What is an Anglican?

Anglican Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi has written an excellent article published in FirstThings about the meaning of Anglicanism. It should be read in its entiretly, but a couple of highlights...

For the Ugandan church to compromise God’s call of obedience to the Scriptures would be the undoing of more than 125 years of Christianity through which African life and society have been transformed. Traditional African society was solely an oral culture, which limited its ability to share ideas beyond the family level. We couldn’t write our language, and there was nothing to read in our language. The first converts in Uganda were called “readers” because they could read the Bible, the first book available in our own languages. Because of the Bible, our languages have been enriched and recorded. For the first time, we heard God in our own languages. To this day, our people bring their Bibles to church and follow along with the readings.

He then gives several examples of that transformation, from bringing peace to warring tribes to bringing respect and dignity to women to virtually making a unified Ugandan society possible. This is not a "spiritual" transformation, if by "spiritual" we mean of the mind or heart. This is real transformation of living breathing human beings in a society. And it is based on a fairly straightforward reading of the text of the Bible.



With this knowledge of the centrality of the authority of Scripture in Anglicanism, therefore, we understand ourselves to be in the mainstream of Anglicanism—from Thomas Cranmer to John Stott. The evangelical tradition in the Church of England produced William Wilberforce, whose lifelong mission to eradicate slavery and the slave trade liberated our people. It produced Charles Simeon, who inspired the beginning of mission societies that shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with us and many others. It produced Bishop Tucker and other missionaries, who risked their lives to come to Uganda. These and many more Anglican evangelicals brought us the legacy of the Protestant Reformation in England. Their commitment to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture has continued among us to this day.

From Thomas Cranmer to Richard Hooker, from the Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1662 Ordinal to the 1998 Lambeth Conference, the authority of Holy Scripture has always held a central and foundational role in Anglican identity. This is true for the Anglican church in Uganda; and, if it is not true for the entire Anglican Communion, then that communion will cease to be an authentic expression of the Church of Jesus Christ.

Orombi then goes on to explain why the bishops of the Global South refuse to wink at the sins and heresy of the Episcopal church. He explains that martyrdom has been a common theme, from the first missionaries martyred simply for their faith to those executed for refusing homosexual advances of a king to the execution of archbishop Janani Luwum by Idi Amin, refusal to compromise on a basic belief in the authority of scripture has been central.

So Orombi points to the 1998 resolution from Lambeth, known as Lambeth 1:10 which refers to "homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture". Additional statements from African regions are stronger. East Africa: "Holy Scriptures are clear in teaching that all sexual promiscuity is a sin". West Africa: "homosexuality is one of the many sins that Scripture has condemned".

As a result, he makes it clear that those who do not recognize the authority of scripture are the ones failing to be Anglican, therefore.

In December 2006, the House of Bishops of the Church of Uganda unanimously adopted “The Road to Lambeth,” a statement drafted for a council of African provinces. Among other things, it stated, “We will definitely not attend any Lambeth Conference to which the violators of the Lambeth Resolution [1.10] are also invited as participants or observers.” Accordingly, if the present invitations to the Lambeth Conference stand, I do not expect the Ugandan bishops to attend.

In short, if Episcopal Bishops who have thumbed their noses at both a plain reading of scripture and the stated decisions of worldwide Anglican Bishops are going to the Lambeth conference at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Uganda and many other African provinces will not compromise and will stay away. They will not compromise scripture and its power to transform.

Non-Anglicans need to get acquainted with these leaders of Global South Anglicanism like Orombi, Peter Akinola, Emmanuel Kolini and others. Apart from a commitment to the threefold office of Bishops, Priests and Deacons (overseers, presbyters and deacons, if you prefer) and a leaning toward a more liturgical structure for worship, these men are evangelical missionaries. They can teach American Christians a great deal.