The Other Global South

A controversial resolution passed last week by the synod of the Anglican Diocese of Cape Town is “affirming a pastoral response to same-sex partnerships of faithful commitment”. The move drives a further wedge between the revisionist six-nation Anglican Province of Southern Africa and other African provinces, most of whom are firmly traditionalist.

Passage of the resolution is also a reminder that, while 22 of the 38 Anglican Communion provinces remain in impaired or broken communion with the Episcopal Church (TEC), other provinces have been on a liberalizing trajectory, in many cases aided and abetted by financial support from TEC.

In their bid to export what South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence labeled “the gospel of indiscriminate inclusivity,” revisionist forces in the Episcopal Church have allies they can call upon in the Anglican Communion, and not just the usual suspects in Canada, Scotland or New Zealand. When seeking validation for their actions, Episcopal leaders have called upon the churches of Mexico, Brazil, and frequently, Southern Africa. At about 2 million members, the province of Southern Africa is significantly larger than either Anglican population in Mexico (25,000) or Brazil (83,000) and is more equivalent to other mid-sized African provinces such as Rwanda (1.27 million) and Kenya (2.5 million).

None of these provinces has provoked the Anglican Communion as their American and Canadian counterparts have, with the election of openly partnered homosexual bishops. But in the Episcopal Church’s evangelistic fervor to spread heterodox teaching to the rest of the Anglican Communion, they are more than ready to play a supporting role.

Just like in the Episcopal Church, not everyone in these provinces is revisionist. Some bishops in Mexico and Southern Africa have either criticized TEC’s actions at General Convention, or expressed solidarity with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), the alternative province-in-formation recently launched by U.S. and Canadian traditionalists. Indeed, Brazil has experienced its own split, with the conservative northern diocese of Recife breaking away from that province and joining the neighboring Province of the Southern Cone.

But the majority of the provinces, and certainly their leadership, are onboard with the revisionist agenda. The Episcopal Church views them not merely as allies in holding off conservative detractors like the churches of Nigeria or Rwanda, but also as a beachhead for liberalizing other Global South provinces such as Tanzania and even Uganda.

As the commerce and publishing hub of sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Africa has a unique platform to influence neighboring provinces by providing revisionist resources. The church is also matched with a liberal state that was only the fifth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage. Much like African-American civil rights leaders that partnered with progressive groups in the 1960s, South Africa’s anti-apartheid leaders formed political coalitions with leftist groups; many were influenced by radical leftist theology as a result.

Archbishop Thabo Cecil Makgoba was elected in 2007 to lead the Anglican Province of Southern Africa. (Diocese of Cape Town)

The Diocese of Cape Town and its Archbishop, Thabo Cecil Makgoba, is an example. Makigoba’s diocese has a companion relationship with the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, where they find a kindred spirit in revisionist Bishop John Bryson Chane, one of the most outspoken revisionists in the American church.

The Southern Africa province is the oldest in Africa. According to the Anglican Communion website, British Anglicans met for worship in Cape Town after 1806, with the first Bishop appointed in 1847. That alone sets the province apart from the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. While churches like Nigeria and Kenya were primarily evangelized in the 1900s by evangelicals, Southern Africa was evangelized earlier by Anglo-catholic Christians.

The province’s 23 dioceses span South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Angola. While none of those other nations aside from South Africa permit same-sex marriage, the church is overwhelmingly dominated by its South African component. Last week’s news of the Cape Town resolution on “covenanted partnerships” between homosexual couples is seen as a major step down the trail blazed by TEC.

The diocesan synod also resolved to ask Archbishop Makgoba to appoint a working group to engage in a “process of dialogue and listening” on issues of human sexuality. This is in line with a controversial “listening process” which is being promoted by the Anglican Communion Office in London. To read more about the listening process, click here.

The resolution on pastoral guidelines was proposed by the Rev. Terry Lester, who said St. George’s Cathedral needed guidelines to help it provide pastoral care to gay and lesbian members in “faithful, committed” same-sex partnerships.

According to a statement released by the diocese, the original text of the resolution included language which some members of the synod said would lead to the blessings of same-sex unions and bring the diocese into conflict with the wider Anglican Communion. That language was dropped.

“I was very encouraged by the way in which the Synod was sensitive both to the pastoral needs of gay and lesbian couples and at the same time affirmed the stance of the wider Anglican Communion, not charging ahead and doing our own thing but rather committing ourselves to a process of listening and dialogue on how to move forward,” Makgoba said.

Elected Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan and Primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa in 2007, Makgoba was generally seen as less liberal that his predecessors, Njongonkulu Ndungane and Desmond Tutu. Ndungane himself has sparked controversy even in retirement, with a recent lawsuit brought by his wife seeking support. For his part, Tutu has continued to tour the world, often involving himself in Middle East disputes and speaking out in opposition to Israel. Compared to Tutu and Ndungane, Makgoba was expected to try to move the South African church closer to the other African Anglican provinces, but there were early signs of trouble.

In December of 2008, Makgoba drew criticism after saying Jesus is like a “bucketful of God”.

“We can learn an awful lot about God from looking at Jesus,” Makgoba said. “Of course, one person, in one place and one time, is not identical to the fullness of God, eternal, beyond all time and space.” Conservatives contended that Makgoba’s statement ran contrary to scripture:

Col. 1:15-20
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Col. 2:9
9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form

The young leader of the Southern African church has also followed Tutu in pursuing anti-Israel activities, accompanying him to the United States soon after his election and attending the annual conference of Friends of Sabeel North America. Sabeel is an ecumenical liberation theology group founded by Palestinian Christian Naim Ateek, and Anglican priest.

Orthodox Anglicans in Southern Africa have begun efforts to form a “Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans” (FCA) similar to the spiritual movement recently formed within the Church of England. The group will meet for an official launch at St. John’s Church in the orthodox Diocese of iBhayi/Port Elizabeth on September 3.