Episcopal Press and News
Nigerian Church Consecrates Eight New Missionary Bishops for Anglican Communion's Fastest Growing Province
Episcopal News Service. April 26, 1990 [90114]
Michael R. Barwell, Editor of Interchange in the Diocese of Southern Ohio.
The Anglican Church of Nigeria will open the Decade of Evangelism by consecrating eight new missionary bishops in the vast northern section of Africa's most populous nation.
The Most Rev. Joseph Abiodun Adetiloye, Archbishop of Nigeria, consecrated the new bishops on Sunday, April 29, during a massive outdoor service in the still-uncompleted capital city in the geographical center of the West African nation. The eight new dioceses will place an official Anglican presence in each of the northern states which, until this time, have been included in the three large dioceses of Jos, Kano, and Kaduna.
The archbishop late last year targeted the north, which contains Nigeria's largest Muslim population, for new evangelism efforts and to provide each state with an Anglican bishop who can be a spokesman for the church on local governmental and societal issues.
In an interview at the Archbishop's Palace in Lagos, the seat of the Nigerian church, Archbishop Adetiloye said that his criteria for the new bishops was that they must speak the local language, have been born or lived in the area, and must relate well to the people.
Abuja, the site of the consecrations, is itself a new missionary diocese created last year. Abuja's bishop, the Right Rev. Peter Akinola, is a wellknown linguist and speaks all of Nigeria's 27 native languages and several foreign languages, the archbishop said. He added that next year the Nigerian church, an independent province of the Anglican Communion, hopes to start the Crowther Memorial Language School, where all new priests will be trained to speak the three main Nigerian languages, Yoruba, Ibo, and Hausa, as well as some dialects. The new school will be named in honor of the Right Rev. S.A. Crowther, the missionary bishop of the Niger Territories from 1864 to 1890.
The consecration date itself is a memorial event to the Church Mission Society bishop. On April 29, 1865, Crowther founded the Niger Delta Mission as part of the church of West Africa.
The Nigerian church is the fastest-growing province of the Anglican Communion, containing an estimated 2.7 million members in a national population now estimated at more than 120 million. There are 55-60 million Nigerian Christians, said the Very Rev. J. Akin Omoyajowo, general secretary of the province. He estimated that the major Christian denominations are Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Methodist, although the largest Christian growth in recent years has been in so-called Pentecostal churches, heavily funded by mission groups from the United States.
The Anglican Church has responded by appointing canon missioners or evangelists who sponsor crusades in all areas of the country. Many of the parishes in larger cities, such as Lagos or Ibadan, have congregations with 1,000 adult members and as many as 2,000 children attending services every Sunday.
Such rapid growth also has its inconveniences. In the Diocese of Ibadan, Nigeria's largest inland city, the Right Rev. G.I. Olajide said that he now has only 124 clergy and 128 full-time lay workers to serve 498 congregations. He recently imposed a limit of 200 confirm ands when he visits parishes. "I waslaying hands on four at a time for long hours," he said. "It was losing the personal touch."
In another diocese, a lay worker reported that a bishop baptized hundreds in the morning and confirmed hundreds more parishioners in the afternoon, so tiring the bishop that assistants had to hold up the bishop's arms during the service.
The new bishops will be operating in the predominantly Muslim north where Christian-Muslim tensions have erupted in recent years, most notably in 1987 in the university city of Kaduna. The result was riots and the burning of several churches, vicarages, and the Anglican seminary. Although tensions have eased since then, other areas, such as Sokoto State, are potential areas of renewed tension. The new ruler of Sokoto, in the northwest portion of the country, has recently declared he will form a Muslim sultanate and actively promote the spread of Islam.
"That is okay," Adetiloye said with a smile. "He is a good friend of mine, and I will personally take the new bishop to him and introduce them."