SOUTHERN AFRICA: Church, archbishop encourage election of women bishops

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Church, archbishop encourage election of women bishops


By ENS staff, September 30, 2010

[Episcopal News Service] The provincial synod of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa is encouraging the election of women as bishops and urging dioceses that do not yet ordain women as priests to do so.

The triennial synod, meeting Sept. 29-Oct. 2 in Benoni, Gauteng, passed a resolution on Sept. 30 saying that although women formed the majority of church members, they were under-represented "in theological education, at every level in leadership and in representational roles."


Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town said during his address to the synod Sept. 29 that one of his dreams during his term of office was to consecrate the Anglican Church of Southern Africa's first woman bishop.

The church is "hugely unrepresentative in relation to gender... Women constitute the majority in our pews, but the reverse is true at every level of leadership, lay and ordained," he told synod, his first as archbishop.


The Anglican Church of Southern Africa resolved in 1992 to ordain women as priests, but it has not yet elected a woman as a bishop. Unlike some provinces in the Anglican Communion, no separate decision is needed to admit women as bishops.



Makgoba told the synod that, in South Africa, "the roles of men and women alike, of every culture, were distorted by apartheid. We need to develop appropriate spiritualities for us all, for contemporary living -- that are also channels of healing for the legacies of our brutalizing history."



The Anglican Church in Southern Africa comprises dioceses in Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and the islands of St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha.



Referring to human sexuality issues and theological disagreements throughout the Anglican Communion, Makgoba said the Anglican Church of Southern Africa refused to be split by disagreements.



"For us, what has mattered most is: being centered on Christ; agreeing on the central matters of who Jesus is and the salvation he brings; and therefore recognizing one another as being united in him, and, in consequence, with each other," he said. "In consequence, as we have found within the Synod of Bishops, when differences arise, none of us feels called to say to another: 'I no longer consider you a Christian, a brother in Christ, a member of the body of Christ -- I am no longer in communion with you.'
The church's bishops, meeting Sept. 27-29 ahead of the synod, welcomed Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti who "reminded us of the devastation that his country had recently experienced" following the Jan. 12 magnitude-7 earthquake "and of the long road that still has to be traveled towards full restoration."
The bishops expressed their gratitude for Makgoba's pastoral visit to Haiti in March and for the many Anglicans in Southern Africa who have contributed towards the rebuilding efforts.