The initial meeting between Bishop Mary Gray-Reeves of the Diocese of El Camino Real and Bishop Michael Perham of Gloucester, England, at the 2008 Lambeth Conference was an auspicious one. When a protester jumped up and called Bishop Gray-Reeves “a whore of the church,” Bishop Perham stepped in to help his new American acquaintance around the protesters and on to safety.
This frightening encounter brought together two parts of what has become a trio of bishops ”” the third is Bishop Gerard Mpango of the Western Tanganyika Diocese in Tanzania ”” who have linked up as companion dioceses. The combination of American, British and African dioceses is intentional. The three locations encompass three regions of discontent in the Anglican Communion. By meeting, talking and working together, the three bishops hope to show that people of different cultures, and these three cultures in particular, can maintain civil relations and look for answers to divisive issues.
“We want to hold together when the Communion is threatened,” Bishop Perham said.
Not sure what to make of this. +Gerard Mpango is a good guy, thoroughly orthodox and mission-driven, and very Christ-centered, as his sermon excerpts quoted here show. Jesus must naturally remain at the center of whatever social improvement projects dioceses across the AC might undertake in common, or there is a grave danger indeed that the Church will become merely another NGO, as he rightly said.
The trouble is that this has [b]already[/b] happened in TEC, and not least in the very liberal Diocese of El Casino Real. Oops, I mean El Camino Real.
And since that’s the case, it is strange that the good +Mpango doesn’t seem to sse that as a very formidable barrier to common action, much less common worship and intercommunion.
I think Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya are wiser. It’s too late to try to build bridges across the divide. It’s time to SHUN the heretics, ala Romans 16:17-18, and similar unpleasant texts.
David Handy+
[Comment deleted by Elf]
[Point taken – thankyou – Elf]
“a whore of the church,†…and that is not offensive???
Intercessor
Perhaps Mpango has enough faith in Jesus Christ that he thinks he can still do some good with the Heathens, and believes it’s not too late. When Jesus returns, then, perhaps, it will be. Good for him for being mission minded, even to those who think differently. Good for him for seeing the image of God in other people.
Here’s hoping this is just the first of many such diocesan partnerships that will model how mission and ministry can thrive when the differences that challenge us are not allowed to become divisions that distract us from our common call to proclaim the Good News of God in Christ Jesus.
RE: ” . . . it is strange that the good +Mpango doesn’t seem to sse that as a very formidable barrier to common action, much less common worship and intercommunion.”
Keep in mind, NRA, that Archbishop Akinola loved TEC and was friends with Griswold . . . until, you know . . . he found out what Griswold et al believed.
Remember — so many of the revisionist bishops lie about their beliefs. So I think we can be assured that Bishop Mpango will — eventually — discover what they believe.
And . . . that will be that.
When Archbishop Deng-Bul of Sudan visited the U.S., he was toured around by the Integrity lot who introduced their same-sex partners and homosexual clergy to him. He seem to quietly took this all in. But things didn’t turn out for the Integrity folks like they expected.
The diocese of El Camino Real has been in a free fall since 2002 (what happened again in 2003?). I don’t think it is a bad thing for the uber-liberals to be supporting African churches. They see that their crucified places (“Oh, the horror, the church didn’t recognize my same-sex marriages. How can I go on?”) is really Western spoiled-ness. The problem is that these funds don’t come without strings attached many times.