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African
Anglican Bishop Expects 'Breakthrough' on Gay Row
06 Sept 2007- Anglican
churches will soon return to their mission to alleviate poverty, disease
and injustice and abandon a "fixation" with homosexuality, says Anglican
Bishop Trevor Mwamba, the recently-appointed dean of the Anglican Church
of the Province of Central Africa.
"Very few of us take the homosexual debate as a top
priority issue because there are more pressing issues facing the African
church," Mwamba told Ecumenical News International in a telephone
interview from his office in the Botswana capital Gaborone.
"Most African Anglicans want to get back to basics and
concentrate on poverty, disease, injustice and the need for transparency
in governments," said the dean of the central African region, made up of
churches in Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
The worldwide Anglican Communion has been deeply divided
since the 2003 consecration of V Gene Robinson, a divorced father who
lives with a male partner, as a bishop in the US Episcopal (Anglican)
Church. Some bishops from the Global South have threatened to boycott a
gathering in 2008 of the world's Anglican bishops if their liberal
counterparts from the United States attend.
Mwamba said, however, he thought there would be "forward
movement, even a breakthrough, on this issue" when leaders of the
Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa meet in Mauritius from 2 to 5
October.
"I believe that quite number of African bishops who have
threatened not to attend next year's Lambeth Conference in Canterbury
may change their minds," he said. "Yes, there are problems, but a week
is a long time in politics and we still have almost a year to go before
the next Lambeth Conference," the meeting of global Anglican leaders
that takes place every 10 years.
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