Amidst allegations that Anglicans worldwide do not recognize the Diocese of South Carolina and its Bishop, Anglican Bishops from East Africa strongly announced their support for the Diocese’s dissociation from The Episcopal Church Tuesday during comments at the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul in Charleston. ”¨
The Bishops from Sudan, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania proclaimed unqualified endorsement of Bishop Mark Lawrence and the Diocese. Their comments seemed to dispute the claims of Bishop Charles vonRosenberg, the newly elected Bishop of the recently formed Diocese – The Episcopal Church in South Carolina. In January, vonRosenberg announced that the Anglican Communion has not acknowledged Lawrence’s Diocese, even though it represents the vast majority of local Anglicans. However the four Bishops, all members of the Anglican Communion in good standing, specifically recognized the Diocese during the gathering.”¨
The four were guests of the Diocese following their participation in the New Wineskins Conference in Ridgecrest, North Carolina, the largest Anglican missions conference in the world.
Our rector was the house parent when +Abraham, S. Sudan,and +Elias, Tanzania, along with Ferdinand+, Kenya were at Trinity School for ministry…and our parish has supported their ministries.
We are fortunate in that each of the two bishops will be visiting our town and congregations this spring. Having spoken with the two Bishops, their words of support for DioSC and +Mark ring completely true. They simply shake their heads in amazement at ECUSA.
The Diocese truly has been blessed by the support it has received from Anglicans worldwide. And across the theological spectrum from Reformed to Anglo Catholic.
If the Communion is to survive in any meaningful sense, all Anglicans in the western/northern world need to pray that the wisdom of the bishops of the Global South is heard, even in the halls of the Anglican Communion Office and Lambeth Palace.
I note at the end of the article that its not only these four bishops. +Clarke of Ireland and ++Anis of the Middle East are also in South Carolina encouraging the faithful. So much for “Anglicans worldwide” not recognising Dio SC!
+Martin of Marsabit Diocese should have some fascinating insights to share. The diocese is in the far north of Kenya along the border with Ethiopia, yet they have apparently seen remarkable growth over the past few years.
This incident is so telling. It speaks volumes about the deep cleavage between the whole mindset dominant in TEC these days and the mindset of the Global South. The leaders of TEC live in a mental world that bears increasingly little resemblance to the mental world of the vast majority of Anglicans around the world. They are simply out of touch with reality.
There are a lot of adjectives that might be attached to the mindset displayed by +von Rosenberg, and they aren’t flattering. Words like “wishful thinking,” “institutiionalist,” “colonialist,” and so on spring to mind. But in the end, the main descriptors that stick out to me are [i]desperate[/i], and above all, [b]delusional[/b]. In the final analysis, who counts as Anglican will be decided not by the northern elitist bureaucrats in the ACO in London, or by the thoroughly corrupted and unrepresentative “Instrument of (Dis)Unity” that is the ACC these days. No, who is recognized as truly Anglican will be whomever the vast majority of the world’s Anglicans treat as Anglican. The attitude taken toward +Lawrence and his faithful dicoese by the Global South matters far more than whoever is the Archbishop of Canterbury, or whomever he invites to Lambeth, etc. That’s the bottom line.
David Handy+