Posted on 08/01/2005 4:47:37 PM PDT by sionnsar
About all you need to know about the recent International Conference on Afro-Anglicanism in Toronto is that Frank Griswold was there while Peter Akinola, Henry Orombi and Bernard Malango were nowhere to be found. The Primate of South Africa showed up to play his traditional role of pet African for western Anglican liberals:
In his sermon, Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, Primate of South Africa, said, "I have been pondering what it means to be an Afro-Anglican...because identity is a fundamental marker of our selves. People taken from their homes have a unique journey to find an authentic past to call one’s own. My message to the conference is to hold on to each other."
Frank said some stuff.
"Communion is God’s own life embodied in a community of faith," said Griswold. "At this time, we have gone beyond Anglican civility to a new place of really wrestling with differences in a much more substantial way. This is the only way in which we can actually discover what God is up to in one another’s realities.
"God’s fullness, God’s imagination is always unfolding, and the invitation that God holds out to us in the mystery of communion is to discover more fully the person of Christ in one another."
Mike Battle commented on what bigots how backward Anglican conservatives are.
In another panel entitled "The State of the Anglican Communion, in a post Windsor Report World," the Rev. Dr. Michael Battle, part of the writing team for the Episcopal Church’s response to the Windsor Report and its representative to ACC-13, said that "To Set Our Hope on Christ" was not "trying to be academic in a sense, or representing all the various sides in a cultural war. It was basically trying to be descriptive theologically, and did give an explanation of the theological and biblical reasoning, focusing on the transitions that are often difficult for holy communities trying to understand God’s Spirit that often moves in profound ways that take us a while to get caught up to.
The African Bishops Who Shall Not Be Named were insulted, demeaned and villified in the usual manner.
Also part of the panel was Dr. Esther Mombo, academic dean of St. Paul’s United Theological College and one of the authors of the Windsor Report. "Dr. Mombo is really a voice crying in the wilderness," Battle said. "She gave insights into how Anglicans, especially in the Global South, do not need to be participating in cultural wars that only demean the African community, and how it is so easy to criticize the other and allow problems in our own back yard to be exacerbated. She pointed to issues in Africa that really need to be addressed and ministered to, instead of these other issues which are being dangled before them for monetary gain."
And a self-important time was had by all.
"The feeling of unity, not uniformity, make me hopeful because I was afraid that our differences with respect to different issues would be greater than our unity of purpose, said the Rev. Jayne Oasin, social justice officer at the Episcopal Church Center. “But I left feeling that we had an increased ability to face some of the tougher societal issues such as poverty and famine—that they could be addressed even as we continued to debate and discuss some of our tougher differences,"
She said that meeting two women from the Church of England who are also involved in anti-racism work has resulted in a new collaboration.” This was perfect for me because anytime you do anti-racism and anti-oppression work, it’s very easy to feel that you’re the only one in the world doing this work because the nature of oppression is that it’s isolating," she explained. "So when you find people in very different parts of the world who are facing and successfully tackling similar work it makes you feel you have allies in the fight against oppression."
In other words, the International Conference on Afro-Anglicanism was nothing out of the ordinary.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. More self-delusion about Biblical law and how to "bend" it.
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