Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon noted to the General Synod of the Church of England in February 2017 that ‘the route to the Church of England’s internal health is, as with any church, through her self-expenditure for the sake of the world’.
To this end, Anglican Mainstream hosted a presentation at the July Synod on the response of African Anglican Churches to the challenges facing Africa.
China and Islam
By 2100 Africa will have overtaken China as the continent with the largest population. Twenty is the median age of African people which means most have not yet reached childbearing age.
The continent’s carrying capacity is weak. As people flock to the cities for work, rural areas will be depleted of labour to support the agriculture that it needs. While developed economies can import extra food from the global market, this is beyond most African countries. Ethnic rivalries are stirred by political leaders for their own ends. While all countries experience corruption, a decent rule of law and a robust political system can keep it in check. Where it is lacking, corruption means that people will starve and die. China is leading the rush of countries to buy up parts of Africa in their own interests and not in the interests of the local populations.
The Church also faces competition from Islam, which is a complete political programme making advances through Islamic finance in the economy, Khadi courts in the justice system and Halal meat in the food industry.
Not engaged
While Western NGOs enter African countries the Church is often not engaged, makes no input and so learns nothing.
Barnabas Fund, which presented the findings of its research on the future of Africa at the Synod, focuses on providing the resources to support projects designed and delivered by local churches. Their largest partner is the Church of Uganda, which recently launched a major appeal to assist in feeding over 800,000 refugees that have entered the country from South Sudan, now at the rate of 2,800 a day.
The Guardian reported on 3 April that ‘the country has one of the world’s most compassionate refugee policies, which grants migrants land to build a home and rights to travel and work that are practically unheard of elsewhere’. For Camp Rhino in Northern Uganda the Church is buying food and trucking it up north to feed 80,000 refugees. In the Diocese of Marsabit in Kenya, suffering from extended drought and famine, the Church is feeding 12,000 people.
Mosquito nets
A most effective intervention in health has been to provide mosquito nets for babies to combat the preventable diseases that kill so many children before they reach their fifth birthday. The Church in Uganda has provided a home at the Mengo Hospital for training 50 clinical assistants from and for South Sudan, in partnership with Anglican International Development, the International Christian Medical and Dental Association and Barnabas Fund. The first graduation was held in Kampala in June.
By introducing appropriate agricultural techniques, changing the date on which they sow their seed and the way they use their land, farmers can be assisted to quadruple the output from their plots from 500 kilos to two tons per hectare. The excess can be sold and the income used to pay for education and medical costs.
The Church focuses on providing hope, identity, community, education, support for refugees when they can return home, food, support of small businesses, physical security, advocacy at local and government levels, and work against corruption.
The Church of England assists African churches to address these challenges primarily through the partnership of local churches. These support people and projects with whom they have historic links, built up over years or developed by a visiting student now returned to lead their church or by young people who spend gap years in Africa and never get its sand out of their toes.
Fuel for criticism
But the Church of England also provides fuel to those who wish to criticise the church in Africa. When Bishop Jenkins of Durham spoke of the resurrection as a ‘ conjuring trick with bones’, detractors claimed that even the church that had brought the gospel to many parts of Africa was now abandoning its own faith. The same is true of the abandonment of the Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality which brought so much change to African families and women in particular.
We do well to heed again Archbishop Fearon words, ‘the route to the Church of England’s internal health is, as with any church, through her self-expenditure for the sake of the world’, as the guidance for policy, rather than seeking to render the church less toxic in secular society by changing its biblical and historic teaching.
