Tanzania will not consecrate women priests as bishops, Archbishop Valentino Mokiwa said last week, upon his return home to Dar es Salaam from the Gafcon conference in Jerusalem.Archbishop Mokiwa said his church did not accept the theological or sociological arguments put forward by supporters of women bishops, and was opposed to the innovation.
Evangelized by the Universities Mission to Central Africa, the churchmanship of the Province of Tanzania is predominantly Anglo-Catholic, but with evangelically inclined dioceses in Central and Western Tanganyika.
However, both wings of the church oppose the introduction of women bishops, and Archbishop Mokiwa said he would not support such moves.
Archbishop Mokiwa also rejected suggestions that the Gafcon movement was schismatic. ''It is not a breakaway church,” he said. ''I will go for the Lambeth conference on July 17 and that is evidence that we are not breaking away,” he said.
Gafcon came “together because we were uncomfortable with the state of communion,'' he said, stating there had been a failure of leadership at the top levels of the church. Archbishop Mokiwa said he hoped to raise these issues with Archbishop Rowan Williams at Lambeth.
Archbishop Mokiwa is one of the key leaders of the Communion Partners Programme --- a plan for delegated Episcopal oversight unfolding in the Episcopal Church that seeks to work within the existing canonical structures of the church while supporting embattled traditionalists.
However, other Tanzanian bishops have been in talks with Anglo-Catholic leaders in the US and England, exploring possibilities of a “flying bishop” under Tanzanian oversight for traditionalists.
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