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A product of Britain’s colonial interval, the Church of England has 14 of its 46 church buildings in Africa. A lot of these church buildings severely limit the function of ladies throughout the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
However a sea change started a decade in the past with the election of Ellinah Ntombi Wamukoya in 2012 as bishop of Swaziland, a diocese of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa also called Eswatini. Since then, extra ladies have damaged by the glass ceiling and have been elected bishop in a continent the place the church has an estimated inhabitants of 40 million.
In January 2024, Africa’s six feminine Anglican bishops met for the primary time in a weeklong gathering the place they known as for genuine management, empowerment and mentoring for African ladies.
The six met at St. Julian’s Centre in Limuru, close to Nairobi, the place an inaugural Africa Anglican sisters’ journeying retreat was being held. The theme of their assembly was “African Anglican ladies bishops embarking on a journey of religion: Defying conventions and main with grace.”
“We’re scattered—six of us—in the entire continent,” stated Bishop Rose Okeno of the Butere diocese in western Kenya. “We’ve got by no means had time to fulfill simply to wish, to know one another and fellowship.”
Okeno is a rural diocese serving principally small-scale farmers and merchants. When ascending to the submit in the summertime of 2021 she commented, “I see it as a calling from God. There might be some challenges, particularly given how our society views ladies, but it surely’s majority males who elected me. So it is a affirmation that I’m their chief. I’m assured.”
Earlier that yr, scholar and researcher the Rev. Emily Onyango grew to become Kenya’s first feminine Anglican bishop and the primary within the Anglican church in East and Central Africa.
“I will be the first feminine bishop in ACK (Anglican Church of Kenya) from the Diocese of Bondo, and should the doorways for different feminine bishops be open. I’ll be part of certainly a home of brother bishops however pray they’ll bear in mind to incorporate me as a sister bishop,” Onyango stated. Regardless of makes an attempt to cease her ordination, Onyango assumed the place, which she holds to at the present time.
On the January assembly had been Okeno, Onyango, Bishops Vicentia Kgabe and Dalcy Dlamini of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Bishop Elizabeth Awut Ngor of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, and Bishop Filomena Tete Estêvão of the Anglican Church of Angola and Mozambique. By no means earlier than has Africa laid declare to 6 feminine bishops on the similar time, a lot much less having these six seem on the similar place collectively.
On the assembly, the six spoke out on what they known as the triple menace of gender-based violence, teenage being pregnant and HIV/AIDS. They rebuked Anglican church buildings in Africa for his or her silence on these points which have an effect on many African ladies.
“We observe that the affected are our congregants who might be described as perpetrators and survivors of the aforementioned triple threats and demand of us to intervene,” they stated in a press release issued on the finish of their assembly.
Additionally they acknowledged humankind’s duty for injury to the setting: “We stay properly conscious that our actions as human beings have impacted negatively on the local weather.”
Of the historic assembly, Esther Mombo, a professor of theology at St. Paul’s College in Limuru, Kenya, stated, “They’re distinctive ladies in management in a church that has not accepted ladies.”
That uniqueness could not final lengthy nonetheless, for based on Jesse Mugambi, a professor of philosophy and non secular research on the College of Nairobi, the rising development is for girls to take key positions within the church. He feels it’s late coming, nonetheless, because the most severe and dedicated individuals in church buildings are sometimes ladies and younger individuals.
“The outdated concept that religions need to be led by an outdated man has to alter. If we delay, we pays for it,” he stated.
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