Furthermore, the problems are not remotely cultural. Nigerian Archbishop Nicholas Okoh and CANA east Bishop Julian Dobbs have no problem at all talking to each other across cultural and racial divides. They both speak English; they both know the difference between gay sex and straight sex. Really. They also both believe in the authority of Scripture to guide them and their respective churches.

The African Anglican Bishop clearly forgot the bitter lesson he got at the hands of Western gay imperialists when he was called to be Dean of the Tucker Foundation at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. His name was suddenly withdrawn by the college President because of his perceived past and present views on human sexuality. Even though ultra-liberal New Westminster Bishop Michael Ingham came to his defense, it was not enough and Tengatenga was history.

TENGATENGA: Do we know where the other is coming from before we can simply dismiss them as being ignorant. Is it because their ways of reaching decisions, either moral or otherwise, come from a different base.

VOL: Yes, we know exactly where the “other” is coming from. The problem is not ignorance, but willful rejection and disobedience of Biblical Christianity. The ONLY base is Holy Writ, not the “pluriform truths” of Frank Griswold or the agnosticism (or is it really the heresies) of a Jefferts Schori or the unnumbered resolutions of General Convention that deny the authority of Scripture. The “base” of African Anglicans is Scripture; the “base” of most Western Anglicans is one’s own interpretation of Scripture and moral relativity. The outcome will therefore be different because the base is different.

Cultural differences are negligible, for the most part non-existent, and mostly irrelevant. If you want to address cultural differences, look at Boko Haram vs the rest of Nigeria. (We are still on the African continent here.) The “perceived threats” are not perceived; they are actual and real and have resulted in the Global South Primates separating themselves from Western pansexual primates. There is not a chance in hell of their talking to each other again, unless the West repents of its ways. That apparently is not going to happen. God’s Holy Spirit will rarely, if ever, go where He is not wanted. Occasionally, there is the hammer and tong approach of God’s Spirit, but that largely happens to individuals (see St. Paul, the Wesley brothers, Chuck Colson,et al) but collectively it is not going to happen.

A dear and godly TEC bishop wrote to tell me that he believes God’s Spirit is going to move mightily at the next General Convention and convict the bishops of sin with a major turnaround in faith and morals. I wish I could believe him, I wish it was going to be true. But alas it will not. God has given North America a new beginning in the formation of the ACNA. I believe that is the work of the Holy Spirit.

TENGATENGA: Within our differences, we have committed ourselves through Christ to work together. I see my task as facilitating interpretation on both sides.

VOL: The die was cast a long time ago. We have a de facto schism, if not a de jure schism in the Anglican Communion and no amount of “facilitated interpretation” will change that. When the Diocese of West Malaysia (Province of South East Asia) refused to allow representatives of the Episcopal Church to participate in a consecration service recently, they demonstrated the fact that there has been a paradigm shift in the Anglican Communion. Perhaps the news never reached Tengatenga.

More recently, Tengatenga was in Charleston SC addressing the left over the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina (the handful of parishes that remain after the vast majority left with Bishop Mark Lawrence).

In an exclusive interview with The Post and Courier, Tengatenga spoke about the challenges of his unique post and the tensions that have led to recent turmoil throughout the Anglican Communion, especially within The Episcopal Church.

Tengatenga said a certain post-colonial arrogance in the West has run up against a newfound confidence and autonomy in Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of what in religious circles is called "the Global South". This has exacerbated political, social, and theological differences. Homosexuality and the ordination of gay bishops happen to be the issues that have triggered the current unrest, but the conflict goes much deeper, he added.

"There is the perception that (acceptance of gays and lesbians) is a symptom of the greater liberalization of the church," he continued. "The church in other parts of the world has grown without the compromises that liberalism suggests," even as liberalism appears to be dwindling in the West.

"So if this bloc is espousing an unadulterated Gospel, and this bloc is espousing a watered-down Gospel, then which one should prevail? Who is the custodian of the truth and what the church is like in the world?"

Tengatenga was describing not his particular point of view, but the general inter-continental dynamics of contemporary Anglicanism. He said the tensions between liberalism and orthodox resistance create a spiral of theological and ideological opinion traveling through a globalized world in which old colonial attitudes must fall by the wayside.

TENGATENGA: It was easier to promote diversity when diversity was limited by Western hegemony. Today, the world is more complicated and post-colonial populations are coming of age, asserting their own views and identities.

"So Anglicanism has to adapt to that reality," he noted. "How do you deal with universal diversity?"

One way, Tengatenga believes, is to remind believers that the church provides a divine, illuminated center that all Christians, no matter their views on homosexuality or any number of issues, can look to. "One cannot work ... toward disintegration of that reality, one must work toward (its) redemption."

VOL: But only if the center is Christ and His Word and not some human precept “illuminated” by what exactly?

Tengatenga said the 1998 Lambeth resolution (1:10) that affirmed marriage as an institution between a man and a woman (for which he voted) nevertheless included language calling on Anglicans to listen and learn. A door was left open; implicit in the resolution was the possibility of change.

Not true. The door of “listening” was never designed as a loophole for further discussion and acquiescence, but as a means to minister to homosexuals with the thought of redemption, healing and grace. Gays have used and manipulated this clause to make it appear that other options were available. Because of it, then PB Frank Griswold dived through the perceived hole in the resolution to pay for a listening post in London to hear the whine of gays and thus promote their agenda in the person of Philip Groves.

The lie is continually promoted to this day and has had disastrous consequences with the fabric of the Anglican Communion now completely torn with little hope of its being repaired, a situation that even the Archbishop of Canterbury noted recently in his presidential speech to Synod.

Welby believes the divisions may be too much to manage. "In many parts of the Communion there is a belief that opponents are either faithless to the tradition, or by contrast that they are cruel, judgmental, inhuman. I have to say that we are in a state so delicate that without prayer and repentance, it is hard to see how we can avoid some serious fractures."

For Tengatenga the dissonance is another reason for hope. "This shows the church is actually alive, and it shows who we are, shortcomings and all. We become more of ourselves."

Not true. It demonstrates that we have moved irrevocably apart, and with the formation of the ACNA, AMIA, ANiC, AMIE, GAFCON I and II, FCA and the Global South Primates, “becoming ourselves” is little more than narcissistic therapeutic psychobabble held together with the fig leaf of sodomy.

END