Kenya and Uganda

make three US Bishops

By SUE CARELESS

At the end of the summer no less than three American priests were consecrated bishops by African archbishops. They will serve a total of 65 orthodox Anglican congregations in the United States as missionary bishops. All three Americans had left the Episcopal

Church.

Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi consecrated Bill Atwood of Texas and William Murdoch of Massachusetts in Nairobi on Aug. 30.

Then just three days later in Kampala Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda consecrated John Guernsey of Virginia on Sept. 2.

(Earlier in the summer, on June 21, the Ugandan House of Bishops voted to receive Andrew Fairfield, retired Bishop of North Dakota, as a member of its House.)

The consecration of Bishop Murdoch hits close to home. His brother is a gay priest serving in Massachusetts. The Church Times in Britain said that the African ordinations would be viewed as “valid but irregular” by Lambeth Palace (the headquarters of the Church of England).

Both Bishop Atwood and Bishop Murdoch will return to the US to minister to 32 congregations who have placed themselves under Archbishop Nzimbi’s authority.

Orombi spokeswoman Alison Barfoot said the Ugandan archbishop had called Guernsey to lead 33 congregations in the United States that recognise the Church of Uganda’s authority.

She called Guernsey “an ecclesiastical refugee,” in a telephone conversation with Reuters news service.

“We thought the crisis in the Anglican Church would be resolved by now,” she said. “We expected the Episcopal Church to repent [of ordaining an openly gay bishop]... but they have prolonged the crisis. This is not about sexuality; it’s about Scripture. The leadership of the Anglican church has hijacked us to a faith that does not represent biblical Christianity.”

The consecrations have set off a turf war of sorts because each Anglican province is self-governing. The Archbishop of Canterbury had asked that African archbishops not consecrate U.S. priests to help avoid a schism. A Pastoral Vicar to care for orthodox Episcopalians had been proposed by the Primates of the Anglican Communion, but the Episcopal Church had rejected the concept out of hand. Now theologically conservative Africans claim that they are merely providing refuge for orthodox believers persecuted by a predominately liberal Church.

The Episcopal Church declined to offer any comment on the consecrations other than to say that its bishops might address the issue during the House of Bishops meeting Sept. 20-25.

The festive five-hour Kenyan consecration service was held in a simple stone cathedral on the outskirts of downtown Nairobi. It was attended by about 600 people who danced and sang exuberantly in English and Swahili.

Atwood spoke briefly to the Kenyan congregation: “All are welcome at the cross, but we come not to stay as we are; we come to be changed, to become more like Jesus. There is a competing message that seeks to replace the Gospel, but it’s a superficial one, an innovation that denies sin by attempting to redefine it, and it robs people of the forgiveness that Jesus died to bring.”

Archbishop Drexel W. Gomez of the West Indies preached at the Kenyan consecration saying there is a “division of opinion between those of us who firmly believe that homosexual practice violates the order of life given by God, and those who seek, by various means, to justify what Scripture does not.” In his sermon, Gomez accused the Episcopal Church of “aggressive revisionist theology” and said the idea that homosexuality is permissible for Christians is “a lie.”

The moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada, retired Canadian Bishop Don Harvey, attended both consecration services and estimated that 75 percent of the Primates travelled on to the Ugandan service.

“I only know three who did not and all had personal reasons centring around other commitments and/or difficult travel arrangements,” said Harvey. “At the Kenyan service we were told that of the 52 million Anglicans who go to Church on an average Sunday 40 million were represented by their Primates or his official representative.”

Attending the Kenyan consecrations were Primates from: Central Africa (Bernard Malango), Kenya (Benjamin Nzimbi), Rwanda (Emmanuel Kolini), Uganda (Henry Orombi), West Africa (Justice Ofei Akrofi), the Indian Ocean (Ian Ernest), the Southern Cone of South America (Gregory Venables) and the West Indies (Drexel Gomez), as well as an archbishop representing the primate of Nigeria and bishops representing theologically conservative networks in the Anglican provinces of Canada (Don Harvey) and the United States (Bob Duncan).

It is not the first time that American Anglicans, unhappy with the Episcopal Church’s view on homosexuality and Scripture, have placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the Anglican Church in Africa.

History of overseas

consecrations of Americans

In Jan. 2000 Rwanda’s Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini and the (now retired) Archbishop of Southeast Asia, Moses Tay, were the first to establish a missionary branch in the United States. They jointly consecrated two former Episcopal priests as bishops--Chuck Murphy and John Rodgers--in Singapore, and formed the Anglican

Mission in the Americas, or AMiA. It now numbers 116 congregations in the US and Canada and has five bishops.

In Aug. 2006, the Archbishop of Nigeria consecrated Martyn Minns of Virginia to oversee some of the 34 parishes which are part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America or CANA. Only one-third of CANA is ethnically Nigerian.

Two other foreign archbishops--Drexel Gomez of the West Indies and Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone (the lower half of South America)—oversee small numbers of US congregations.

So in total, six current Primates of Anglican provinces in the Global South have taken under their protection 200 to 250 of the more than 7,000 congregations in the Episcopal Church (TEC).

Nor is the end in sight. Rwandan Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini has announced that he will consecrate three more American priests as bishops in January. (Click here for details).