Celebrating the Gifts of Afro-Anglicanism

Canon George Brandt's address opened the Third Afro-Anglican Conference in Toronto, Canada, with a discussion of the beginnings of the conference and the ideas and principles lying, behind its development. The address honors some of the laity, priests, and bishops who were involved in the conception, design, and execution of the 1985 and 1995 conferences, which were shaped by historical and cultural events and forces in the wider Communion and the world. Finally, the address urges discussion of questions concerning some of the current issues and forces which are confronting Anglicans of African descent today. I greet you, Your Graces, my Lords, ladies ami gentlemen-my co-workers, sisters and brothers in the vineyard of the living Christ Jesus. It is an immense pleasure for me open this historic conference with a bit of history. Before you begin nod off sleep, this is history that will, I think, intrigue you. I'm going do it from an occasionally personal perspective because I think all of us engage history that way, especially when it concerns us, the African and African-descended children of God. Ours is a story of nuance and irony in a world and in a communion in which we do not dominate hut in which we are unavoidable. Much of our history as Afro-Anglicans is bound up with being, as Bishop Wilfred Wood once said, in the church of the slaveholders and the slaves. While most of us are no longer in a condition of legal chattel slavery, how often do we in our actions, assumptions, and attitudes respond one another after the fashion of our former masters, slave ancestors, or colonial overlords? Our dealings one with another oftenn reflect those sorts of power relationships instead of the familial and communal styles that obtain in traditional African societies. As we do scriptural reflection on early pre-Davidic Israel or sub-apostolic Christianity, we are struck by characteristics of those communities that are mutual, built on consensus, and are democratic in nature. Yet the North American and Caribbean and Central American history of slavery of our people on the one hand, and the colonial history of our people in Africa do, I suggest, more powerfully influence the way we are with one another than the norms set forth in Scripture. As some began reflect on this and other realities of our existence, the idea began dawn that as racial change for the better in the West and political and economic change in Africa took hold, and as we became more and more aware of our need for each other, there needed be a vehicle-an event, a gathering-where our leaders and best minds could begin share their thoughts about the commonalities of our situation and the gifts we bring Christ's church. In the early 1980s, the idea developed for a gathering of Anglican men and women who were African or of African descent. The first was be a memorial the Rev. Robert Chester Spencer Powell, who had died at a relatively young age in 1981, and who had been a leading figure in refugee and drought relief and other concerns in Africa on behalf of Church World Service. His widow, Bernice Powell, is currently one of the Presidents of the World Council of Churches and is the Executive Director of the United Church of Christ in the United States. Bob Powell was one of the first in North America grasp the need for all of the children of Africa, put it simply, to get know one another. It was, after all, in the late 1970s that five Ugandan bishops and other clerics found refuge at the Church of the Intercession in New York from the murderous regime of Idi Amin. Indeed, it was in that parish that the then-Archbishop of Kenya presided at a meeting of the exiled Ugandan House of Bishops necessitated by the murder of Archbishop Luwum and others. I remember it well, because that is the parish from which I was ordained shortly thereafter. It was these commitments of Christian hospitality that forged links across oceans and continents, distance and culture that last this day-though I must say there is growing evidence that there are forces at work in our Communion destroy them. …

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