Whenever the words “bishops” and “dialogue” appear in the same sentence, it is likely that something fishy is going on. In this case, Western bishops are having conversations with African bishops to convert them to the fashionable foibles of contemporary Western Anglicanism. The hors d’oeuvre is same-sex blessings with, no doubt, the suggestion that there are many paths to God and Jesus isn’t really unique to follow.
Toronto archbishop Colin Johnson was there to lead the neo-colonial charge:
The Consultation of Anglican Bishops in Dialogue
The consultation began at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, when the Anglican Communion was split over issues of same-sex unions and larger questions of Scriptural interpretation.
At this conference Archbishop Colin Johnson of Toronto and the Rev. Canon Dr. Isaac Kawuki Mukasa, a Ugandan-Canadian now on staff with General Synod, began conversations with African bishops. Interested African dioceses started theological correspondence with Canadian counterparts, first on human sexuality and then mission.
The chairman of the GAFCON Primates’ Council, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, seeing through the ecclesiastical murk, denounced the Canadian funded propaganda exercise as a sham.
Canada figured prominently in the second half of the archbishop’s letter, as he condemned as a sham the Anglican Church of Canada’s Bishops in Consultation initiative. Underwritten by the Canadian church and supported at its last meeting in Coventry in May 2014 by the Archbishop of Canterbury and his Director of Reconciliation, the Rev. Canon David Porter. Begun in 2010 and funded by the Canadian Church, the gatherings have brought together Canadian, American and African bishops to discuss the divisions within the church, with an eye towards achieving institutional unity while permitting a degree of latitude of doctrinal positions on issues ranging from sexual ethics, Christology, universalism and soteriology.
Archbishop Wabukala wrote: “For instance, the ‘Bishops in Dialogue’ group after their Coventry meeting earlier this year claimed that we must maintain visible unity despite everything because ‘now we see through a glass, darkly’ (1 Corinthians 13:12). In other words, things will only become clear in heaven. This is a bad mistake. It is true that there is much about our future state that we do not yet understand, but God has given us the inspired Scriptures as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Ps.119:105). Our future hope cannot be turned into an excuse for compromise or silence when Scripture is clear. For Anglicans the collegial mind of the Communion on sexuality and Scripture remains the orthodox position as strongly reaffirmed by the 1998 Lambeth Conference which continues to call us to obedience and pastoral responsibility. Dialogue is no substitute for doctrine.”
Ironically, as the Anglican Church of Canada’s denunciation of the Doctrine of Discovery escalates in righteous vehemence, so does its attempt to impose Anglican Western values – none of which have much to do with Christianity – on African Anglicans.
