The greatness of this man of God is easily gleaned from this fact that it has taken at least three great men to step into his shoes. The Most Rev’d Gregory Venables, Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone was elected to replace him as Chairman of the Primates Council of GAFCON on April 5. He handed the mantle of leadership of Global South Anglican (GSA) on April 15 to the Most Rev’d John Chew Archbishop of the Diocese of Singapore which hosted their recent meeting. Add to that Primate Okoh in Nigeria and you’ll agree, his was a giant pair of shoes indeed.
And so, Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola has retired. The erstwhile Primate of All Nigeria of the church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) formally stepped down from his exalted position exactly five weeks. In his place has stepped a former Nigerian Army colonel, Archbishop Nicholas Okoh. He would be sorely missed in his many roles in Nigeria and in the global Anglican Communion where he is so deeply revered by the majority and equally deeply reviled by a tiny but vocal minority.
Henry Orombi, Anglican Archbishop of Uganda likes to call him “the Lion of Nigeria.” Rick Warren, the famous American pastor and author of international best-seller, Purpose Driven Life says “he has the strength of a lion” and “that when he speaks, far more than just Anglicans pay attention.”
The Most Reverend (Dr) Peter Jasper Akinola, was that Bishop from Africa no one could ignore. Forged in the fire of adversity and hewn from the rock of purist theology, destiny placed him right at the centre of a war for the soul of the Christian faith, and he is standing rock solid in the vanguard.
The first salvo in the war that was to define Akinola’s leadership opened right at the onset of his consecration as Archbishop, Primate and Metropolitan, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) in 1998. It was his first Lambeth Conference as helmsman having just taken over from the highly regarded church-planter extraordinaire, Most Reverend Abiodun Adetiloye.
At that meeting, a ten-yearly gathering of leaders of the 77million-strong Anglican Communion worldwide, liberals from the western wing of the church, which also happens to be major financiers of the worldwide communion, canvassed a change in the Church’s position on homosexuality. They wanted the Church to see it as an orientation, a sexual preference, rather than a sin, and therefore accord its gay members equal rights, including the rights to marry and become priests. These liberals argued that since God is love, He does not discriminate against any one, including those who have same-sex attraction.
Akinola was outraged. So were many others, mostly from the relatively poor, grant-receiving global-south wing of the church. They challenged the view as running counter to God’s divine plan, describing it as outrageous deviance from Biblical teaching. He found himself in the vanguard of this opposition, partly on account of his church being the largest single communion of Anglicans internationally. He rallied the troops, as it were, and the proponents of gay rights were defeated.
He recalled: “As a family, we came together (at the Lambeth Conference) in 1998 and we said, overwhelmingly: We cannot endorse same-sex union, because it's incompatible with scripture. We cannot endorse the ordination of active homosexuals to the ministry, because a minister is supposed to be a wholesome example to all people. When you have a person who has a particular orientation, he's acceptable only to his own clique and that you cannot have that in the church. So, we agreed on those two things. Democratically - we voted.”
If Resolution 1:10, as that democratically agreed upon decision became known, had been adhered to by all, Akinola would most probably have remained in the relative obscurity of feeding and
In 2003, Akinola remembers, “we got word that they (the Episcopal Church of the United States of America, ECUSA) were going to consecrate an open, active gay to the episcopate; we met at the gracious invitation of our leader, Dr Rowan, in his palace in London and we warned: 'Please don't do this! Please don't do it! It will destroy our church.' We said: 'If you do this thing' - I am quoting the communiqué directly now - 'it will tear the fabric of our communion at its deepest level.'”
ECUSA defied the Akinola-led opposition. On November 1, 2003, it installed Gene Robinson, an openly gay clergy man as the Bishop of New Hampshire at a well-attended ceremony, with at least 3,000 persons and 54 bishops in attendance. Gene had separated from Isabella, his wife with whom he had two daughters, in 1986 upon concluding that he was gay, and had been partnering with a certain Mark Andrew.
Akinola, in the meantime had become the rallying point of the struggle. He was elected Chairman of Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA), the Nairobi, Kenya-based umbrella body of 42 million Anglicans in all the 12 Anglican Provinces in Africa and the Diocese of Egypt in October 2003. Two years later, he was also named chairman of Global South Anglican which represents the interest of the 50 million-strong body of Anglican Churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
He reacted swiftly. In a statement issued on behalf of GSA, he not only strongly condemned Robinson’s ordination; he proclaimed “a state of impaired communion” within the worldwide Anglican family.
That state of impaired communion remains till today entrenched, as it were, following the holding in June 2008 of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem, ahead of Lambeth 2008, giving birth to what its conveners described as “a spiritual movement to preserve and promote the truth and power of the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ as we Anglicans have received it”. It was attended by “1,148 lay and clergy participants, including 291 bishops representing millions of faithful Anglican Christians”. And GAFCON eventually went on to create a Akinola was eventually unanimously elected as first chairman of the group’s Primates’ Council.
The rest as they say is history. The greatness of this man of God is easily gleaned from this fact that it has taken at least three great men to step into his shoes. The Most Rev’d Gregory Venables, Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone was elected to replace him as Chairman of the Primates Council of GAFCON on April 5. He handed the mantle of leadership of Global South Anglican (GSA) on April 15 to the Most Rev’d John Chew Archbishop of the Diocese of Singapore which hosted their recent meeting. Add to that Primate Okoh in Nigeria and you’ll agree, his was a giant pair of shoes indeed. (Culled from a Report of the same title in the forthcoming edition of KINGDOMPeople magazine)
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