Afro-Anglicans Gather in South Africa
Episcopal News Service. February 9, 1995 [95018]
Nan Cobbey, Editor of Episcopal Life.
(ENS) Members of the African diaspora of the Anglican Church gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, this January to compare concerns, share stories and shape a future in the worldwide church in which they are now the majority.
Like the first Afro-Anglican conference held in Barbados in 1985, the Second International Conference on Afro-Anglicanism was dominated by North Americans -- 168 of the 239 registered -- but the 10-day program offered opportunity for all voices to be heard. Participants came from 25 nations, both hemispheres and 10 of Africa's 12 provinces.
"We come today to forge our identity -- to name this child called Afro-Anglicanism," the Rev. Canon Harold T. Lewis of Connecticut told the audience at his opening address. "We come to affirm our integrity, our oneness, our unity, our common sense of purpose.... We come to assess our impact on the whole church."
Lewis, former officer for black ministries for the Episcopal Church and chief organizer of the conference, raised the theme of Afro-Anglican responsibility in influencing the agenda and mission of the church.
The Anglican Communion, which started as just the Church of England, has grown to such an extent, he said, "that the church in Nigeria... counts among its faithful more Anglicans than the Church of England, the Episcopal Church USA and the Church of Canada combined."
Participants recognized important challenges in those demographics. As Suffragan Bishop Alfred Reid of Montego Bay, Jamaica, said, "Having attained majority status in the communion, we have new responsibilities. We [must] come together from time to time to reflect on. . . the kind of leadership we should be offering to the communion."
For Reid, as for many others, the most moving part of the Jan. 18-25 conference was a visit to the "holy ground" of Robben Island where South African President Nelson Mandela spent 27 years as a prisoner. Yet it was also frustrating. "I had expected to actually see or walk in the cell...but that was not possible because it was still being used as a prison," he said.
Reid faulted conference planners for one thing: "Out of the 10 days, I thought that perhaps we would have had more dialogue with the new South Africa."
Nell Gibson, director of parish-based services at Episcopal Social Services in New York City, shared that disappointment. "We interacted with coloreds and whites for the most part and didn't see black South Africans who are 90 percent of the population."
Yet Gibson, too, found her visit inspiring. She was most moved by a simultaneous conference on African theology. There she experienced again "that tradition and belief in the ancestors are the things that are the basis for African spirituality." Buoyed by that spirituality, she came home committed to planning a return pilgrimage for African-American women.
Jonnie Cassel, the only black seminarian at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, went to South Africa with great expectations. "I wanted to take a look at why their congregations seem to be so much larger than ours. . . what they were doing to make the church appealing to people of color," she said.
She came home impressed. "It was the unity," she said. "We were talking to people from the four corners of the earth. There was a bonding there. Maybe it's because I'm the only black at the seminary, but the bonding was just great for me."
The Rev. Oge Beauvoir of Haiti offered the perspective from a country still struggling with reconciliation. "It was good for me to see how people in South Africa [are reacting to] reconciliation," he said. "Of course, in our reconciliation here we need something more. . . we also need justice."
Overnight visits to South African homes, held midway through the conference, offered a rare opportunity to make personal connections that will be continued, noted Emily Wilson, president of Episcopal Church Women in the Diocese of Connecticut. She also was struck, she said, by the sheer variety of persons attending the conference, which reminded her of the "rainbow" of Anglicanism often mentioned by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, primate of the Province of Southern Africa. "There were different tongues, different colors, different clothes," she said.
Several participants criticized the U.S. domination of the conference and were disappointed that no final statement to the church was written, though it had been on the agenda.
Given the wide gap between the issues raised by U.S. Anglicans and those important to Anglicans in Africa and some other parts of the world, having no final statement was "disappointing, but appropriate," observed Diane Porter, senior executive for Service, Education and Witness for the Episcopal Church. "The non-statement was the statement of the meeting," she said. "We're all Anglicans. We're all part of the diaspora. But we can't come to a common agreement as to what's important."
Calling the conference valuable for the connections it forged between the participants, Porter voiced one regret: "I wish we had let others know how the large numbers of Americans helped with the finances. I think that would have helped the others not feel so overwhelmed."
According to Lewis, a final report of the meeting is being prepared by a drafting committee and papers from the conference will be published in Anglican Theological Review.