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Nolbert Kunonga, Bishop of Harare, has been accused of intimidating Christians and converting his diocese into the religious arm of Robert Mugabe's ZANU PF party.  Many Zimbabwean Anglicans want him gone, and they're hoping the primates assembled in Tanzania will help him find the door.

Zimbabwean Anglicans want the archbishops and bishops gathered in Dar es Salaam to act against Kunonga, a ruling party loyalist in his late 50s, who they say is a disgrace to Christianity and to Africa. Anglican priests critical of Mugabe have been transferred to tough rural parishes and many have resigned. A plethora of legal cases between Kunonga and his disillusioned flock are stuck in Zimbabwe's chaotic court system. In place of priests who have resigned, he has appointed men who have pledged not to criticise the head of state. He even licensed the acting vice president of Zimbabwe, Joseph Msika, a man on record as saying that whites are not human beings, to act as a deacon of the church.

From the time of his disputed election as Bishop of Harare in 2001 to the present Kunonga has, say Anglicans in Harare, made no secret of his personal ambitions for fame and fortune or his willingness to exploit fully his sycophantic relationship to Mugabe and ZANU PF.

Bp Kunonga was charged with incitement to murder and other serious offences in December 2003.  The trial was abruptly shut down and declared finished by his archbishop.

In December 2005, the court hearing before a Malawian judge collapsed in disarray without proper explanation and the head of the Anglican province of Central Africa, Zambian Archbishop Bernard Malango, informed church leaders in the province that the case against Kunonga had been dropped for ever.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has said that Bp Kunonga should be suspended until criminal charges against him have been adjudicated.

A senior source in the Anglican Communion told IWPR [Institute for War and Peace Reporting] that Dr Williams would almost certainly be talking to Archbishop Malango about why he declared the Kunonga case closed and sealed for ever.

Well, Dr Williams can talk with Abp Malango, but, in view of Malango’s palsy-walsy relationship with the Zimbabwean despot and his bishop, I wouldn't count on anything coming of it.

Archbishop Malango is a friend and an admirer of both Mugabe and Kunonga. He was a guest of honour at the Harare bishop's 33rd wedding anniversary celebrations.

The primates have contentious issues of worldwide significance on their plate, so it is very possible that they will not find time to deal with the Kunonga problem.

Archbishop Malango, who fancies himself a defender of “church orthodoxy and doctrine”, signed off on the inaccurate and fundamentally unserious Communion Sub-Group Report unveiled at the primates’ meeting.

Previous related posts:

• Parishioners banned for disrupting bishop’s anniversary party
• Bishop cancels Sunday services for his anniversary
• Primate shielding Mugabe’s bishop getting jammed up
• Renegade Anglican bishop in Zimbabwe

Police in Belarus arrested ten American religious workers for teaching English in a local Baptist church.  They were each fined the equivalent of US$14 and their passports were confiscated pending a deportation hearing.

The 10 all are retirees from the US state Missouri, who had travelled to the Belarusian city Mogilev as part of a humanitarian aid programme partially financed by their church, and partially from their own funds.

They had been teaching English for free to Mogilev citizens as workers for a Belarusian branch of Stefanus, an international social assistance organization.
. . .
Promotion of religion by foreigners is banned by Belarusian law. International evangelical Christian groups sometimes bypass the rule by setting up churches, and then asserting the church is run by Belarusians not foreigners.

Belarus' authoritarian government frowns on almost all forms of group training not specifically sanctioned by the state.

A spokesman for Stefanus said the workers did not encourage students to accept their religion.

The police raid was filmed by a crew from a government-run news programme.

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• Belarusian Catholics permitted to seek approval for church construction
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• Belarus: Europe’s most oppressively anti-religious nation

The Most Rev Andrew Hutchison, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, blogged today from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  He regrets that the primates will be preoccupied with debates over sexuality and who’s a real Anglican to the exclusion of more important problems.

It all came into perspective for me after I arrived at the Dar es Salaam airport at 7:30 in the morning.  The drive to the conference centre takes about an hour.  Despite being tired my eyes were wide open as we drove over dusty unkempt roads and through a sea of thousands upon thousands of people.  Most were standing beside the side of road looking desperate and without hope.  Adults and children intermingled and behind them were some of the most dilapidated shacks that I had ever seen.  For many these are the only houses they will ever know.  Most were patched with cardboard and jammed together.  So many different things kept running through my mind – there is no space for these people, hardly an inch of grass for any kind of rest or refreshment, never an opportunity for a quiet moment, pollution and dust a constant feature.

I am going to a meeting with a gospel of hope and a preferential option for the poor and we are debating who is in and whom we are going to keep out.  I have been at this long enough to know that it never boils down to one simple question.  Meetings like this are filled with all manner of ego, authority and power but as we gather and are preparing to begin, that endless stream of humanity that I saw on my way haunts my memory.  I wish we were dealing with what difference a gospel of hope could make in their lives, rather than worrying about strategies for the Primates and the politics that are an inevitable part of such gatherings.  Please remember to pray for my brothers and sister who share in these meetings in the next few days.  There is a huge amount at stake and the world needs to hear the good news again – that the gospel does not say God so loved the Church – rather it says God so loved the world!

The fundamental debate is over the content of the “gospel of hope” the church preaches.  Many Anglicans maintain that Archbishop Hutchison’s is not the biblical gospel that offers divine forgiveness to repentant sinners.  Among the categories of sin for which forgiveness can be obtained is homosexual activity; but Abp Hutchison does not believe that sinful.  Traditional orthodox Anglicans argue that the archbishop’s view takes hope away from non-celibate homosexuals by encouraging them to believe that their behaviour is fine with God.  On this view, his “gospel” is no gospel at all.

Abp Hutchison speaks as if he is not directly involved or implicated in the divisions within the Anglican Communion.  In fact, the ACC, over which he presides, has played a leading role in bringing on the present crisis.  That role is spelled out in the Windsor Report, which he was a party to negotiating in 2004.  The actions of the Diocese of New Westminster in blessing same-sex unions are specified as one of the two proximate causes of the rift in the Communion.

Ironically, today’s Anglican Journal article publicising Abp Hutchison’s blog post mentions what the Windsor Report had to say about Canada.

The 2004 report asked the Episcopal Church and the Canadian diocese of New Westminster to apologize for the “deep offence” that their decisions regarding sexuality have caused to “many faithful Anglicans.”

Judging by his blog, one would think that Abp Hutchison has forgotten all about that.

The desire to ignore issues of sexuality is, moreover, quite disingenuous, in view of the history that led to approval of same-sex blessings in the ACC.  Homosexual activists and their supporters pressed their cause at every opportunity.  For years, they wanted to talk about nothing but sexuality.  Now that they are in the ascendant, however, their tune has changed.  It’s no longer worth talking about.  We got what we want, over the persistent and continuing objections of many Canadian Anglicans, so let’s move on.

The archbishop laments the poverty he saw along the road and says that we could and should do more to help the poor.  Yet, the fight to preserve traditional biblical teachings on sexuality is being led by the Global South primates—the representatives of Third World poor people.

Finally, I noticed a striking contrast between Archbishop Hutchison’s perspective on what he observed along the road from the airport and that provided by The Rev George Conger (in Tanzania as a free-lance journalist), who was interviewed today by Kevin Kallsen of Anglican Report.  This is what they said, beginning about 13:20 of the video interview.

Kevin Kallsen: Now this is your first time in Tanzania.

George Conger: Yes.

KK: Mine too.  And you took the ride from the airport to here. Were you surprised by how Dar es Salaam is Third World as it gets?  I was kind of under the impression that it’s a Second- or First-World city in a Third World country.

GC: Well, you see before you and around you the benefits of one-party rule and socialism.

KK: Yes, you do.  And corruption.

GC: Dar es Salaam is not pretty; it’s not really a tourist place.  But—and it is poor—but what I think I was impressed by was the bustling economic activity along the sides of the roads.

KK: Yes.

GC: People are not just sitting around, staring.  This isn’t Somalia or Ethiopia where people are just sitting waiting to die.  There’s a thriving market economy, not just partly—totally underground for government purposes.

Abp Hutchison saw people “standing beside the side of road looking desperate and without hope”, while Rev Conger saw the same poor people, but they were working and apparently hopeful.  Interesting.

h/t: felix hominum

Previous related posts:

• Archbishop Hutchison: Canada could mediate at primates’ meeting
• 2007 Primates Meeting Prayer Campaign
• A man with a message