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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.

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.