The Primate of Nigeria is featured in a new interview this week. In the interview Abp. Akinola talks about his national role in Nigeria and his sense of how Anglicanism is failing in England. The interview appears here in the magazine, Third Way.
The Church Times has coverage here.
From the article:
“ENGLAND has let Christ go, says the Archbishop of Nigeria, the Most Revd Peter Akinola. Consequently, the ‘huge religious vacuum’ created in the name of multiculturalism is being filled by Islam.
In an interview with Third Way, the Archbishop says he now leads 20 million Anglicans — ‘not on paper: in the pews on Sundays’. He describes himself to Joel Edwards, director of the Evangelical Alliance, as a nobody; some one with no claim to glamour or ‘superstar syndrome’; a ‘tool in the hand of God’, with no choice but to be humble.
[…]England is making “a constant effort to throw God out of the system”, he says, describing a re ported one million Anglicans at Sunday worship as “not even as much as one diocese in my country”. He criticises English preachers for their timidity: “When the gospel is pro claimed uncompromisingly, the Muslim respects you. When you have no regard for your religion, when you are neither here nor there, the Muslim disdains you — detests you.””
One correction to the Church Times article: Akinola is no longer the chairman of Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA).
Interestingly, there’s an article in the Telegraph today that quotes the Archbishop of York John Sentamu’s remarks that England has become intolerant of Christian faith as well as pointing to a Cambridge study that the English government has focused too strongly on Islamic groups and ignored Christian ones.
ACNS (Anglican Communion News Service) has a story on Abp. Semantu’s words as well.