Grant: After I gave my life to Christ, there wasn't much else that I was interested in. I'd done a lot of courses for the BTh program already in my BA, and did a BA in Religious Studies, so I did an STM as my ordination degree and then went to Montreal Institute for Ministry for a year after that. I did an STM for two years and then the in-ministry year. Then I was ordained and went to Saint Barnabas in Pierrefonds [in Montreal]. After being in Saint Barnabas, I worked at the Cathedral for one year and, at the same time, I was finishing a Master's degree in New Testament studies at McGill. So I was trying to keep myself busy.

While I was studying at McGill, we had this student from Kenya who came and he told us about the needs in Africa. We became curious, so we offered ourselves to the Anglican Church of Canada for overseas ministry. We were virtually the last missionaries sent by the Anglican Church of Canada. It was felt at the time to send white people to go and help people in Africa or Asia or Latin America was a kind of cultural imposition. Actually, when we got to Africa, we discovered people didn't want us not to come, they wanted people, they wanted relationships and not just money. We had a wonderful, a transforming time in Kenya.

Wendy: Our friend from Kenya said as the church is growing, there is a need for education. But we have to come here to a completely different culture in Canada to learn. It would have been better if I could have stayed in my culture where I grew up and had an education. We thought about testing out if teaching was a thing that I'm called to. We decided we'd go over and test it out. When we got back from that time, we realized, yes, teaching does seem to be the direction of the call for Grant, so we came back so Grant could do a PhD in Toronto. Grant did his PhD thesis on how Africans read the Bible, because the different ways of perceiving the truth of God through different cultural eyes is so mutually enriching. Grant would go back to Africa to interview and do some research continually with connections with Africans, so that ordered the career that we followed.

Grant: The church has grown incredibly fast in Africa over the 100 years, but theological education has taken a while to catch up. The place I used to teach in Kenya was called St Paul's theological college. It is now St Paul's University. The theological college is now one department. It's now teaching at a Master's level; it was at a Bachelor's level when I was there. There are now quite a number of places in Africa where you can do a doctoral degree in theology, so things have changed substantially.

Widell: That was when you were in Kenya. When you were asked to do something in Ethiopia, did you start from scratch there?

Grant: Basically, yeah. Of course, Ethiopia was never a British colony. There were never western missionaries in Ethiopia trying to start Anglican churches. There were Anglican missionaries in Ethiopia, but they were working with the orthodox, trying to bring renewal to the Orthodox Churches. It's called the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It's related to the Coptic Church. The Anglican Church was working with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but they weren't planting Anglican churches, except for a few English speaking chaplaincies.

Then, during the war with Khartoum, the war between the North and the south of Sudan, refugees came across the border into western Ethiopia and they bought Anglicanism with them. They started churches in the refugee camps and then they started to move out of the camps into the villages. After they'd been there for a while, they wrote to Bishop Mouneer and said: "Dear Bishop, we're Anglicans, we're in your diocese, so you're our bishop". That was in the 1980's. Bishop Mouneer sent the rector of the church in Addis Ababa, who is British, to Gambella in the west, where we live now, to investigate and discovered about 12 churches. Then that man was made the first bishop for the Horn of Africa, and spent a lot of time going back and forth between Addis and Gambella, trying to organize the church and do some leadership training among clergy who had been ordained. They were ordained in this situation of war, ordained in refugee camps in a situation where if you could read and you could lead, then you're the pastor. So they were in desperate need of training.

Widell: The training in Gambella is due to the refugee situation?

Grant: That's where the church came from. It started with refugees. From 1991 until very recently, we just continued to strengthen the churches in the villages. Then, two years ago, in December 2013, a civil war began in South Sudan and it very quickly degenerated into an ethnic war. So 300,000 refugees have come across the border into Ethiopia since December 2013, which has doubled the population. There were 300,000 people in Gambella before; now there are 600,000. We have 90 churches now. When we got there 4 years ago, when Bishop Andrew left, which was a year before we went, there were 38 churches in Gambella.

Widell: When I was in Tunisia, I talked to the new rector, Peter Knight. It was in conversation with him, that I realized the province of Jerusalem and the Middle East doesn't ordinate women.

Grant: It's a little different. The diocese of Cyprus and the Gulf, which is part of our province, does have ordained women. The other dioceses don't. I have been a strong supporter of women's ministry. Bishop Mouneer knew that when he asked me to be the bishop. At the last synod I asked for permission, not to ordain women, but to allow women who are ordained in other provinces, to function as priests in Ethiopia. We had, for example, a Sudanese priest, a woman, come to Addis Ababa to study for a couple of years. I would have been happy to license her and give her some work to do, but that was voted down at synod. I proposed that, Bishop Mouneer allowed that proposal to go through to synod, and it was rejected.

The main reason that Egypt doesn't ordain women is its relationship with the Orthodox Churches and with the Muslims in most of our countries, who are the majority. Bishop Mouneer has had a hard time keeping positive relationships with other churches as well as with the Muslim community, because of what the West has done with regards to homosexuality. He doesn't want to put more barriers in the way of interfaith relationships than there are.

Widell: And what about the homosexuals? Practicing homosexuals cannot be ordained, but people with homosexual attraction can?

Grant: That wouldn't be a problem.

Widell: As long as they stay celibate?

Grant: Yeah.

Widell: I don't think that people in the west realize that sodomy is illegal in these countries.

Grant: (For) Most of the world, sodomy is illegal. The American ambassador to Ethiopia was asked when she arrived a couple of years ago what her priority was for her time as the ambassador, and she said gay rights. Here's a country that is one of the poorest in the world which has huge unemployment rates, massive numbers of people who are illiterate, where food security is very difficult, where there's been a massive drought this year, where many people who live on the edge, where there isn't enough health care, and that's her priority. Something is wrong with that kind of statement, especially in a country where she comes in and says her priority is to change the laws of the country in which she is a guest. There's something very wrong, that's basically what she is...so it did not go down very well.

Widell: What can you tell us about the Global South?

Grant: It's an organizational term. Bishop Mouneer is the chair. He is the chair of the Global South. I'm not sure how long he will continue doing that; he won't be the archbishop for very long. I think his second five-year term is up this year, and so he will step down as the chair of the Global South as well. The Global South was an idea; I can't remember where it emerged. The first meeting I think was in Kuala Lumpur. It was an idea that may have come out of the Anglican Consultative Council actually, to give people who live in Africa, Asia and Latin American a chance to meet together without interference from the West, and to talk together and to discuss issues they had in common. Not all of them, but what most of them have in common, is their opposition to the theological trends of the west. As well as being an organization that has met together for mutual encouragement and to talk about how to do ministry in their context, they have become a bit of a lobby group to try to bring the West back to what the Global South would consider to be theologically orthodox.

Widell: Is it meeting on a regular basis?

Grant: It's had meetings I would say on an irregular basis. The last meeting had to be cancelled, it was going to be in Tunisia, in 2015. A week before the meeting, there was an attempted assassination of a minister of the government, and the government asked us not to come. They said they couldn't ensure the protection. Sadly, the meeting was cancelled, but it's been rescheduled for October this year. I think it's going to be in Turkey, so that's not quite South.

Widell: Is that in the Church of England?

Grant: It is. It's part of the Diocese in Europe.

Widell: What about the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans?

Grant: The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans came out of what was called GAFCON, the Global Anglican Futures Conference. The first one was held in Jerusalem a few years ago, the second one was held in Nairobi, Kenya, a couple of years ago and another one will be held in 2018. Many of the members of the Global South are also members of GAFCON, but there is not a complete overlap; some of the Global South don't go to GAFCON, and a lot of the people from the Global North do go to GAFCON.

So, the so called Global North, like Australia, the Diocese of Sydney, has been very involved in GAFCON; evangelicals, charismatics and Anglo-Catholics from various parts of England and North America are part of GAFCON. The Anglican Church of North America, which is Anglicans who have left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada and have formed another Anglican body, is a part of GAFCON. GAFCON is not an idea of the Anglican Communion, of anyone in the official organs of the Anglican community, but was more or less a protest at the ordination of Gene Robinson and the ratification of that ordination and the inability of Canterbury to do anything to discipline the Episcopal Church. It was not only the ordination of Gene Robinson, but also New Westminster beginning to bless same sex unions in Vancouver. The Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church were perceived by many conservatives around the world as having departed from the norms of the faith and, therefore, many of the conservatives from around the world, mostly from the Global South, could not conceive of attending a Lambeth Conference as long as those who have departed from the faith in that way were invited to the Lambeth Conference.

Because those who consecrated Gene Robinson were invited to Lambeth, Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and a number of other provinces said: we can't attend Lambeth. GAFCON was more a kind of alternative, but now it's taken on more of a life of its own. It's not just a conference, it's now an organization. The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans and the Global South are similar, they are not identical.

Widell: I read that the ACNA is also Global South.

Grant: Yes, that's recent. The ACNA, they don't like being called ACNA because it sounds like acne but the ACNA is also a member of the Global South, so their primate meets with the Global South primates. It's interesting because there's nothing South about North America except the theology.

Widell: Do provinces like the province of Jerusalem and North Africa fit into this?

Grant: It's difficult. The Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East is a member of the Global South, and Bishop Mouneer is the archbishop of that province. There are four dioceses:

• Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa,

• Jerusalem and the Middle East, which is confusing, as it has the same name as the province, even though it's a diocese. That's been a source of some tension that Jerusalem took the same name as the province.

• Cyprus and the Gulf, which has many churches in almost entirely Muslim countries around the Gulf. Most of them are English chapels and

• the Diocese of Iran, which is a very small diocese.

Four dioceses. The provincial policy is that we do not ordain practicing homosexuals or bless same-sex unions, but there is a difference of opinion on things like membership of GAFCON. The province is not a member of GAFCON, it is a member of the Global South.

Widell: Which dioceses are members of the Global South?

Grant: The diocese of Egypt is not yet a member of GAFCON, but it may one day. None of our dioceses are a member of GAFCON, but we're in the Global South. It may happen one day, that's up to Bishop Mouneer, really, and the synod of the diocese. There's a difference of opinion not on theology but on what the best political stance should be within the community because GAFCON has been considered to be a kind of anti-Communion lobby group. Bishop Mouneer has not found it wise to join GAFCON. I think many are beginning to give up on the instruments of communion as a method of bringing orthodoxy back into the norm for the community.

Bishop Mouneer has been one of the strongest supporters of conservatives staying in the center of the communion and staying engaged with the community, but I think he may be giving up. Everything has been tried, both with Rowan Williams and with Justin Welby. Agreements that have been made have not been followed through by Canterbury. Promises have been made and then broken, time and time again. I don't think we'll ever see another primates' meeting in which all the primates will attend. I don't think we'll ever see another Lambeth conference in which all the primates will attend.

Widell: This was the last one?

Grant: That was the last one. They made some agreements in January, and they have been broken. Justin Welby says they have not been broken, but they have been. They've clearly been broken, because the Americans attended the Anglican Consultative Council and they voted on issues of Anglican policy and doctrine. The agreement with the primates was that the Americans would be suspended for three years and not vote on anything to do with doctrine or policy, but they defied that and they were not stopped. I think most of the largest provinces in the Anglican community have just about given up on any of the instruments of the communion being able to bring things back together. It's clear, I think, to most in the Southern Hemisphere, that the West has the money, the West has the power, and the West will get what it wants, regardless of what Africa, Asia, Latin America think. I don't know if we'll end up with two Anglican communities, but it looks like that's what going to happen.

Widell: Is it going to revolve around the ACNA?

Grant: The ACNA will be a part of one communion and the Episcopal Church will be a part of another and the Anglican Church of Canada. I think that's probably where it's going; I might be wrong. It may be able to hold together somehow, but humanly speaking, I don't see how it can. If two people are walking in opposite directions, something has got to give at some point. The Book of Proverbs says: how can two walk together unless they be agreed?

Jonathan Widell is a freelance Anglican writer living in Montreal, Canada