Archbishop Akinola's Busy 2005

by John Worrell

Peter J. Akinola, Bishop of Abuja, Archbishop of All Nigeria, has been busy separating the sheep from the goats. At least he seems to be preparing to separate Nigeria and 'the Global South' from the rest of us Anglicans.

The Church in Nigeria has adopted a new constitution deleting the previous references to the See of Canterbury and substituting "a new provision of Communion with all Anglican Churches, Dioceses and Provinces that hold and maintain the Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacrament, and Discipline of the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church." [Akinola press conference]

Archbishop Akinola recently assailed the bishops of the Church of England for their response to Parliament's Civil Partnership Act. He implied that the bishops were equivocating on the matter of same sex unions and drifting toward the reprehensible actions of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada -- who, he says, have "invented a new religion." And the Church of England was warned that it might be ejected from the Anglican Communion (!).

In October, the Anglican Global South conference met in Egypt. The Archbishop of Canterbury was invited and spoke. Some days after the meeting a letter to the Archbishop appeared which attacked his integrity in an astonishing insult. Akinola's name led the signers. In a further affront, the letter was released to the press before Archbishop Williams had time to see it. At least two Primates have indicated that they were embarrassed by the document and had not in fact signed it.

During the Primates' meeting in February, Akinola refused to receive Holy Communion with Presiding Bishop Griswold and Archbishop Hutchison of Canada, and he has now quarreled with Archbishop Eames of Ireland, the chair of the Lambeth Commission which wrote the Windsor Report. In the US to deliver lectures at two seminaries, Eames, in a Q&A session at the Washington Cathedral, deplored the influence of money from conservative American groups in the recent conflicts in the Anglican Communion.

[Nevertheless has no hard evidence of the truth of the charge, but there is abundant anecdotal testimony -- from Eames, Hutchison, and Griswold among others -- at least as far back as the 1998 Lambeth Conference.]

Understandably, perhaps, Akinola took umbrage, charging that Eames had alleged quid pro quo deals. Eames countered that he didn't mean that anyone's vote had been bought. Of course, that is not the way these things are done anyway.

In November in Pittsburgh, Akinola announced the signing of a concordat with a small separated Episcopal group and the Reformed Episcopal Church -- one, a schism in the 1960s, and the other, in the 1870s -- as a part of activating CANA (Convocation of Anglicans in North America). An extension of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, CANA exists to gather alienated Episcopalians, Anglican Nigerians, and others in the US under Akinola's pastoral care. What role Bishop Duncan of Pittsburgh had in the meeting was not clear in our sources. He is Moderator of the one-foot-in-one-foot-out Anglican Communion Network. Whether they are expected to be gathered with the rest under the wing of the Primate of Nigeria is not yet revealed.

Earlier this year Bishop Mark Hollingsworth of Ohio visited the Church in Nigeria with a priest of his diocese who is Nigerian. Bishop Hollingsworth met with six of the Nigerian bishops, and four of them invited him to preach or to address their clergy. This gracious hospitality did not extend to the Archbishop, however, who would not receive him when he visited Abuja.

[COVENANT, Number 22, January 2006]

The Revd John Worrell is editor and publisher of Nevertheless, a Texas Church Review, and lives and writes in Spring, Texas.