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The Anglican Church of the Province of Southern Africa, now known as the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA), is one of the provinces of the Anglican Communion that claims to walk the tightrope of the ‘middle path’ in the doctrinal and moral wars of the modern Communion.

ACSA believes that its hero status, from the leading role that it had in the anti-apartheid movement, gives it the new role in championing the indabas (discussions) which some see as essential to the future of Anglicanism. In reality, this means pressure from many bishops and lay leaders for ‘continuous conversations’ until sufficient minds are changed (for a Synod vote) to the new pan-sexual morality. If they can achieve this while convincing people in the pews that nothing is really changing and after all ‘this is what Jesus would want us to do’, all the better.

Delegates from 16 Anglican Provinces attended the sixth Global South conference at All Saints Cathedral, Cairo from 3-8 October, along with guests from Australia, Canada and England.

They issued a conference communiqué which gives strong counsel to the Church of England and foreshadows development of a structure to sustain orthodox Anglicanism. The Primates Councils of the Global South and GAFCON issued a further joint com-muniqué concerning same-sex unions.

The Council of the Anglican Provinces of Africa (CAPA) was founded in 1979 in Chilema, Malawi, by the Anglican Primates of Africa. It reaches out to individuals, communities and groups through more than 40 million dedicated Church members in the 25 African countries with an Anglican presence. That 40 million is over half the Church-going Anglicans in the world.

CAPA is headed by a council to run the Provinces’ activities. Its secretariat, headed by General Secretary Canon Grace Kaiso from Uganda, is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Canon Precious Omuku from Nigeria, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Adviser on Anglican Communion Affairs and seconded from the Anglican Communion Office, was consecrated assistant bishop in Juba, South Sudan, in a televised ceremony on 3 January at the age of 68.

Bishop Omuku will remain in London as a special envoy of the Archbishop of Canterbury and be an international advocate for the Anglican Province of Sudan and South Sudan.

South Africa witnessed two major campaigns in October and November. Tens of thousands of students protested against a rise in student fees, ‘Fees must fall’, and the Anglican Archbishop, Thabo Makoba, and the Director of the Evangelical Alliance of South Africa, the Revd Moss Ntlha, led an anti-corruption march of 6000 people.

These protests against the government by churches which had supported the anti-apartheid struggle marks an important step in the development of South Africa since freedom from apartheid came in 1994.

‘Summitry’ was a regular part of the Cold War. The USSR and the USA faced each across the Iron Curtain with separate alliances, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Warsaw Pact. Their leaders could not meet as part of one organisation, without recognising the unrecognisable: the West did not recognise the division of Berlin. In 1963 John F. Kennedy proclaimed across the Berlin Wall: ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’.

But US and Russian Presidents did meet in ‘summits’. And Archbishop Justin Welby has called a summit of Anglican Primates in Canterbury for 11–16 January 2016 in these words:

In the Western hemisphere, September saw a new year for schools, universities and many professional bodies. This year it saw the elections for the new five year term of the Church of England General Synod and four new appointees in the Anglican Communion and the Church of England take up their office and ministries.

They all come from evangelical and orthodox backgrounds and commitments.

Christians in Northern Nigeria use the word ‘Crises’ in the same way that the word ‘Troubles’ was used in Northern Ireland of a terrorist attack or other act of sectarian violence.

‘Have you heard there was another Crisis yesterday in Kanu (or Kaduna or Jos)?’ means children were abducted, or a church was torched, a pastor was killed, or a bomb exploded in a market.

Christian Aid Week in May is an established national institution. Thousands of volunteers, including me, drop red envelopes through people’s letter-boxes and collect them at the end of the week. Thousands who never attend church respond generously to appeals to help the most deprived in the world.

Christian Aid began in response to the refugee crisis at the end of the Second World War. It puts into practice the teaching of Jesus to love our neighbours and to obey him in helping the poor, the hungry and the naked. Jesus did not specify that these poor people had to be Christian.

Transition of leadership is always a testing time for organisations.

This is certainly true for the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which came into being in 2009. Following the consecration to the office of bishop of a man who was in a samesex relationship, those who could not accept this within a Christian church formed a new church, faithful to Anglican teaching. It was recognised by the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (GAFCON), which first met in 2008 in Jerusalem.

At the end of June I was privileged to attend the Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a vibrant and upbeat gathering of nearly 1000 people at St Vincent University, Pennsylvania.

It was a celebration to mark five years since its formation, to worship together and hear from the Lord, and to recommit itself as a movement under the leadership of Archbishop-Elect Foley Beach to mission based on the foundation of God’s Word.

On Sunday June 29, Canterbury Cathedral hosted a service of Celebration and Thanksgiving, marking the 150th anniversary of the consecration of Samuel Ajayi Crowther in the Cathedral as Bishop of the Niger.

Bishop Crowther had been a slave and was made the first Anglican black bishop, of the Niger. He was an evangelist and church planter and promoted ‘wholistic mission’ especially combatting the slave trade. His slogan was ‘The Bible and the Plough’. The tragedy was that the Anglican church worldwide had no further non-white bishops until Bishop Azariah in India in 1912. Crowther, who was a distinguished linguist with a DD from Oxford, was too much of a threat.

GAFCON 2013, which met at the Conference Centre and Cathedral at All Saints Nairobi, can legitimately claim to be the largest worldwide gathering of Anglicans since Lambeth 1998 which was attended by all Anglican bishops and their wives.

331 bishops and archbishops and 1,358 delegates, including over 300 women, met together, among whom 120 were from England, Ireland and Wales.