Anglican Communion Conflicts and Realignment
The former primate of the church, Peter Akinola, has become prominent in recent years as a leader of conservatives within the Anglican Communion. After the 2003 ordination of a noncelibate gay man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA), he threatened that it might split the Anglican Communion.
As a first step, the church declared itself in "impaired communion" with the ECUSA on 21 November 2003. In September 2005 the Church of Nigeria reworded its constitution to redefine, from its point of view, the Anglican Communion. No longer would it be "Provinces in communion with the See of Canterbury" but instead "all Anglican Churches, Dioceses and Provinces that hold and maintain the ‘Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacrament and Discipline of the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church’".
Since one of Akinola's demands, the expulsion of the ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada from the Anglican Communion, is very controversial, some commentators saw this rewording as a portent of a forthcoming attempt to set up a rival Anglican Communion. On November 12, 2005 the church entered into a "Covenant of Concordat" with the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province of America, two groups outside the Anglican Communion which do not recognize the ECUSA.
In October and December 2006, several churches in Virginia declared themselves out of communion with the ECUSA due to their opposition to the ordination of Robinson and the election of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and joined the Church of Nigeria through the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a mission originally started by the Church of Nigeria to support Nigerian Anglicans in the United States. It now mostly consists of non-Nigerian, theologically conservative American Anglicans, and has two American bishops; (Bishop Martyn Minns and a suffragan bishop, David Bena), who are simultaneously bishops of the Church of Nigeria. In March 2007, CANA announced plans to elect additional American bishops in September 2007.
The Church of Nigeria is currently in full communion with the orthodox Anglican Church in North America, founded in June 2009, of which the CANA is a network. Their first diocese is the Missionary Diocese of the Trinity, affiliated both to the Church of Nigeria and the ACNA, inaugurated in 19 August 2012 by Archbishop Nicholas Okoh.
Read more about this topic: Church Of Nigeria
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