Nigerian Anglican Leader Committed to Protecting Conservative Flock

Nigerian Anglican leader Archbishop Peter J Akinola has told the head of the Anglican Communion that the worldwide body is deeply divided and that despite many efforts to keep the body from splitting, the division has only deepened.

|PIC1|"As leaders of the [Anglican] Communion, we have all spent enormous amounts of time, travelled huge distances, sometimes at great risk, and expended much needed financial resources in endless meetings, communiqués and reports," wrote Archbishop Akinola in a letter addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

"We have developed numerous proposals, established various task forces and yet the division has only deepened," he added.

The letter, published on 6 May, was written after Dr Williams asked Archbishop Akinola to cancel plans to install a local minister in northern Virginia as head of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America - a conservative splinter group and missionary arm of the Church of Nigeria.

Although the letter was publicised just days before the installation of the Rt Rev Martyn Minns as missionary bishop of CANA last Saturday, Archbishop Akinola said that he did not receive it until after the ceremony.

Still, the Nigerian Anglican leader - who was recently featured as one of Time magazine's top 100 Most Influential People in the World - said he wanted to respond and clarify the situation with regard to CANA.

CANA was established as "a way for Nigerian congregations and other alienated Anglicans in North America to stay in the Communion," he wrote.

It does not bring any advantage to the Church of Nigeria financially or politically, the conservative leader added, but he said, "We believe that we have no other choice if we are to remain faithful to the gospel mandate."

At the heart of the crisis in the Anglican Communion are the "decisions, actions, defiance and continuing intransigence of the Episcopal Church," Archbishop Akinola pointed out. Controversy within the Communion heightened when the Episcopal Church consecrated an openly gay bishop in 2003. Conservative Anglicans leaving the US church body said the Episcopal Church's departure from Christian orthodoxy was the reason for their split.

Archbishop Akinola told CANA members on Saturday during the ceremony that the conservative group was there to provide a "spiritual home" for God's people. Bishop Minns said CANA was for those who want to remain "faithful members of the Anglican Communion" but cannot do so in "good conscience" in the Episcopal Church.

A February communiqué drafted by the Primates said that such interventions as the Church of Nigeria's missionary initiative in the US were exacerbating the fragile situation in the Anglican Communion. But the communiqué also recognised that those Primates who have intervened do not feel it is right to end those interventions until it becomes clear that sufficient provision has been made for the life of those persons and until there is change in the Episcopal Church.

Archbishop Akinola assured Dr Williams that CANA was established "for the Communion" and that they have no desire to cling to it.

"We are more than happy to surrender it [CANA] to the Communion once the conditions that prompted our division have been overturned," he wrote. He initially made that pledge in February during the Primates' meeting and made it again to CANA members on Saturday.

While the Church of Nigeria tried delaying the election of their first CANA bishop and the election of additional suffragan bishops for the conservative US group, Archbishop Akinola said the Episcopal Church has not embraced the Primates' recommendations that the US Anglican arm not authorise same-sex blessings and confirm another openly gay bishop.

"They are determined to pursue their own unbiblical agenda and exacerbate our current divisions," Archbishop Akinola stated.

The Episcopal House of Bishops recently passed resolutions affirming gays and lesbians as "full and equal participants" in the church and rejecting the Primates' plan for leaders outside the US Anglican body to oversee the conservative dioceses in the US that disagree with the Episcopal Church.

Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori also recently told The Boston Globe that the Episcopal Church was not likely to move "backward" on its 2003 decision to elect Bishop Gene Robinson, a gay man living in a same-sex relationship. She called the 2003 consecration "a great blessing".

"It is imperative that we continue to protect those at most risk while we seek a way forward that will offer hope for the future of our beleaguered Communion," wrote Archbishop Akinola. "It is to this vision that we in the Church of Nigeria and CANA remain committed."