WCC NEWS: Rev. Canon Dr Emily Awino Onyango accepts new Anglican leadership role

Rev. Canon Dr Emily Awino Onyango, a Kenyan woman theologian, was consecrated on 27 March as the assistant bishop of the Bondo Anglican Diocese, making her the first woman to hold such a post in the church in east-central Africa. Photo: Henry Njagi/NCCK 30 March 2021 By Fredrick Nzwili The consecration of Onyango—59 years old—comes 32 years after the election of Bishop Barbara Harris in the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts in the USA. Harris was the first woman bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion, while Onyango is the second female Anglican bishop in Africa after Bishop Ellinah Wamukoya of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa. Wamukoya was elected in 2012.  “The journey to join the ministry has been a long one with wonderful memories such as the fear that I would not manage to carry the Chalice and administer Holy Communion. (I) am grateful to my family, my late parents.... and.... sisters and brothers…. who provided all the support I needed to grow in ministry,” said Onyango in her acceptance speech.  She said the bishop had appointed her as an assistant to help build a vibrant and well-managed church in line with the diocese's vision and mission.  “It’s a great challenge, but I want to do things in a different way to bring about change,” Onyango, mother of two, said. “I hope my work can inspire more women to take leadership in the church.”  According to Onyango, the current times of pandemics such as HIV and AIDS have brought about complexities in culture and theology.  “Today, we are living in the COVID-19 challenge. This has brought to light, like HIV and AIDS, ‘shadow pandemics’ and gender stereotyping that lead to many social, economic, spiritual and physical deaths,” said Onyango. “The challenge for leaders at all fronts is the need (for) new ways of responding to these deaths from a solid theological foundation…”  For Onyango, the laity and clergy who are responding to the post-pandemic challenges need to learn new ways. According to the priest, the immediate task will be to develop a curriculum for the training of clergy and lay people, address gender-based violence and also focus on the empowerment of children.  “The training and learning we require and which I propose… is inclusive of technology. How do we do pastoral care through technology to deal with the shadow pandemics of gender-based violence, sexual violence producing child and teenage mothers, pandemics of mental illnesses exposed and not exposed, anxiety, depression, and suicide?” she said. A scholar and a researcher, Onyango had been teaching church history at Saint Paul’s University in the Limuru area near Nairobi. She obtained her doctorate from the University of Wales in the United Kingdom, her master’s from the Asian Centre of Theological Studies and a bachelor of divinity from the Saint Paul’s United College, now Saint Paul’s University College. She was made a deacon in 1994, a priest in 1996 and a canon in the Diocese of Bondo in 2018.  She has taught in Saint John’s School of Theology in Kokise in Siaya, Western Kenya and Saint Andrew’s Kabare, two Anglican institutions where she rose to become the academic dean and later the principal.  “This has opened a door for inclusion of women in spiritual nurture of the society and leadership in the church. Canon…follows in the steps of women in the Bible who excelled in providing leadership to the nation…,” said Rev. Canon Chris Kinyanjui, general secretary of the National Council of Churches in Kenya.  Fredrick Nzwili is a journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya.   See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC acting general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, from the Orthodox Church in Romania. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches 150 route de Ferney Geneve 2 1211 Switzerland

WCC NEWS: Anglican-Orthodox webinar explores history along with common ground for the future

In the third in a series of webinars on bilateral dialogues, a discussion of “Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue: History, Results, Reception” as well as the Canterbury Statement “Stewards of Creation: A Hope-Filled Ecology” offered an overview of history as well as a vision for the future. Photo: Nikos Kosmidis/WCC 11 March 2021 Rev. Prof. Dr Jennifer Wasmuth, director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, moderated the webinar. “Dialogues are valuable in themselves as places of deeper understanding and also as a witness to the world,” she said. Metropolitan Athenagoras of Belgium, Ecumenical Patriarchate, offered an overview of the context between Anglican and Orthodox Christians. “The Orthodox and Anglican churches maintained friendly scientific and diplomatic relations from the beginning,” he said. "I think we have the duty to continue to work together.” Most Rev. Dr Richard Clarke, retired Archbishop of Armagh, Anglican Communion, reflected on how bilateral dialogue describes both agreement and divergence. “I rather like to describe it as being like a Venn diagram,” he said. “What is the common ground? What, in Venn diagram terms, is the common set?” In the second half of the webinar, discussion centered around “Stewards of Creation,” which considers the implications of the Christian understanding of the human person as part of creation. “Stewards of Creation,” a statement on ecology jointly published by the Anglican Communion and the Orthodox Churches in October 2020, builds on the commission’s previous work, “In the Image and Likeness of God: A Hope-Filled Anthropology.” The document was introduced and presented by the co-secretaries of the commission. Very Rev. Dr Protopresbyter Christos Christakis gave an overview of the content of “Stewards of Creation,” describing its six sections. “The first one establishes the goodness of creation and actually builds the concept of the world as a sacrament,” he said, and continued with a summary. Very Rev. Dr William Adam reflected that “Stewards of Creation” is an important milestone in a range of Anglican-Orthodox dialogues. “There is much in common but also real differences,” he said.   Webinar - “Anglican-Orthodox Dialogue: History, Results, Reception” See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC acting general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, from the Orthodox Church in Romania. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches 150 route de Ferney Geneve 2 1211 Switzerland

WCC NEWS: Orthodox and Anglican appeals from 1920 remain inspiration for unity

Metropolitan Germanos of Thyateira, one of the first six
presidents of the WCC at its foundation in 1948,
Photo: WCC Archives

One of the foundational moments in the modern ecumenical movement is an encyclical letter issued 100 years ago by the Ecumenical Patriarchate on 1 January 1920. As its opening words state, it was addressed “Unto the Churches of Christ everywhere” and sent as a letter to the leaders of key Christian churches. Its first words are an appeal to “Love one another earnestly from the heart,” quoting from 1 Peter 1:22.

The thrust of the letter is the suggestion that doctrinal differences among Christian churches do not, or at least should not, prevent “rapprochement” between Christians. Though making clear their concern about intra-Christian proselytization, the authors of the letter then go on to speak warmly and positively about the need for Christians of different churches to consider each other not as strangers, but as members of the same family and body of Christ – spelling out a number of practical ways in which this might be demonstrated publicly.

Several references in the letter make it clear that the authors were influenced in part by the then recent establishment of the League of Nations. They considered this presented a challenge that religious authorities needed to keep up with; religious leaders should not “continue to fall piteously behind the political authorities, who, truly applying the spirit of the Gospel and of the teaching of Christ, have under happy auspices already set-up the so-called League of Nations in order to defend justice and cultivate charity and agreement between the nations.”

Widespread influence

In turn this letter from the Ecumenical Patriarchate clearly influenced some other significant Christian traditions. One of the recipients of the letter was the Archbishop of Canterbury and at the meeting of the Lambeth Conference later in 1920 an “Appeal to all Christian People” was issued by the bishops of the Anglican Communion in a resolution headed “Reunion of Christendom.”

The motif of penitence for the division of the Christian Church strongly underpinned the content of the Anglican appeal, as it spoke of “our share in the guilt of . . . crippling the Body of Christ and hindering the activity of his Spirit.” It argued that “The times call us to new outlook and new measures. The faith cannot be adequately apprehended and the battle of the Kingdom cannot be worthily fought while the body is divided, and is thus unable to grow up into the fullness of the life of Christ.” Rather more definitely than the document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate the Lambeth Appeal argued for the formal reunion of churches (though explicitly seeing the conservation of episcopacy as a condition of such reunion). Undoubtedly it gave an impetus to the schemes that eventually led to the formation of the united churches, first in South India, then in North India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Looking back

Looking back on both documents from the perspective of 100 years one can give thanks for what has been achieved. Many – though not all – of the practical suggestions offered in the letter of the Ecumenical Patriarchate have formed a regular part of the programmatic work of the World Council of Churches (WCC) since its establishment in 1948, Indeed a key architect of the Patriarchate’s letter, Metropolitan Germanos of Thyateira played an ongoing role in both the Faith and Order and Life and Work movements of the 1920s and 1930s, and was elected as one of the first six presidents of the WCC at its foundation in 1948. And although the steam seems slightly to have run out of organizational unity schemes, such as were envisaged by the Lambeth Appeal, the united churches, which were part of its initial fruit, continue to bear institutional witness to the importance of Christ’s prayer of John 17, “that they may all be one . . . that the world may believe.”

Just as there were connections made between the Letter from the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the establishment of the League of Nations (something also true, though less explicit, with regard to the Lambeth Appeal), so later there would be a congruence between the establishment of the WCC and the United Nations, and to this day the WCC works closely and in partnership with many of the UN agencies.

But I note this with a certain wry sadness. Back in 1920 the hoped for secular spirit of internationalism provided an impetus to Christian unity. There were – and still are – many hurdles on both roads ahead. But now in 2020 so many countries, including my own (which in January this year left the European Union), are turning towards forms of nationalist populism, the churches perhaps need to repay that original debt from 1920, by continuing to hold before the eyes of the world an expansive vision, which summons the secular world to a generous inclusivism, “for the healing of the nations.”

* Clare Amos is a former programme coordinator for Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation at the World Council of Churches, and a former director of theological studies in the Anglican Communion Office in London.

“Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere,” Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 1920

“Appeal to All Christian People,” Lambeth Conference 1920

Read also:

1920 (1): A beautiful letter from the Church of Constantinople

1920 (2): “God wills fellowship”: The Anglican Bishops’ Appeal to Unity

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 550 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC acting general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, from the Orthodox Church in Romania.

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