| NAIROBI — African Anglican archbishops have urged the worldwide Anglican Communion to give three months to the U.S. Episcopal (Anglican) Church to repent for authorizing the consecration of an openly gay priest as a bishop or face disciplinary action.
“It should be given a three-months period at maximum to retrace its steps and come back to the main fold of the Anglican world,” said Nigerian Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola at a press briefing in Nairobi on April 15 at the end of a two-day meeting of African archbishops in the Kenyan capital.
The statement follows the consecration in November of V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire in the U.S. Episcopal Church, a move that triggered controversy throughout the more than 75-million strong Anglican Communion.
At the time of Robinson’s appointment, the leaders of the world’s Anglican churches set up an investigative commission to report within 12 months.
The African Anglican leaders in Nairobi reaffirmed their rejection of homosexuality and said they wanted the commission to discipline the U.S. Episcopal Church.
Before Robinson’s appointment, Archbishop Akinola had threatened to sever links with dioceses that endorsed homosexual relations. In Nairobi, Akinola said most Anglican churches in Africa were refusing financial support from the U.S. church and were seeking to become self-reliant.
“For many years, we have developed this dependency syndrome, which must be broken,” he said. “We are encouraging ourselves and we beginning to realize that God has put enough in the continent for us to be reliant.”
In an interview with Ecumenical News International, Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of the Anglican Church of Kenya said the matter was complicated, since there were people in the U.S. Episcopal Church who were opposed to homosexuality and were still friends of the African churches.
“We are giving time to our brothers in America to sort themselves out,” Nzimbi said. “They are doing so by grouping Orthodox churches through a network of confessing dioceses and parishes.”
Anglican churches in Africa did not deny that there were homosexuals in their churches, Nzimbi noted, but he said they came to church so that they could change.
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