Anglicans in Postcolonial Africa

Anglicans in Postcolonial Africa

The Kenyan Experience

by Kurt Bowen

(

not to be cited or copied without author’s permission)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter One | Introduction

North and South: Two very different trajectories

Colonialism

The Rise of Pentecostalism

Historical Evolution of the Anglican Communion

Controversy over homosexuality and the rise of GAFCON

A Comment on Methods

Chapter Two | Historical Background: Anglicanism, Colonialism and Kenya

Early Years on the Coast: 1844 – 1900

Colonial and Missionary Expansion into the Interior

Early Growth in Central and Western Kenya: 1900 - 1937

European Domination and Indigenous Reactions

Female Circumcision

Educational Policies and Tensions

East African Revival

Schisms

Missionary Retrenchment and an Indigenous Church

Nationalism, Mau Mau and the Church’s Response

Chapter Three | The Church and Politics After independence

The Kenyatta Years: 1963 – 1978

The Moi Era: 1978 - 2002

The Kibaki Years: 2003 – 2013

Chapter Four | Institutional Transformation

The Role of Mission Partners

Demographic Trends

Urban Areas and Slums or Informal Settlements

The Proliferation of Dioceses, Episcopal Elections and Tribalism

Financial Challenges

Episcopal Power: It all depends upon the Bishop.

Clergy: Training, Background and Gender

Chapter Five | Social Outreach

Schools, Christian Industrial Training Centres and Village Polytechnics

Hospitals and Clinics

Christian Community Services

Social Outreach in the Parishes

Three Successful Projects

Chapter Six | Parish Dynamics

Clergy, Laity and Parish Life

Mothers’ Union, Kenya Anglican Men’s Association, and the Youth

Lay Readers and Parish Church Councils

Women in Parish Life: A Marginal Majority

HIV/AIDS

East African Revival

Pentecostal Practices within the Anglican Church

Chapter Seven | African Cultural Traditions and the Anglican Church

Polygamy

Widow Inheritance

Dowry

Female and Male Circumcision

Exorcism

Chapter Eight | Conclusion

Bibliography

Copyright

Acknowledgements

All sustained research is only possible with the support, guidance and advice of those who are already intimately familiar with the subject, region and country under study. This generalization applies with particular force here because my wife and I arrived in Kenya in 2004 without any prior knowledge of Kenya, her people and above all, the Anglican Church of Kenya, which is the specific focus of this book. From the very beginning, we were graciously received by Archbishop Nzimbi who provided me with a generous letter of instruction that subsequently opened many doors. Without that support, this book would not have been possible. Esther Mombo at St. Paul’s also offered much wise advice.

Unfortunately, the rigid rules of the ethics committee at my university, Acadia, prevent me from mentioning the hundreds of Kenyan Anglicans I encountered in the course of the 319 interviews I conducted across Kenya in her villages, small towns and cities with local parish members, clergy and busy administrators in a host of Anglican institutions. In always friendly and sometimes exuberant meetings with both clergy and laity, my wife and I will never forget the warmth of their welcome, and their always open and perceptive observations about their church and Anglican way of life. All that is of value in what follows comes from these encounters. In the end, of course, I am responsible for how I have interpreted their stories.

One more time, I want to express my special thanks to my wife, Dale, who has accompanied me in the varied and always exciting challenges on all my many field trips. Always cheerful, perceptive and charming, Dale has been my life-long companion for which I am eternally grateful.

Chapter One

Introduction

The growth of African Christianity over the last century is one of the most striking developments in the religious trajectory of the twentieth century. In more recent years, the worldwide Anglican Communion – a founding and integral part of that growth - has subsequently found itself in serious disarray. The Communion’s identity, cohesiveness and very future have all been challenged as Kenyan Anglicans, the specific focus of this study - and their counterparts from the rest of the developing world -assert their place within the Anglican Communion, endeavouring to put their own stamp on what it means to be Anglican out of the colonial system in which they were initially recruited and subsequently grew. This book is driven by my attempt to understand African Christians through the prism of Kenyan Anglicans. My far from complete answer to that overarching objective is pursued in the chapters that follow.

Here, I want to sketch some of the background issues that have shaped the broader evolution of Anglicans in Africa, setting in context the ever changing circumstances in which Kenyan Anglicans have constantly had to define themselves. I take up five major issues. First, there is the continuing remarkable religious vitality across the African continent that stands in marked contrast to the stagnation and decline of Christianity in the West. Second, there is the ongoing challenge of colonialism, which brought about the Anglican presence in Africa and has subsequently tortured its self-identity and its relations to the world outside. Thirdly, there is the recent, omnipresent challenge of a global Pentecostal revolution that has called into question what it means to be an Anglican. Fourth, there is the evolution of the worldwide Anglican Communion, as it is has shifted from one of British dominance to a new era of African predominance. Finally, there is the corrosive debate over homosexuality within the Anglican Communion that has transformed African Anglican sensibilities on how they should relate to their mother church, to the Anglican Communion and to the West.

North and South: Two very different trajectories

Christianity is often viewed as a quintessentially Western and European creation, but that portrait is misleading and at best only temporarily accurate. Founded in the Middle East and subsequently spread around the Mediterranean, 500 years later only a third of Christians were Europeans; the remaining two-thirds majority resided in Asia and Africa. By about 1000 C.E, a majority (57%) but by no means all Christians were Europeans, although Europeans did achieve a 94% monopoly on Christianity by about 1500 C.E., as Christianity eventually spread through Northern and Eastern Europe.¹ About 300 years later, only about 1% of Protestants lived outside of Europe and the settler societies of North America, who rose to a modest 10% in 1900 and then accelerated to about two-thirds of all Protestants around 2000, thereby breaking the temporary European domination of the Protestant world.² In the future, as Europe’s population stabilises or declines and African birth rates remain high despite some decline, over one billion or a third of all Christians are expected to be Africans by 2050, which dwarfs the 10 million Christian Africans in 1900.³

An equally striking shift occurred among Anglicans, whose mother church (I mean no offence here to the much smaller number of Irish, Scottish and Welsh Anglicans) was the Church of England. In 1900 it has been estimated from figures provided by the World Christian Database that about 80% of all Anglicans resided in Britain. By 1970, 61% of all Anglicans were still reckoned to be British, who then fell to 33% of global Anglicans in 2005. That last figure overstates the British share of all Anglicans because the listed British membership of 26 million appears to be based on the claim by the Church of England that it had 26 million baptised members⁴ but an average Sunday attendance of approximately one million. When all developed countries (Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA) are combined, their share of global Anglicans fell from a striking 94% in 1900 to 81% in 1970 and then to 43% in 2005, although the most recent number is again inflated by so many nominal Anglicans. Thus the percentage of Global South Anglicans from underdeveloped countries rose from 6% in 1900 to 19% in 1970 and 57% in 2005. Today, 55% and probably more of all Anglicans are Africans, rising from 17% in 1970 and a miniscule 1% in 1900. The one qualifier here is that some and possibly many of the national African figures are also probably inflated, as I will demonstrate in Chapter Four in Kenya’s case. Nevertheless, the overall trend is clear. There has been a decisive demographic shift in the twentieth century by the Anglican Communion to the Global South and to Africa in particular.⁵

The vitality of African Christianity is evident in far more than its explosive growth. The Pew Forum conducted a survey of 25,000 Africans with face-to-face interviews in 19 sub-Saharan African countries in 2008 and 2009. That massive survey found that about 90% of Africans said religion was very important in their lives. Their strikingly high response stands in contrast to the 57% of Americans who made the same claim and to the much lower 29% of Canadians, 21% of Australians and 19% of the British. Overall, 81% of Christian Africans said they attended religious services at least weekly which ranged from a high of 88% for Nigerian Christians to a low of 61% of South African Christians. In a similar vein, 72% of African Christians claimed they prayed at least once a day and 69% said they fasted during Lent. By these survey standards, sub-Saharan Africa is clearly among the most religious places in the world.⁶

To bring out more clearly the distinctive character of African Christianity, I want to sketch very briefly the decline of Anglicanism in England, Canada and the United States. In England, only about a third or less now define themselves as Anglicans or members of the Church of England who are mainly in their sixties or older. Among young people in their twenties a much reduced 10% say they are Anglicans. The Anglican claim to be the Church of England is clearly out of date. Church attendance by Anglicans has been falling for a century with the decline accelerating after 1970. Today, 83% of professed Anglicans say they do not attend church services except for an occasional funeral; only about 10% do so weekly. Even if all the nominal adherents are included in the calculus, Anglicans are now outnumbered by the 38% saying they have no religion rising to 47% of twenty year olds, which is a trend that comes at the expense of the Church of England above all.⁷ Similar trends are evident in Canada where weekly attendance nationally has fallen from over 60% in the 1940s to about 19% in 2000. According to statistics gathered by the Anglican Church of Canada, their membership declined by 28% between 1971 and 1996 at a time when the total Canadian population grew by 38%. In the slightly shorter time frame between 1985 and 2000, the number of very committed or active Anglicans fell by 35%, which is a substantial contraction by any standard. As Anglicans, like all mainline Protestants, are older than other Canadians, these trends are likely to continue.⁸ Finally, in the United States, where religious involvement is thought to be more prevalent than in other affluent Western countries, surveys for many years have found that around 40% of Americans claim they attend church weekly, although actual head counts of those attending church in a given week indicate a much smaller 20% do so.⁹ In the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA), statistics gathered by ECUSA indicate its membership declined by a hefty 43% from 1959 when its members peaked at 3.4 million and then fell to 1.95 million in 2010. In the more recent time frame of 2006 to 2010, when the controversy over homosexuality I take up later was playing itself out, ECUSA lost more than 200,000 members and 300 parishes. Overall, the Sunday attendance of 657,831 in 2010 had declined by 23% since 2000, which suggests a weekly church attendance rate of 33% for the shrunken body of Episcopalians.¹⁰ ECUSA is not likely to disappear any time soon, but the Anglican trends in all these three Western counties certainly stand in stark contrast to the growth and vitality of African Anglicans.

Colonialism

I will be very brief here because I take up the impact of and struggle with colonialism in Kenya in the next chapter. It is, however, worth noting two general matters. First, the five African countries, together accounting for 86% of all African Anglicans, were all once British colonies.¹¹ Inevitably, Anglican missionaries with their close links with the established Church of England had closer relations with their respective colonial governments than did other Christian missionaries. Missionaries from all denominations also played a key role in propagating both their brand of Christianity and the wider imperialist endeavour to control and transform the African colonies politically, economically and culturally. However, and this is the second point, the end of the colonial era and the movements to establish indigenously controlled, independent African states did not in any way involve the rejecting of the Christian churches in Africa. Baring the special circumstances of South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, political independence in the former British colonies was achieved in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Rather than weakening, Christianity flourished. Between 1970 and 2000, the number of African Christians grew from 144 million to 360 million or by 153%. That growth was partially caused by Africa’s high birth rates, but it also stemmed from the continuing expansion of Christianity as the number of adherents to traditional African religions fell from 19% to 12% of all Africans.¹² In Kenya’s case, the decline was even steeper. If imperialist might and foreign cultural subjugation were the main reasons Christianity flourished, that post-independence growth would surely not have occurred.

The Rise of Pentecostalism

Pentecostal practices can be traced back to the Book of Acts in the New Testament, but Pentecostalism is a much newer movement that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century in Kansas and California, where it had its greatest appeal among the poor, uneducated and marginal.¹³ This is what came to be known as classical Pentecostalism. Although missionaries from Azusa Street in California arrived in West Africa in 2007 and then South Africa two years later, the many case studies of individual churches indicate that much of African Pentecostalism began in Africa without outside influence. In South Africa, the Assemblies of God, with its international headquarters in the United States, has always been led by Africans who were largely responsible for its subsequent growth.¹⁴ Broadly speaking, the Gifts of the Holy Spirit were and are the hallmarks of Pentecostalism. These gifts are believed by Pentecostals to have been provided by God at the Feast of Pentecost just after Christ’s death to enable them to sustain an intimate and empowering relationship with God. In services and their private devotions, Pentecostals seek a highly charged, ecstatic set of practices that include speaking in tongues, healing, prophecy, discernment and the performing of miracles.¹⁵

Not long after the arrival of the missionaries in Africa, there emerged a variety and an ever increasing number of African Independent or Initiated Churches (AICs) that arose spontaneously or broke away from missionary domination as they sought to create an autonomous and indigenous Christianity more compatible with their African traditions. A great number of the AICs, particularly the Spirit AICs, embraced the Pentecostal practices of healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues, although they did not see themselves as Pentecostals and had few connections with classical Pentecostalism. Many of these AICs were led by dissident Anglicans in both West and East Africa. Particularly instructive is the early experience of the Pentecostalised Roho (‘Spirit’) movement that emerged among Anglican youth in western Kenya in 1912, just seven years after the arrival of the missionaries. It was led by Mango, a recently ordained Anglican deacon who was baptised in the Holy Spirit in 1916, inspiring him to prophesize the end of colonialism and call for the restoration of misappropriated Luo land. Mango and his nephew, who also played a leadership role, were condemned by the missionaries and forbidden to attend Anglican services. Not long after, several Roho were murdered by a mob and Mango’s home was set on fire.¹⁶ Nonetheless, Roho survived and grew, although it was plagued by many schisms. In the next chapter I recount a few more schisms out of Kenyan Anglicanism in the missionary era that so weakened its long term growth.

After 1970 there emerged a third wave of Neo-Pentecostals and Charismatics who have grown more rapidly than any other branch of African Christianity.¹⁷ Although the available statistics are not always reliable, there is good reason to believe that Pentecostals altogether now represent at least one quarter of all Christians worldwide, which is a striking achievement for a movement that was founded little more than a century ago.¹⁸ In Africa, this third wave was often initiated by university and student revival groups stressing tongues, faith-healing, miracles and evangelism.¹⁹ In Nigeria and elsewhere as well, the largest percentage of the student revivalists came from Anglican backgrounds; some later founded their own churches that are now among Nigeria’s largest.²⁰ In Kenya, where there has been an explosion of new churches, which Gifford, whose account of the them is most detailed, puts under the broad label ‘Pentecostal,’ noting that a surprising number of the members of the new middle class megachurches were former members of mainline churches and predominantly Anglican.²¹ The founder of the Redeemed Gospel Church, with a mother church seating 15,000 in 2004 and another 1,000 churches across Kenya, was raised as an Anglican; his mother was a member of the East African Revival that is discussed in chapters two and six.²² Another two of the largest Charismatic churches in Kenya were also founded by former members of mainline churches who had all been born again members of the Young Ambassadors Christian Fellowship in the early 1970s.²³

Two additional features of this Pentecostal/Charismatic wave deserve attention. First, many of these churches teach and emphasise the gospel of prosperity that salvation leads to material success when members tithe and are fully committed. With very few exception, their Christianity is about success, status, victory, achievement. As Bishop Wanjiru, the head of a megachurch with a largely poor membership, bluntly put it, Christ shed his blood from his hands and feet so that we may be rich. ²⁴ These views are surprisingly widespread across Africa. According to a recent survey of 16 African countries, 56% of African Christians said they believed God will grant wealth and health to all believers who have enough faith.²⁵ Secondly, this third wave has long had links with American Pentecostals and Evangelicals. Unlike the AICs, the new Pentecostals often look to the west and western Pentecostalism.²⁶ The new Pentecostals also differ from the Anglican Church of Kenya where links with foreign missionary bodies, as we shall see on Chapter Four, have largely disappeared. In addition to the importation of the American prosperity gospel, star American evangelists have long been involved in Pentecostal crusades; some churches receive American funding; much of the ‘how to succeed’ literature in Kenyan churches comes from America; and American programmes are part of Kenyan Christian television, although there are also many Kenyan televangelists.²⁷ The two key qualifiers here are that the new Pentecostal churches are all founded and run by Kenyans, and many Pentecostal practices are consistent with an African worldview or understanding of evil forces…witchcraft, misfortune, illness and possession."²⁸

Pentecostalism is also penetrating mainline churches across Africa. Among African Christians not in Pentecostal churches, a third have witnessed or experienced a divine healing, many have seen the devil or an evil spirit being driven out of a person, and in ‘most counties," 20% or more have prayed in tongues several times a year.²⁹ In 2006, a national survey found that 33% of Kenyans said they belonged to a Pentecostal church and another 23% said they were Charismatics who together amounted to 56% of all Christians and 73% of all Protestants.³⁰ This is a huge transformation.

Pentecostalism’s inroads into African Anglicanism are demonstrated by three recent case studies that deserve brief summaries. First, in Uganda, where Anglicans are said to number ten million or 23% of the total population,³¹ a Pentecostal style of worship has been introduced to lure back straying members. Designed to attract the youth, who have been influenced by Pentecostal television programmes, Anglican services have recently incorporated spontaneous prayer, much lay leadership, dancing and clapping, and contemporary praise music. Older Anglicans, who preferred the traditional and far more sedate Prayer Book, were said to feel alienated by the new styles and belittled by advocates of the new ways.³² A similar pattern emerged in a Congolese Anglican parish in 1992, when the youth embraced Pentecostal ways and shared their experiences at the main Sunday service where there was much crying, shouting, free falling and praising. Faced with much opposition from the elders who ran the church, the bishop negotiated a compromise whereby charismatic healing and deliverance from evil spirits were banned at the main service, but allowed in certain groups. By 2000, other aspects of Pentecostal worship including miming and dancing were incorporated into the main service, and there was much less reliance on the Prayer Book and old hymnbook.³³ Lastly in Nigeria, where the reputed Anglican membership of 18 million was reckoned to account for 42% of all African Anglicans,³⁴ the young clergy were open to Pentecostal ways twenty years ago, but only a handful of bishops allowed that. Older Anglicans regarded speaking in tongues as the unfortunate babbling of demented individuals. When the young charismatics were banned and expelled, the demand for Pentecostal ways could not be held back because it risked a further exodus of Anglicans. Today, practically all of the bishops accept Pentecostal practices. One bishop now described his church as Anglocostal and claimed the prosperity gospel was a virus taking over the church, which prompted Zink, the author of this article to conclude that there has emerged a profound reshaping of Anglicanism in Nigeria that may have contributed to the emerging tensions in the Anglican Communion described below.³⁵

Historical Evolution of the Anglican Communion

After 1570, as Britain began its lengthy process of worldwide expansion through exploration, trade and conquest, Anglican clergy from the Church of England and later a variety of missionary societies were an integral part of that emerging British Empire. By the 1850s, the notion of an Anglican Communion began to emerge to refer to the overseas Anglican communities that were then primarily centered on the British settler colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the West Indies, as well as the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECUSA) after America’s independence. In 1867, the first Lambeth Conference was convened by the Archbishop of Canterbury to bring together Anglican bishops from around the globe who were subsequently to meet every ten years.³⁶ Longley, the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1867 resisted all calls to establish a highly regimented hierarchical or centralised body. Thereafter the Lambeth Conferences have emphasised their advisory or fraternal functions rather than their role as a doctrinal or legislative body.³⁷ Thus the Provinces, or regional groupings of Anglican dioceses, have always been autonomous with their own separate constitutions that no other province or the Archbishop of Canterbury can dictate to in any way.

As Anglicanism spread rapidly over the last century in Africa and more generally in the Global South, the number of Anglican Provinces grew dramatically, particularly after 1950 when political independence swept through Africa. In 2014, there were 38 Provinces, with another four united churches that are commonly thought of as Provinces, as well as another six extra-provincial dioceses.³⁸ Faced with these changing conditions and the collapse of the British Empire, there has been an attempt to move away from paternalism towards a new interdependence of equal sister churches.³⁹ In addition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the titular head of the Anglican Communion, and the Lambeth Conferences, two new organizational structures were introduced to strengthen the bonds within the Communion. First, in 1968, a resolution was passed at the Lambeth Conference to create the Anglican Consultative Council composed of one to three clergy and lay members from each of the Provinces that was to meet every two to three years in various locations around the world,⁴⁰ unlike the Lambeth Conferences that have always convened in England. Ten years later the Primates’ Meeting with 38 members was convened on a regular basis to discuss pressing issues.⁴¹

As the aforementioned growth of African Anglicans accelerated, the composition of the Lambeth Conferences changed. At Lambeth 1948, only about a dozen of more than 300 bishops were non-whites. Then between 1958 and 1978, the number of African bishops who were black grew from 3 to 80, while their proportion grew from 16% to 25%.⁴² By 1998, 52% of the active bishops, 62% of the dioceses and 57% of the congregations were Anglicans from the developing world or the Global South. Today, there is every reason to believe that the predominance of the Global South within Anglicanism around the world is greater. The major qualifier here is that 60% of funding of the centralised Anglican agencies came from ECUSA and the Church of England in the late 1990s; that figure rises to 72% if Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and Wales are included.⁴³ In this context, it is perhaps not surprising that Global South Anglicans have come to believe that liberal Anglican churches in the North have dominated the affairs of Anglicanism at the international level, which Global South leaders increasingly resented.⁴⁴ The Ugandan Anglican Primate in 2007 bluntly declared that this state of affairs will no longer be tolerated. The younger churches of Anglican Christianity will shape what it means to be Anglican. The long season of British hegemony is over. ⁴⁵

Controversy over homosexuality and the rise of GAFCON

In the buildup to Lambeth 1998, three regional conferences were held at Kuala Lampur, Dallas and Kampala where the majority of the participants were Global South bishops with extensive financial backing from conservative American Episcopalians. At their study sessions, they discussed and learned how they might better handle the Lambeth process of debating and passing resolutions. Substantively, they focused on international debt and, most decisively, on the ordination of homosexuals and the blessing of same sex unions, which called into question the authority of Holy Scripture that was totally unacceptable to us.⁴⁶

At Lambeth 1998 there was a new mood where, as one observer put it, the USA and England no longer speak for the Anglican Communion.⁴⁷ The central debate that dominated the conference dealt with Resolution 1.10 on human sexuality and homosexuality in particular. Bishops from Uganda and Nigeria angrily demanded that bishops who are pushing for equal rights for homosexuals either repent or leave the Anglican Communion.⁴⁸ At the other end of the spectrum, American Bishop Sponge castigated Africans for having only recently moved from animism to a very superstitious kind of Christianity, adding I am not going to cease to be a twentieth century person.⁴⁹ The already very traditional tenor of Resolution 1.10 was then strengthened by an amendment from Tanzania condemning homosexual activity as contrary to Scripture, that was passed by a comfortable margin of 389 to 190. The main motion was approved with 526 votes in favour, 70 opposed and 45 abstentions. That motion stipulated that acceptable sexual activity should be confined to marriage between a man and a woman in lifelong union. It also explicitly refused to condone the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions and the ordaining of those involved in same gender unions. While insisting homosexual practice was incompatible with Scripture, it called on our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and condemned the irrational fear of homosexuals.⁵⁰ This last bow to gay rights must, I think, be set against the much more blanket condemnation of homosexuality by the African clergy I noted above. After the motion was passed, the Canadian Primate, Peers, felt that the 1995 Canadian General Synod resolution obviously contains a considerably stronger affirmation of gay and lesbian Christians than the Lambeth text," which prompted him to sign a letter of apology to gays that was signed by another 145 bishops.⁵¹

American Episcopalian attitudes towards gays have been slowly changing since 1977 when the Bishop of New York ordained a woman who was openly gay. In 1997, ECUSA’s ecclesiastical court ruled that there is no Core Doctrine prohibiting the ordination of a non-celibate homosexual person living in a faithful and committed relationship.⁵² Two years later, Griswald, who as Bishop of Chicago had previously ordained openly homosexual candidates to the priesthood, was elected by his church’s General Convention to serve as the Presiding Bishop or head of ECUSA.⁵³ However, two events in 2003 really triggered the unremitting uproar on the part of Global South Anglicans over homosexuality since 2003. First, despite the prohibition on church blessings of same sex unions by Lambeth 1998 and the 1997 decision of the Canadian House of Bishop by a two to one margin not to allow same sex blessings, Bishop Ingham in the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster agreed to authorize same sex blessings, after his diocesan synod had voted on three successive occasions in favour of doing so.⁵⁴ Secondly, in the same year, Gene Robison an openly gay Episcopalian priest living with his partner was elected Coadjutor Bishop by the Diocese of New Hampshire, which was subsequently confirmed by a majority of the bishops, clergy and lay delegates at ECUSA’s General Convention or national governing body. Unlike New Westminster, the decision by the General Convention implicated ECUSA’s national leadership in Robinson’s appointment as bishop.⁵⁵ In response, the Archbishop of Canterbury called a meeting of the Primates where they expressed their profound pain and uncertainty over the decisions made by New Westminster and ECUSA, saying these decisions jeopardise our sacramental fellowship with each other and could be perceived to alter unilaterally the teaching of the Anglican Communion on this issue, despite the long standing tradition of provincial autonomy.⁵⁶ A short four months later, ten of the 38 Anglican provinces had declared themselves to be in a state of impaired communion with ECUSA,⁵⁷ which is now known as The Episcopal Church, or TEC.

The Archbishop of Canterbury quickly established the Lambeth Commission on Communion which published its recommendations in 2004, known as the Windsor Report. It called for moratoriums on bishops living in a same gender union, public rites blessing same sex unions, and interventions across provincial boundaries over these matters. The Windsor Report also called for statements of regret on the part of all who had been involved in these matters and it recommended that an Anglican Covenant be created that would make explicit and forceful the loyalty and bonds of affection…between the churches of the Communion.⁵⁸ Griswald, TEC’s presiding bishop, expressed regret for the pain caused by Robinson’s consecration, but he remained defiant that Robinson’s consecration was not wrong, while a number of American bishops indicated they would continue to allow same sex blessings.⁵⁹ In a similar vein, Bishop Ingham said his diocese does regret the consequences of our actions, but not the actions themselves.⁶⁰ At TEC’s General Convention in 2006, it did decide to exercise restraint by not consecrating gay bishops and it refused to authorize rites for the blessing of same sex unions at this time, although it also apologised to those gay and lesbian Episcopalians and their supporters hurt by these decisions. ⁶¹ At the first meeting of African Primates in 2004, to celebrate the coming of age of the Church in Africa, the primates demanded the two North American churches take seriously the need for repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation enjoined on us by Christ.⁶² However, neither of these two churches has ever been prepared to so decisively repudiate their stand on homosexuality.

In fact, ECUSA’s 2009 General Convention ended its 2006 moratorium on consecrating people in same sex relationships, when large majorities of its bishops, clergy and lay deputies resolved that God has called and may call gays and lesbians to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church. The House of Bishops by a three to one margin also called for a generous pastoral response in considering same sex blessings."⁶³ Not long after, Canon Mary Glasspool, an openly gay woman was elected and later consecrated as an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles.⁶⁴ In 2012, the General Convention then authorised a rite for same sex blessings with strong majorities among its bishops, clergy and laity.⁶⁵ Most recently, in 2015 TEC’s General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to allow gay marriages.⁶⁶ In the Anglican Church of Canada, about a third of Canadian dioceses had authorised same sex blessings by 2012.⁶⁷ The next year, its General Synod passed a resolution that will bring a motion to allow same sex marriages at its next meeting in 2016.⁶⁸ As for the Church of England, the 2013 Pilling Report under the auspices of the House of Bishops was welcomed by the