Archbishop Peter Akinola in full flow(Photo: (c)CMS/Jeremy Woodham)
But the Primate reserved his harshest words for his fellow bishops – many of whom hadn’t coughed up their quotas for the fund that is meant to keep the whole Church of Nigeria afloat without outside support.
He pointed out that such a plan was part of the legacy of CMS, a name which is still synonymous with the Anglican Church in Nigeria today.
“Today we don’t have to go through CMS in London to make decisions. For that we thank Henry Venn [General Secretary of CMS 1846–1873] – for his policy of self-governing, self-extending and self-supporting churches.”
Akinola’s commitment to extending the church is well-known and vigorous. Last year he ordained 20 bishops. People asked him if it wasn’t too many. “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he told the crowd, oddly evoking the memory of Ronald Reagan. “We are just beginning.”
You might think from this that Akinola is a fan of bishops. But those in the rows behind ducked as another primatial broadside came their way. “Today unless you ride in a jeep you’re not a bishop. God have mercy.”
He scoffed at the way bishops in the country are normally addressed as “My Lord”. “The day is gone when bishops are ‘your majesty, your lordship’.” Today’s bishops must be evangelists – “going from town to town, hamlet to hamlet, preaching the Gospel.”
Evangelism explosion
Bishop Ken Okeke couldn’t be further from “his lordship”, though he can’t stop the deferential treatment by his parishioners, however much he tries. One young woman passes as we walk around the cathedral grounds one evening and asks if everything is all right. She is shocked to discover the bishop walking, not being driven.
However, this is gentle compared to the travels into the ‘mission areas’ of his diocese, which he hopes will get their own bishops in due course.
Here, he is still very much Bishop ‘on the Niger’. To visit some of the remoter parts, he still has to wait for the flood season when the river bursts its banks, at last making them accessible by boat.
His priests in these areas are still “breaking new ground”, he tells me. During recent outreach visits, people were still bringing out boxfuls of idols to be burnt.
Culture clash
Bishop Ken likes to highlight how the Gospel confronts evil in every culture. Crowther’s Gospel brought an end to the killing of twins, he says, which were thought to be abnormal and were murdered after birth.
Today the issue he is confronting is the stigmatisation of widows, with many enforced traditions that batter women’s dignity. They are forced to shave their hair off, to sit on the floor and are often prevented from seeing their husband buried. Widows are also compelled to wear all black – or all white – for one year as a sign of mourning, as they used to in Europe.
Bishop Ken says this has no basis in Scripture and the Diocese now offers official teaching against these practices. A cultural commission has been set up to deal theologically with such issues as they come up.
But evangelism remains top priority and Bishop Ken and his wife, Ngozi, who heads up the diocesan women’s ministries, set themselves the target of a mission-focused diocese when they returned from 20 years in England as Ken was called to be bishop.
“We believe what Crowther started gave birth to the church and if we don’t continue it we will die.”