NIGERIA: Four new bishops elected for Convocation of Anglicans in North America
Episcopal News Service. September 14, 2007 [091407-05]
Matthew Davies
The Anglican Church of Nigeria's House of Bishops elected four new suffragan bishops September 12 to serve the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a conservative breakaway group composed largely of former Episcopalians and some Nigerian expatriates.
The bishops-elect are Roger Ames of Akron, Ohio, rector of St. Luke’s Anglican Church; David Anderson of Atlanta, Georgia, president of the American Anglican Council; and Nigerian priests Amos Fagbamiye of Indianapolis, Indiana, vicar of the Anglican Church of the Resurrection; and Nathan Kanu of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, priest-in-charge of Christ’s Ambassadors Church.
They will join CANA's Missionary Bishop Martyn Minns and Suffragan Bishop David Bena, former suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Albany.
Minns was officially installed in the U.S. on May 5 despite calls from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori for the ceremony not to proceed. An English-born former Mobil Oil executive and former rector of Truro Parish in Fairfax, Virginia, Minns was elected and consecrated in 2006 in Nigeria.
Nigerian Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, who announced the news September 12, describes CANA as a "missionary initiative" that provides "a safe place for those who wish to remain faithful Anglicans but can no longer do so within The Episcopal Church."
Akinola is one of the Anglican Communion's leading critics of the Episcopal Church. He has maintained that homosexuality is incompatible with Scripture and repeatedly called for the Episcopal Church to repent for the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, a divorced gay man living in same-gender relationship, and some dioceses' provisions for the blessing of same-gender unions.
The Anglican Primates, at their February meeting in Tanzania, acknowledged that interventions by bishops and archbishops of some Provinces have heightened "estrangement between some of the faithful and the Episcopal Church that this has led to recrimination, hostility and even to disputes in civil courts."
According to the communiqué issued at the end of that meeting, Jefferts Schori reminded the Primates that some in the Episcopal Church "have lost trust in the Primates and bishops of certain ... Provinces because they fear that they are all too ready to undermine or subvert the polity of the Episcopal Church."
Minns was onsite in Tanzania and was observed conferring regularly with Akinola in sessions apparently devoted to planning and influencing the Primates' communiqué.
According to CANA, the consecrations of its new bishops will take place in the U.S. before the end of 2007, with the date and location yet to be determined.
In a communiqué issued at the close of their meeting, the bishops offered their "full support to the establishment of structures to sustain this steady growth with the election and assignment of Suffragan Bishops to assist the missionary Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Martyn Minns, and to consolidate the growth."
Akinola also announced the election of bishops Edmund Akanya of Kebbi and Benjamin Kwashi of Jos as archbishops of Kaduna and Jos ecclesiastical provinces respectively. They replace bishops Idowu-Fearon and Emmanuel Mani whose five year terms end in January 2008.
The synod re-elected five incumbent archbishops: Maxwell Anikwenwa of Awka Diocese as archbishop of the Niger province; Ephraim Ademowo of Lagos as archbishop of Lagos province; Bennett Okoro of Orlu as archbishop of Owerri province; Samuel Abe of Ekiti as archbishop of Ondo province; and Joseph Akinfenwa of Ibadan as archbishop of Ibadan province.