African Primates declare ‘Indaba project’ is dead

THE ANGLICAN Communion’s Indaba project has reached its conclusion, the primates of the Council of the Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) have concluded.

In a statement released last month following their 9-10 March meeting in South Africa, the liberal and moderate African provinces backed their conservative brethren’s view that homosexual relations are contrary to God’s word.

The archbishops of Southern Africa, Burundi, Central Africa, Indian Ocean, Sudan, Tanzania and the Middle East, joined by the primate of South East Asia, stated they “continue to uphold the traditional biblical teaching in regard to human sexuality and marriage and affirm Lambeth Resolution 1:10 in its entirety.

“We believe that this is the only way to safeguard the life of the Christian families and we should resist the pressures of the secular western cultures to alter God’s purpose in creating man and woman.”

The archbishops said they were not persuaded by the arguments put forward by the Episcopal Church and Anglican Church of Canada, and called upon the North American Churches to halt plans to change Church teaching on homosexual behaviour. Such a move was not faithful to Scripture, tradition or natural law but was an accommodation to secular culture.

“Some churches in the West”, they wrote, “allowed the worldly cultures to reshape the message of church to the society especially in the area of marriage and human sexuality. These issues not only contradict the traditional teaching of the scripture but also impede our witness to the Gospel, which is the reason of our presence in this world.

“We believe that the Church is entrusted with the message of Gospel in order to trans- form the culture, not the other way around. We do accept diversity but not diversity on the expense of the truth. Therefore we call upon these Churches to refrain from making unilateral decisions which will further the divisions between the provinces of the Anglican Communion.”

However, the CAPA archbishops did not follow the lead of the GAFCON primates on the issue of the Archbishop of Canterbury, writing that they “extend our support for the Archbishop of Canterbury in his efforts to bring restoration to our Communion.”

However, they made it clear they would not accept the innovations made by Archbishop Rowan Williams at his ill-fated 2011 Dublin Primates’ Meeting, writing: “We affirm the necessity of the Primates’ meeting, however we emphasise the importance of following through the recommendations of the previous Primates’ meetings.”