Kenya: ‘Best way to make our voices heard is by our absence’

THE ARCHBISHOP of Kenya has rebuffed the Archbishop of Canterbury’s call for his Church to reconsider its decision to boycott this month’s meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Lusaka.

In a letter dated 18 March, the Most Rev Eliud Wabukala said he had grave theological reservations about the Most Rev Justin Welby’s letter to the primates of 16 March, saying it propounded a form of cheap grace, of reconciliation without repentance.

Archbishop Wabukala wrote that the Kenyan Church had accepted Canterbury’s invitation to attend a special primates’ gathering to seek a solution to the divisions over doctrine and discipline dividing the church, but it was now clear that the promises made at the meeting to the primates would not, or could not, be kept.

The chairman of the ACC, the Rt Rev James Tengatenga had rejected “our moral authority” as leaders of the church and had “affirmed in clear terms” that the Episcopal Church would “participate fully and without restriction” at the Lusaka meeting — contrary to the promises made in Canterbury.

This rebellion was symptomatic of the deeper problems that had divided the church, he said.

The London-based Anglican curia were “not being used so much as instruments of unity but as instruments to cajole orthodox Global South provinces of the Communion into acquiescence with the secular sexual culture which has made such inroads into the Anglican Churches of the West.”

Dr Wabukala appreciated Archbishop Welby’s reference to the East African Revival as an instrument for renewal of the church with it emphasis on “repentance and confession”.

However, “there does not seem to be any recognition that homosexual activity is a matter for repentance by those speaking on behalf of the London-based Anglican Communion authorities. Instead there are only calls to repent of ‘homophobia’, a term which is seriously compromised by the way homosexual activists have used it to include any opposition to their agenda.”

Given this manipulation of the Anglican system by special interest groups “some of us have been forced to the conclusion that the best way to make our voices heard is by absence rather than presence.

“We have no wish to interfere in the juridical authority of other provinces, but we do have a responsibility to ensure that our recognition of one another in the Anglican family is based on a common submission to the authority of God’s Word, not simply a shared history,” Dr Wabukala said.

Spokesmen for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of Kenya declined to comment on the correspondence.