Year: 2007

The attention given to the Zimbabwe government-owned Harare Herald has drawn a strong letter of correction of the paper’s reporting from the provincial secretary of the Province of Central Africa: “Contrary to The Herald’s report that the Anglican Province of Central Africa broke up on the 9th September 2007, the fact is the Church of the Province of Central Africa remains strongly intact.”

Although the meeting has yet to begin, writers are priming their coverage with dire predictions of what the Archbishop of Canterbury will demand at his first visit to an Episcopal Church meeting. Originally invited by the Bishops to listen to the experience of The Episcopal Church (TEC), most reporters believe that the Archbishop will come to tell TEC what to do or else.

Where is the voice of the Church in mid Africa that says the Church is appalled by the level of hate-mongering in the press, by the statements of those bishops who are quoted, by the general willingness to publish without objection remarks that homosexual persons are unfit to live, deserving to be punished and an abomination?

According to Morgan, a member of the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, “The original intention of a Covenant to affirm the bonds of affection, was good. The indications now are that many see it as a contract, a means of ensuring a uniform view on human sexuality enforceable by the threat of exclusion from the Communion if one does not conform. I certainly do not want to sign up to that kind of Covenant.”