Africa won't join church split

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-07-06-africa-wont-join-church-split

[Mail & Guardian Online] 4 Jul 2008-- The Anglican Bishop of Port Elizabeth, Bethlehem Nopece, who attended the conference, said the Southern African diocese was already overwhelmingly conservative, as the last vote by synod, which took place three years ago, revealed. "We voted that we do not accept homosexual practice, what we do accept is celibacy, even if a person is homosexual in orientation," said Nopece. "Those who lobby for homosexual priests to be ordained do not want a split within the church, but want to push the church to accept it."

Janet Frisk, a theology lecturer at Rhodes University and an ordainedpriest, said the move by Foca was motivated by power rather than by doctrine. "Peter Akinola, [the archbishop of Nigeria and a vocal Foca member], has, for the past 10 years, been making moves to become another power base in the Anglican Church," she said. "It is about Africanisation, but in some ways it is about blatant power, and the gay thing is just a presenting cause. Gay people have been getting ordained forever, the only reason it's an issue now is because gay people openly living with their partners are being ordained. It is [ostensibly] about sexuality, but not really [so]."

Frisk's position was echoed by Wilson Sichebo, the bishop of Bulawayo, who said his parish remains loyal to the mother church headquartered in Canterbury. Sichebo, who is also the president of the Zimbabwe Council of Churches, said that what is sad about the whole affair is that the split is not caused by differences in doctrine, but by what he called the lust for "power and recognition". Sichebo said there was space for difference within the Anglican Church: "What is the business of the church if we can't mix with those who are different from us?" He also said the divisions were distracting the church from the real issues it should be confronting, such as providing access to antiretrovirals for those who are HIV-positive, supporting victims of violence and fighting poverty on the continent.

A very misleading article. When did South Africa become all Africa. The article also does not identify the theological position of the various clergy that it quotes. For example, Trevor Mwamba is a known liberal and TEC sympathizer.