a final letter or communiqué, and these have been increasingly orchestrated. In October 2005, Global South Primates, meeting in Egypt and accompanied by observers and lobbyists, sent an apparently corporate letter to Dr Williams, questioning his leadership. The tone had hardened: the letter spoke of the C of E “giving the appearance of evil”, and of Europe as “a spiritual desert”.

Five of its alleged signatories denounced it as having been neither commissioned, discussed, nor approved by the body of Primates. The Archbishop of the West Indies, the Most Revd Drexel Gomez, described it as “an act of impatience and disrespect for process”. The President-Bishop in Jerusalem & the Middle East, the Most Revd Clive Handford, called it “megaphone diplomacy”.

I asked Bishop Handford who had written the letter and put it out. “It’s not clear. One might speculate,” he said, and did.

Archbishop Akinola thundered: “It is pertinent to say NO ONE [his capitals] objected.” Yet another Primate told me: “Peter Akinola is skating on very thin ice when he says only one or two Primates didn’t approve it.”

The Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone, the Most Revd Greg Venables, said: “I’m afraid I’ve yet to receive an explanation which gives me confidence. It’s all, ‘Not me, guv.’”
By the time the letter reached Dr Williams at Lambeth, its contents had already been circulated on the web.

The lobbyists behind all these developments have been visible at every significant Communion gathering over the past few years. They blatantly influenced the Primates in Dar es Salaam in February, and have now gone beyond that point to holding positions of power themselves, as newly created bishops.

THERE ARE, of course, lobbyists on the other side. Integrity has been active at various Anglican summits for years. The difference is that the liberals are not trying to unchurch anyone, though there are signs of attitudes hardening. But they are not the victims of the neo-conservative spin. These are the bulk of Anglicans worldwide who value the comprehensiveness of their branch of Christianity, who see the Communion as a place of debate, and who dread a Church of the Like-minded.

Those whose impulse is always to react rather than reflect are playing into the hands of the lobbyists we have been too preoccupied to notice: the secular commentators, who are happy to write off Christ’s Church as ill-informed, bad-tempered, and irrelevant. When even Christians are forced to agree with them, this is where the real damage starts.

Cons and pros of African influence in the West

From Canon Peter Macleod-MillerSir, — Whatever our stance on homosexuality and church leadership, the ordination of a bishop as a missile in ecclesiastical gang warfare must be a concern within a global spiritual community.

What of the moral carbon footprint on shipping a certain brand of righteousness from one continent to the other? Shall we consider the well from which this remedy has been drawn?
While the thriving faith of the Ugandan Church may be rich in the certainties that most dictators crave, their strong stance on human sexuality has not been matched by their opposition to corruption, poverty, violence, and injustice.

It is extraordinary that a nation such as the United States, so protectionist in its policies, and without sufficient intellectual mobility to desire even the possession of a passport from their own shores, should seek to import their own “good oil” from such a far-off jurisdiction.

In another era, powermongers took their ships and enslaved a far-off workforce (plundering what they wanted and leaving the rest) to achieve their own ends. It appears that the boats are back in the water.
PETER MACLEOD-MILLER
The Rectory, BarrowSuffolk IP29 5BA

From Mrs Margaret BrownSir, — For years, our country has been privileged in so many ways, and yet much that we held dear we have discarded. As a nation, we have turned our backs on God, to our peril, thinking that we know better.

We have the highest divorce rate in Europe, the highest abortion rate, and the highest cohabitation rate. Blasphemy, foul language, and gun-culture are all to the fore on our television screens, to say nothing of binge-drinking, drug-taking, and gambling all on the increase.
It is therefore most refreshing to hear Archbishop Akinola say that “the Church must conform to the authority and supremacy of Scripture . . . the biblical teaching on sin, forgiveness, reconciliation, and transformation by the Holy Spirit through Christ; the sanctity of marriage, teaching about morality that is rooted in the biblical revelation and the apostolic ministry.” How right he is.

Originally, we took the gospel to the people of Africa, and one wonders whether God is now telling us that the Africans, who have been downtrodden for such a long time, but have remained so faithful to his teaching, should perhaps now bring the gospel back to us.
MARGARET BROWN
Luckhurst, MayfieldEast Sussex TN20 6TY