Congo to give a temporary home to the AMiA: The Church of England Newspaper, April 29, 2012 p 7

Archbishop Henri Isingoma

The Anglican Province of the Congo will give the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) a temporary refuge while it searches for an ecclesiastical home, the Primate of the Congo Archbishop Henri Isingoma.

In an email to the Church of England Newspaper, the Congolese archbishop stated “we have finally agreed to temporarily welcome AMiA in our Province as a result of a fruitful discussion as a first step of our ongoing dialogue.”

He added that the Congo was also rethinking the Anglican Covenant and Windsor Report, moving on from its January 2012 position.

The province would be “silent until the next Provincial Assembly scheduled for June 2012” on the Covenant, the archbishop said, noting “we appreciate the role played by the Windsor Report and the Anglican Covenant as reliable ways that helped the Anglican Communion to resist to the division for a long time but at the moment, looking at the way the crisis is deepening, I think they seem to gradually lose ground for a secure future of an effective communion among Anglicans worldwide,” the archbishop said.

On 13 April 2012 Bishop Chuck Murphy announced the AMiA had been received by the Congo.  The CEN has since been able to confirm the move, but the 6 April 2012 invitation given to the AMiA set a number of conditions for the breakaway American group.

The oversight offered by the Congo would be temporary, and with the understanding that the “provisional attachment of your Mission to the Province of the Anglican Church of Congo will not in any way break its long date relationship with the sister-Province of Rwanda and other missionary agencies in the USA …”

The AMiA must also engage in a “reconciliation process” with “other entities where our Province intends to play a major role.”

Archbishop Isingoma told CEN “we remain aware that at the beginning of their mission there were some uncontrolled and not careful enough actions and feelings contrary to the Anglican tradition.”

However, “this seems to have tremendously improved with time and calls out for them to be recognized as mission partners.  That is why, by compassion and hoping that some possible positive results, even in the far future, will come out from different dialogue processes, we couldn’t appreciate the rejection of their church mission action as expressed in their petition. We really felt unkind not only to welcome them at a time of distress in order to offer to them more opportunities to continue with the dialogue within the wide Anglican Communion,” the archbishop said.

“We agree to welcome you in our Province as you request in your petition while you move on in normalizing your position as a plausible Anglican missionary society,” the archbishop told the AMiA said.  The “nature and modality” of the transfer will be discussed at a forthcoming meeting in London, he added.