October (Web-only) 2004

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Bishops of the Anglican Communion in Africa will be meeting here tomorrow with the critical issues of homosexuality and ordination of women as priests.

As a prelude, the chairman of Africa's Anglican bishops conference and the Primate of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, the Most Rev. Peter Akinola, issued a response to "The Windsor Report 2004." In it they indict the global leadership of the Anglican Communion for doing nothing tangible to bring order following a one-year study of homosexuality and North American bishops' changing of traditional theology regarding sexuality. They also rebuke the church leadership in North America and Europe for bringing shame to the Anglican Communion, and in particular to Anglicans in Africa and other developing nations.

The Most Rev. Akinola's response to the Windsor Report, which was released by the Anglican Church in Nigeria on October 19, notes that the report has not provided the needed prescription to the crisis that has embroiled the global Anglican Communion.

"After an initial reading," Archbishop Akinola writes, "it is clear to me that the report falls far short of the prescription needed for this current crisis. It fails to confront the reality that a small, economically privileged group of people has sought to subvert the Christian faith and impose their new and false doctrine on the wider community of faithful believers."

He laments that "We have watched in sadness as sisters and brothers who have sought to maintain their allegiance to the 'faith once delivered to the saints' have been marginalized and persecuted for their faith. We have been filled with grief as we have witnessed the decline of the North American Church that was once filled with missionary zeal and yet now seems ...