African Anglicans fall out over support for the Episcopal Church of the USA

22 Jan 2015
George Conger

The Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa [CAPA] is on the verge of disintegration after leaders of the Gafcon coalition called upon its chairman, the Archbishop of Burundi, to repent or resign in the wake of an October communiqué he endorsed that backed the Episcopal Church of the USA.

The collapse of CAPA, sources within the Gafcon movement tell Anglican Ink, is merely a sign of the wider collapse of the Anglican Communion. On 22 Jan 2015, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, the Primate of Kenya released a copy of a letter prepared at the December Gafcon primates meeting in Nairobi for Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi. He stated that as “no reply has been received, the letter is now being made public in order to avoid misunderstanding.”

The public rebuke of Archbishop Ntahoturi by the Gafcon primates is unprecedented in African church history, but was not unexpected. In his Advent letter to Gafcon, Archbishop Wabukala called Africa’s bishops to order.  Archbisho Ntahoturi’s failure to heed the warnings coming out of Nairobi prompted the public release of his rebuke.

The Gafcon archbishops chastised Archbishop Ntahoturi for claiming to speak on behalf of Africa’s Anglicans, when the position he represents is that of a minority.

By allowing his office and name to be attached to the October 2014 “Transformation Through Friendship” communiqué prepared with the Episcopal Church, the archbishop had become party to a fraud upon the church and a slander against African Anglicans by asserting support for the “unbiblical and false teaching of The Episcopal Church.”  the rest