24 September 2021 marks the inauguration of the newest province of the Anglican Communion, known as the Igreja Anglicana de Mocambique e Angola (IAMA, or the Anglican Church of Mozambique and Angola).
To proceed, the project required a minimum of two thirds of the Anglican Primates to vote in favour and this threshold was reached in August.
A special Synod of the parent province, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA), was held on 1 September to approve the IAMA constitution and deal with the process of dividing the one diocese of Angola into four dioceses, and the three dioceses of Mozambique into eight. Unusually, the province is not one geographical unit and this reflects the underlying reason for its formation; unlike the other nations comprising the parent Anglican Church of Southern Africa, both Angola and Mozambique were Portuguese colonies.
It is therefore natural that these two Lusophone (Portguese-speaking) nations should become an independent province and there is huge potential for mission and growth; their combined population of over 62 million accounted for half of the population covered by ACSA, yet they were represented by only four of ACSA’s 29 dioceses.
Resources are scarce because both nations, burdened with a legacy of abrupt decolonisation and civil war, are amongst the poorest in Africa, yet the new province does have the great asset of spiritual vitality and growth at the grassroots. As in many parts of Africa, this multiplication is sustained by the deployment of lay ministers known as catequistas (catechists). In Mozambique’s Niassa diocese, for example, there are some 200,000 church members, but served by only some 40 clergy, with the burden of teaching and pastoral care being largely carried by 700 catequistas who lead local congregations week by week.
The significance of this new province is likely to be felt well beyond Southern Africa. In the short term, it removes a group of gospel-minded bishops from the Anglican Church of Southern Africa and so the liberal-leaning Primate, Thabo Makgoba, will have a freer hand.
But in the longer term it will serve to help a confused Communion recover its roots. Until now, the only Lusophone province recognised by Canterbury has been the rather marginal, but actively anti-evangelical Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil) in which same-sex marriage is officially authorised. With time, and by God’s grace, we are likely to hear a very different and much stronger Lusophone voice within global Anglicanism.
