Anglican Split

PETER AKINOLA, the archbishop of the Anglican Church in Nigeria is calling for the suspension of the Church of England from the Anglican Communion because of their proposed policy related to homosexual clergy.

There are multiple layers of irony in this story -- including the fact that the Anglican Communion started out as an extension of the Church of England. Can it be truly Anglican if the English are kicked-out? (The word Anglican means English. The Angles migrated from Germany in the 5th century and settled in the area now known as England. England is a variation of Angleland.)

Then there is the fact that the largest and most influential bodies of Anglican churches are in Africa and Asia. Those churches, which are extremely evangelical, have grown while the English churches have on a whole declined to point that the churches in the global south (Africa, SE Asia, and South America) probably wouldn't notice if they were gone.

The statement by Akinola signals that the churches in the global south do not intend to stay connected with the Archbishop of Canterbury. From a missional stand-point alone the Western churches have put these other churches in a precarious position. The very conservative societies in which they function deem them to be reprobate by virtue of their involuntary association with the affirming movements in the US, Canadian, and English churches.