Nigerian Archbishop Bolsters CANA

The Living Church-

The primacy of “global mission and evangelism” has been threatened by tensions in the Anglican Communion, the Archbishop of Nigeria said in an address July 23 while in Virginia. He called on Anglicans to both proclaim “the full gospel of Christ” and “continue to defend the family.”

Speaking at the annual council of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, July 22–24 in Herndon, Va., Archbishop Nicholas Okoh urged CANA members to “declare that there is no one else” besides Jesus Christ to redeem people.

“The main thrust [of Christian mission] continues to be the proclamation of the gospel, the faith once delivered to all the saints,” he said. To that end, CANA serves as “an important mission of the Church of Nigeria.”

In a Christian Post interview July 20, Archbishop Okoh said that the Church of Nigeria founded CANA to keep the Anglican Communion from dividing.

The archbishop also called on Anglicans to affirm monogamous heterosexual marriage as the normative context for human sexuality. “All other sexual relationships are a sad measurement of our brokenness, self-centeredness, and rebellion” against God, he said.

He spoke of humankind’s continuing “rebellion against God’s absolute authority,” with one result being the persecution of those who oppose such rebellion.

“The Western world has become afraid [of saying] that there is right and wrong,” he said, and has “disinherited its Christian inheritance.”

By contrast, missionaries bringing the gospel and the Scriptures to Nigeria “widened [Nigerians’] understanding of what is right and wrong in God’s eyes” and influenced them to abandon practices incompatible with the Christian faith.

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http://www.livingchurch.org/news/news-updates/2010/7/26/nigerian-archbishop-bolsters-cana