New assistant at St. Paul’s faced cultural shift in Anglican Church

From Philadelphia-

When Emmanuel Ato “Manny” Mercer, the new assistant rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Chestnut Hill, made the 5,700-mile trip from Ghana to Atlanta in 2000, little did he know just how that journey would change his life.

In Ghana as a young man he had attended an Anglican all-boys secondary school. After a mandatory year of national service, during which he taught civics, environmental studies and English in a junior high school, he enrolled in the Saint Nicholas Theological Seminary in Cape Coast, earning a licentiate in theology in 1998.

“Right after seminary I was posted in a little town,” Mercer said in a recent interview. “After two years, I decided to come to the United States to study for a Master of Divinity degree at Emory University.”

His hope was to take what he learned here and return to Ghana and teach at the seminary, but that began to change the first weekend he was in the States.

“When I came to the United States I didn’t know where I was going to worship,” he said.
He found All Saints Episcopal Church on the Internet. It was at All Saints that he began to face the cultural differences that exist between branches of the Anglican Communion in Ghana and the United States. The Communion is a worldwide federation of 38 autonomous provinces, all of which are in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and, therefore, each other. An Anglican from one province is welcome to worship or, if ordained, to minister in any other.

More here-

http://chestnuthilllocal.com/blog/2011/08/02/new-assistant-at-st-paul’s-faced-cultural-shift-in-anglican-church/