Why the Next Archbishop of Canterbury Should Be African

From Religion Dispatches-

Fifty years ago, Howard Johnson, a priest at the cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, visited the nascent Anglican Church in Nigeria. He was distressed at the the unnecessary “Britishness” of the church—“are cutaway coats and Gothic slits of the essence of Christianity?” he asked—and the church’s inability to keep pace with the growth of Islam. “Unless we change our tactics and treble our efforts, Christianity may be doomed to play a diminishing role in the drama of African development,” he concluded.

But Johnson was wrong. Today, the Anglican church in Nigeria is a central player in a vibrant and aggressive religious marketplace. Along with Pentecostal churches, other so-called “mission denominations,” and, yes, Islam, something like twenty million Nigerian Anglicans compete for attention. And they do so as part of a world church. The church’s official name is Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), indicating the way in which they see themselves as part of the worldwide family of churches who look to the Archbishop of Canterbury as their “focus of unity.”

More here-

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5824/why_the_next_archbishop_of_canterbury_should_be_african/