Anglican Church of Southern Africa

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The Anglican Church of Southern Africa is the Anglican province in the southern part of Africa, including 23 dioceses in Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Saint Helena, South Africa and Swaziland. The primate is the Archbishop of Cape Town. The current archbishop is Thabo Makgoba. His predecessor was Njongonkulu Ndungane. Arguably the most recognisable primate was Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu.

The province has an Anglo-Catholic ethos and is regarded as the most liberal Anglican province in Africa, particularly on issues such as ordination of women and homosexuality.

1 Official name
2 History
3 Membership
4 Structure
- 4.1 Diocesan bishops
5 Worship and liturgy
6 Doctrine and practice
- 6.1 Social issues
- 6.2 Ecumenical relations
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links

[edit] Official name

Once known as the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, this name was dropped to avoid historic confusion as to its ambiguous name. The church changed its name to the Anglican Church of Southern Africa in 2006.

[edit] History

The first Anglican clergy to minister regularly at the Cape were military chaplains who accompanied the troops when the British occupied the Cape Colony in 1795 and then again in 1806. The second British occupation resulted in a growing influx of civil servants and settlers who were members of the Church of England, and so civil or colonial chaplains were appointed to minister to their needs. These were under the authority of the governor.

The first missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) arrived in 1821. He was the Revd William Wright. He opened a church and school in Wynberg, a fashionable suburb of Cape Town. Allen Gardiner, a missionary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) went to Zululand, and arranged for a priest, Francis Owen to be sent to the royal residence of King Dingane. Owen witnessed the massacre of Piet Retief, the Voortrekker leader, and his companions, who had come to negotiate a land treaty with Dingane, and left soon afterwards.

The Anglican Church in Southern Africa at this time was under the Bishop of Calcutta, whose diocese effectively included the East Indies and the entire Southern Hemisphere. Bishops en route for Calcutta sometimes stopped at the Cape for confirmations, and occasionally ordination of clergy, but these visits were sporadic. It became apparent that a bishop was needed for South Africa, and in 1847 Robert Gray was consecrated as the first bishop of Cape Town in Westminster Abbey. The new bishop landed in Cape Town in 1848.

Desmond Tutu (born 1931), former Primate of the Anglican Church of the Province of South Africa, noted pacifist and a leading figure in the successful fight against apartheid

A breakaway group, the Church of England in South Africa separated after 1870 and was constituted in 1938. It is a separate church body of conservative evangelical orientation and is not part of the Anglican Communion although it is strongly supported by and has close ties with the Anglican Diocese of Sydney.

Desmond Tutu rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid. Tutu was elected and ordained the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and primate of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, and the Magubela prize for liberty in 1986.

[edit] Membership

Today, there are at least 2.4 million Anglicans out of an estimated population of 45 million.

[edit] Structure

The polity of the Church of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa is Episcopalian church governance, which is the same as other Anglican churches. The church maintains a system of geographical parishes organized into dioceses. The Province is divided into 23 dioceses and each is led by its own bishop:

[edit] Diocesan bishops

The Most Revd Thabo Makgoba - Archbishop of Cape Town
The Right Revd Andre Soares - Bishop of Angola
The Right Revd Peter Lee - Bishop of Christ the King
The Right Revd Mervyn Castle - Bishop of False Bay
The Right Revd Patrick Glover - Bishop of the Free State
The Right Revd Donald Harker - Bishop of George
The Right Revd Thabo Makgoba - Bishop of Grahamstown
The Right Revd David Beetge - Bishop of Highveld
The Right Revd Brian Germond - Bishop of Johannesburg
The Right Revd Ossie Swartz - Bishop of Kimberley and Kuruman
The Right Revd Dinis Sengulane - Bishop of Lebombo
See is Vacant - Bishop of Lesotho
The Right Revd Molopi Diseko - Bishop of Matlosane
The Right Revd Leslie Walker - Bishop of Diocese of Mpumalanga
The Right Revd Nathaniel Nakwatumbah - Bishop of Namibia
The Right Revd Rubin Philip - Bishop of Natal
The Right Revd Mark van Koevering - Bishop of Niassa
The Right Revd Bethlehem Nopece - Bishop of Port Elizabeth
The Right Revd Jo Seoka - Bishop of Pretoria
The Right Revd Raphael Hess - Bishop of Saldanha Bay
The Right Revd John Salt - Bishop of St Helena
The Right Revd Sitembela Mzamane - Bishop of of St John's
The Right Revd Martin Breytenbach - Bishop of St Mark the Evanglelist
The Right Revd Meshack Mabuza - Bishop of Swaziland
The Right Revd Mlibo Ngewu - Bishop of Umzimvubu
The Right Revd Dino Gabriel - Bishop of Zululand

[edit] Worship and liturgy

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa embraces three orders of ministry: deacon, priest, and bishop. A local variant of the Book of Common Prayer is used. The Church is known for having Anglo-Catholic leanings.

[edit] Doctrine and practice

See also: Anglicanism and Anglican doctrine

The center of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa's teaching is the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The basic teachings of the church, or catechism, includes:

Jesus Christ is fully human and fully God. He died and was resurrected from the dead.
Jesus provides the way of eternal life for those who believe.
The Old and New Testaments of the Bible were written by people "under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit". The Apocrypha are additional books that are used in Christian worship, but not for the formation of doctrine.
The two great and necessary sacraments are Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist
Other sacramental rites are confirmation, ordination, marriage, reconciliation of a penitent, and unction.
Belief in heaven, hell, and Jesus's return in glory.

The threefold sources of authority in Anglicanism are scripture, tradition, and reason. These three sources uphold and critique each other in a dynamic way. This balance of scripture, tradition and reason is traced to the work of Richard Hooker, a sixteenth century apologist. In Hooker's model, scripture is the primary means of arriving at doctrine and things stated plainly in scripture are accepted as true. Issues that are ambiguous are determined by tradition, which is checked by reason.^[2]

[edit] Social issues

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa is regarded as the most liberal Anglican province in Africa, particularly on issues such as ordination of women and homosexuality. Gene Robinson's appointment as bishop of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America prompted warnings of a possible schism in the Anglican Communion. Retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated that he did not see what "all the fuss" was about, saying the election would not roil the Church of the Province of Southern Africa.

[edit] Ecumenical relations

Unlike many other Anglican churches, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa is not a member of the ecumenical World Council of Churches.^[3]

[edit] References

^ Formerly the Diocese of St John's
^ Anglican Listening Detail on how scripture, tradition, and reason work to "uphold and critique each other in a dynamic way".
^ http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=3587 World Council of Churches

[edit] Further reading

Elphick, Richard & Davenport, Rodney (eds). (1997). Christianity in South Africa: a political, social and cultural history. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20940-0
Hinchliff, Peter (1968). The church in South Africa. London: SPCK. ISBN 0-281-02277-1.
Neill, Stephen. Anglicanism. Harmondsworth, 1965.
Page, B.T. (1947). The harvest of good hope. London: SPCK.