ENGLAND: Homosexuality debate is not main agenda for African churches, Botswana bishop tells conference

July 10, 2008 [Modern Churchpeople's Union] The debate over homosexuality is diverting attention away from the real challenges the church in Africa faces, Bishop Trevor Selwyn Mwamba of Botswana told delegates at the Modern Churchpeople's Union conference July 10 in Hoddesdon, England.

In his lecture, titled "Saving the Soul of Anglicanism, Blessing or Curse, the African Experience," Mwamba dismissed the perception that all African churches were concerned about homosexuality or that they saw it as an issue likely to divide the Anglican Communion.

"Looking at the future of the Anglican Communion from an African context, my contention is that it will continue renewed in faith and mission inspired by appropriate structures and instruments of unity," he said. "I dismiss the doomsday predictions of those who glimpse the breakup of the Anglican Communion at a drop of a hat. The simple reality is that the majority of African Anglicans, about 37 million of them, are frankly not bothered with the debate on sexuality. A bishop from the Democratic Republic of the Congo told me that the people in his diocese were not in the least interested in the issue. This is just the tip of the iceberg because in my own Province of Central Africa, contrary to what the renegade ex-bishop of Harare, Dr. Nolbert Kunonga, and David Virtue have said, the debate on sexuality is not also an issue. We can multiply these examples across Africa."

Chaired by the Archbishop Barry Morgan of Wales, the Modern Churchpeople's Union conference is meeting July 8-11 under the theme "Saving the soul of Anglicanism: the nature and future of the Anglican Communion."

Mwamba told the gathering that it's time the Anglican Communion focused its energies "in doing God's mission in the world and strengthening the many things we have in common rather than on those on which we differ.

"Let us then straight, gay, liberal, conservative, moderate, Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, traditionalist, Africans and Americans, Asians, Europeans get into each other's worlds and be enriched in the discovery of our oneness in Christ and together enlarge God's kingdom of love where everybody has a seat at the table."

Other speakers at the conference include the Rt. Rev. Frank T. Griswold, 25th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church; Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire; the Rev. Dr. Marilyn McCord Adams, Regius Professor at Oxford and Canon of Christ Church Cathedral; and Bishop Michael Jackson of Clogher in the Church of Ireland.

Additional coverage of Mwamba's address is available on the blog of the Modern Churchpeople's Union here.

Further information about the conference is available here.