What Is Anglicanism?

by Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi

from First Things (August/September 2007). 

Few would deny that the Anglican Communion is in
crisis. The nature of that crisis, however, remains a
question. Is it about sexuality? Is it a crisis of
authority—who has it and who doesn’t? Have Anglicans
lost their commitment to the via media, epitomized by
the Elizabethan Settlement, which somehow declared a
truce between Puritan and Catholic sentiments in the
Church of England? Is it a crisis of globalization? A
crisis of identity? 

I have the privilege of serving as archbishop of the
Church of Uganda, providing spiritual leadership and
oversight to more than nine million Anglicans. Uganda
is second only to Nigeria as the largest Anglican
province in the world, and most of our members are
fiercely loyal to their global communion. But however
we come to understand the current crisis in
Anglicanism, this much is apparent: The younger
churches of Anglican Christianity will shape what it
means to be Anglican. The long season of British
hegemony is over. 

The preface to the Book of Common Prayer states, “It
is a most invaluable part of that blessed ‘liberty
wherewith Christ hath made us free,’ that in his
worship different forms and usages may without offense
be allowed, provided the substance of the Faith be
kept entire; and that, in every Church, what cannot be
clearly determined to belong to Doctrine must be
referred to Discipline.” 
And yet, despite this clear distinction, contemporary
Anglicans are in danger of confusing doctrine and
discipline. For four hundred years Anglicanism
represented both the theological convictions of the
English Reformation and the culture of the Christian
Church in Britain. The sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Anglican divines gave voice to
both: English Reformation theology (doctrine) and
British culture (discipline). The Anglican churches
around the world, however, have ended the assumption
that Anglican belief and practice must be clothed in
historic British culture. 

Take, for instance, the traditional Anglican
characteristics of restraint and moderation. Are they
part of doctrine, as Anglican theology, or discipline,
as British culture? At the recent consecration of the
fourth bishop of the Karamoja diocese, the preacher
was the bishop of a neighboring diocese whose people
have historically been at odds with the Karimajong
(principally because of cattle rustling). At the end
of his sermon, the preacher appealed for peace between
the two tribes and began singing a song of peace. One
by one, members of the congregation began singing. By
the end of the song, the attending bishops, members of
Parliament, and Karimajong warriors were all in the
aisles dancing. 

The vision of Christ breaking down the dividing walls
of hostility between these historic rivals was so
compelling that joy literally broke out in our midst.
At that point in the service, I dare say, we were
hardly restrained or moderate in our enthusiasm for
the hope of peace given to us in Jesus Christ. Did we
fail, then, in being Anglican in that moment? Was the
spontaneity that overcame us a part of doctrine or of
discipline? Surely, African joy in song and dance is
an expression of discipline. Yet our confidence that
the Word of God remains true, and our confidence that
it transforms individuals and communities—all this is
part of doctrine: the substance of the Faith that
shall not change but shall be “kept entire.” 

In the Church of Uganda, Anglicanism has been built on
three pillars: martyrs, revival, and the historic
episcopate. Yet each of these refers back to the Word
of God, the ground on which all is built: The faith of
the martyrs was maintained by the Word of God, the
East African revival brought to the people the Word of
God, and the historic ordering of ministry was
designed to advance the Word of God. 
So let us think about how the Word of God works in the
worldwide Anglican Communion. We in the Church of
Uganda are convinced that Scripture must be reasserted
as the central authority in our communion. The basis
of our commitment to Anglicanism is that it provides a
wider forum for holding each other accountable to
Scripture, which is the seed of faith and the
foundation of the Church in Uganda. 

The Bible cannot appear to us a cadaver, merely to be
dissected, analyzed, and critiqued, as has been the
practice of much modern higher biblical criticism.
Certainly we engage in biblical scholarship and
criticism, but what is important to us is the power of
the Word of God precisely as the Word of God—written
to bring transformation in our lives, our families,
our communities, and our culture. For us, the Bible is
“living and active, sharper than a double-edged sword,
it penetrates to dividing soul and spirits, joints and
marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the
heart” (Heb. 4:12). The transforming effect of the
Bible on Ugandans has generated so much conviction and
confidence that believers were martyred in the defense
of the message of salvation through Jesus Christ that
it brought. 

For the Ugandan church to compromise God’s call of
obedience to the Scriptures would be the undoing of
more than 125 years of Christianity through which
African life and society have been transformed.
Traditional African society was solely an oral
culture, which limited its ability to share ideas
beyond the family level. We couldn’t write our
language, and there was nothing to read in our
language. The first converts in Uganda were called
“readers” because they could read the Bible, the first
book available in our own languages. Because of the
Bible, our languages have been enriched and recorded.
For the first time, we heard God in our own languages.
To this day, our people bring their Bibles to church
and follow along with the readings. 
In some traditional African societies, women were
denied benefits because of various superstitions. For
example, some societies believed that if women ate
chicken they would grow beards. In that culture,
women, then, never ate chicken. When the Bible came
alive during the East African Revival of the 1930s,
the Holy Spirit convicted men of such sins of
oppression and began the progressive empowerment of
women that is continuing today. So, for another
example, the African tradition of polygamy and divorce
at will left many women neglected and often destitute.
The biblical teaching of marriage between one man and
one woman in a loving, lifelong relationship liberated
not only women but also the institution of marriage
and family. 

For many of our tribes, revenge was esteemed as a
virtue. If a family had been violated, the first
instinct was to gather the clan, arm them, and seek
revenge on the family and clan of the offender. In
such realms, the Bible has had a profoundly
transforming effect, given the teaching of Jesus on
forgiveness. Traditional Ugandan society was driven by
family loyalties, with little basis for loving those
beyond your blood ties. The Bible brought the teaching
of Jesus to love our neighbors and even our enemies.
And, while there remain remnants of the old culture,
the Bible has given us a moral and spiritual basis for
transforming culture. 

Traditional African objects of worship were limited to
families and clans. This created a context in which no
central beliefs could be held or shared beyond the
ethnic setting. Yet ancestral spirits and such natural
phenomena as earthquakes, lakes, and mountains could
not satisfy the Africans’ quest for the living God.
The Bible’s revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit brought hope for deliverance from the fatalism
that resulted from worshiping created things rather
than the Creator and Redeemer. 

The gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed to us through
the Word of God enables warring tribes to begin to
coexist and to embrace neighborliness. Indeed, the
Word of God opened the way for the nation of Uganda to
be forged. When evangelists from Buganda (in central
Uganda) traveled to tribes in the east, west, and
north, a new day dawned in our country. Instead of
being armed with spears, they came armed only with the
Word of God. Instead of a message of war and
destruction, they delivered a message of Good News
from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

As the Bible came with the authority of Christ, it
revealed a God that is greater than the evil spirits
and the kingdom of darkness that controlled so many
people’s lives. In Uganda, the Bible has grown into a
cherished source of authority that is central to
Christian faith, practice, and mission. For all God’s
people, obedience to this Bible is the source of
confidence, abundant life, and joy. It is an absolute
treasure that no one can take away. Isaiah, later
quoted by Peter, wrote, “The grass withers and the
flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever”
(Isa. 40:8; 1 Pet. 1:24-25). The grass on which our
cattle feed, the grass from which our roofs are
thatched—all this withers. But the Word of God has
withstood the test of time. The Bible is at the heart
of our Anglican identity, and we Ugandan Anglicans
joyfully submit to its life-giving and transforming
authority. 
With this knowledge of the centrality of the authority
of Scripture in Anglicanism, therefore, we understand
ourselves to be in the mainstream of Anglicanism—from
Thomas Cranmer to John Stott. The evangelical
tradition in the Church of England produced William
Wilberforce, whose lifelong mission to eradicate
slavery and the slave trade liberated our people. It
produced Charles Simeon, who inspired the beginning of
mission societies that shared the gospel of Jesus
Christ with us and many others. It produced Bishop
Tucker and other missionaries, who risked their lives
to come to Uganda. These and many more Anglican
evangelicals brought us the legacy of the Protestant
Reformation in England. Their commitment to salvation
through faith in Jesus Christ as revealed in Scripture
has continued among us to this day. 

Such a commitment—to the authority of Scripture as a
defining mark of Anglican identity—was why the vast
majority of bishops from the Global South and I
insisted that Lambeth Resolution 1.10, the 1998
decision on human sexuality, include the words
“incompatible with Holy Scripture” when describing
homosexual practice. This standard of Holy Scripture
is why we continue to uphold Lambeth 1.10 each time we
meet. 

In the current Anglican crisis, we are at risk of
losing our biblical foundation. As bishops, we are
constrained, in the words of the 1662 Ordinal, “to
banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous
and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word,” and we
are determined “out of the same Holy Scriptures to
instruct the people committed to [our] charge and to
teach or maintain nothing, as necessary to eternal
salvation, but that which [we] shall be persuaded may
be concluded and proved by the same.” 

From Thomas Cranmer to Richard Hooker, from the
Thirty-Nine Articles and the 1662 Ordinal to the 1998
Lambeth Conference, the authority of Holy Scripture
has always held a central and foundational role in
Anglican identity. This is true for the Anglican
church in Uganda; and, if it is not true for the
entire Anglican Communion, then that communion will
cease to be an authentic expression of the Church of
Jesus Christ. 

Tertullian’s oft-quoted statement “The blood of the
martyrs is the seed of the church” is the story of the
faith in Uganda. On his first visit to Uganda in 1885,
the Englishman and missionary bishop James Hannington
was martyred as he tried to cross the river Nile into
central Uganda. Bishop Hannington was coming to Uganda
from Kenya and decided to approach the Buganda kingdom
from the east. Unfortunately, unknown to him, there
was a Baganda belief that its enemies would approach
the kingdom from the eastern route. So the king, the
Kabaka, sent warriors to meet this encroaching enemy.
Before they killed Hannington, on October 29, 1885, he
is reported to have said, “Tell the Kabaka that I die
for Uganda.” 


Less than a year later, on June 3, 1886, the king of
Buganda ordered the killing of twenty-six of his court
pages because they refused his homosexual advances and
would not recant their belief in King Jesus. They cut
and carried the reeds that were then wrapped around
them and set on fire in an execution pit. As the
flames engulfed them, these young martyrs sang songs
of praise. Far from eliminating Christianity, the
martyrdoms had the opposite effect: If the faith of
these martyrs was worth dying for, then it must also
be something worth living for. Christianity began to
spread like wildfire. 

Martyrdom, however, is not a thing of the past. As
recently as 1977, the archbishop of the Church of
Uganda, Janani Luwum, was martyred at the hands of
Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Archbishop Luwum spoke out
boldly against the injustices and atrocities of Amin.
This, however, ushered in a swift and merciless
reaction from Amin. The archbishop’s home was
plundered during a 1:30 a.m. raid on February 5, 1977.
This brought a piercing censure of Amin from the
Ugandan House of Bishops. Church leaders were summoned
to Kampala and then ordered to leave, one by one.
Luwum turned to Bishop Festo Kivengere and said: “They
are going to kill me. I am not afraid.” 

On February 16, 1977, Amin had Archbishop Luwum
arrested on trumped-up charges of treason. Thrown into
a cell with several other political prisoners, the
archbishop said, “Let us pray.” Then they were taken
to Amin himself, brutally beaten, and shot to death.
“While the opportunity is there, I preach the Gospel
with all my might, and my conscience is clear before
God that I have not sided with the present government
which is utterly self-seeking,” Janani Luwum wrote. “I
have been threatened many times. Whenever I have the
opportunity I have told the president the things the
churches disapprove of. God is my witness.” 
The influence of these martyrs on the faith of
Anglican Christians in Uganda cannot be
underestimated. The Church of Uganda has been built
not only on the apostles and prophets, with Christ
Jesus as the cornerstone, but also on its martyrs. The
faith and moral vision for which our martyrs died can
never be denied by the Church of Uganda. Their courage
and complete confidence in the God of the Bible and
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has left
an indelible mark on Christianity in Uganda. 
The experience of martyrdom is not, however, unique to
Uganda. The faith of the Ugandan martyrs is the same
faith that took Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley to the
stake. Latimer’s dying words to Ridley were, “Be of
good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we
shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in
England, as I trust shall never be put out.” Yet, as
the light of the gospel continues to dim in the
Western world, are we not betraying our founding
fathers and the Reformation Faith for which they died?


Do we not need a revival of the martyrs’ confidence in
the Word of God? A revival in the conviction that this
Faith that was worth dying for is the same Faith worth
living for today? The heroes of Anglicanism throughout
the world are our martyrs. 
In 1935, fifty-eight years after the first
missionaries arrived in Uganda, a revival broke out in
northeastern Rwanda and rapidly spread throughout
Uganda, beginning in the western part of the country.
At that time, much of Anglicanism in Uganda was
nominal. The missionaries had emphasized liturgical
and formal expressions of faith, grounded in the
catechism. When the East African Revival broke out,
the nominal African Christians realized that what they
had learned from the missionaries through the
catechism and liturgy actually made a difference in
their lives. 

The influence of the revival cannot be overemphasized.
The Ugandan Anglican identity was forged through God’s
gift to us of the East African Revival. Genuine
repentance, for instance—in which people turned from
their old ways of believing and behaving and turned to
embrace the God of the Bible and his moral vision—was
a fruit of the revival in people’s lives. The
missionaries had challenged us to dispense with the
fatalism of our traditional African religions. The
result, though, was eliminating only the outward and
superficial symbols, without touching the roots of
those deep beliefs. Gone from our worship were our
traditional drums, yet in our hearts people still
invoked our ancestors and other spirits. When the East
African Revival swept through our villages, it swept
away the old roots; our people turned from its lies
and replaced them with the truth of Jesus Christ in
the gospel. There was true repentance and conversion,
and the fruit of repentance was evident in people’s
lives. The revival established a new zeal for
enthusiastic holiness in African Christianity. 

In Uganda, a Christian is one who has a testimony—a
story of what their life was like before a living
relationship with Jesus Christ; how they heard the
message of Jesus Christ and how their life has changed
since surrendering their lives to him. The First
Letter of John states: “This is the message we have
heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in
him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have
fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie
and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the
light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with
one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies
us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we
confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will
forgive us our sins and purify us from all
unrighteousness” (1 John 1:5-9). 

The East African Revival taught us about living
transparently with one another and before God about
our sin. To “walk in the light” is to be eager to
confess our sin publicly, to receive forgiveness, and
to be restored into the fellowship of the community.
The revival spawned thousands of local lay-led
fellowships in which Christians gathered weekly to
pray and praise, to share testimonies, and to walk in
the light with one another. 

Initially, the revival was met by resistance from the
missionaries and other church leaders because it
challenged the status quo of nominal Anglicanism. Over
time, however, the revival became part of mainstream
Anglicanism in Uganda; today most of our bishops and
other church leaders are products of the East African
Revival. 

Another notable effect of the East African Revival on
Anglican identity in Uganda is a renewed passion for
mission and evangelism. The goodness of the gospel
cannot be hid under a bushel; it cannot be whispered
but must be shouted from the rooftops. Even as
archbishop, when I make a pastoral visit to a diocese,

I go as an evangelist. When I am invited to speak, I
preach the gospel and invite people to come forward
and give their lives to Christ. Every diocese in our
church organizes regular evangelistic outreaches
within the villages and markets in their communities.
Ugandan Anglicans are not ashamed of the gospel,
“because it is the power of God for the salvation of
everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). 
Ugandan Anglicans are not unique in their experience
of revival. The Great Awakenings in America, the
revivals catalyzed by John Wesley in England, the
Welsh revival, and countless others around the world
have been a part of Anglican experience. Even the
charismatic renewals in the late twentieth century are
part of this revival stream within Anglicanism. 

Theologically, Ugandan Anglicans share much in common
with our evangelical brothers and sisters, yet we have
retained the historic threefold order of ministry:
bishops, priests, and deacons. This, of course, is
reminiscent of the English Reformation, which
theologically had much in common with the continental
Reformers while retaining the historic episcopate. 

And yet our commitment to the episcopate is not just
about the good order of the Church. As bishops are
successors to the apostles, so our focus through the
historic episcopate is on apostolic faith and
ministry. A bishop is ordained in apostolic succession
to be the apostolic presence in the community. A
bishop, therefore, is the ongoing presence and voice
of the apostles. He is our link to the early Church,
and this link between bishop and apostolicity gives
Anglicans our transcultural identity. The implication,
therefore, is that the essence of Anglican identity is
to be apostolic. More than a simple unbroken line of
consecrations, we are to be apostolic in nature:
faithful to the apostolic message, submitted to
apostolic authority in Scripture, committed to
apostolic mission and ministry, and devoted to
apostolic worship. 

In short, an apostolic church is a missionary church.
A bishop is the focus for the mission of the Church,
following in the footsteps of Jesus, who commissioned
his apostles to preach, to teach, and to heal. The
bishop’s apostolic ministry starts with evangelism,
because transformation begins with the individual. The
bishop himself must have a testimony and set a
direction in his diocese for evangelism and church
planting. When the early missionaries came in the late
1800s, their understanding of mission was not only
preaching but also education and health ministry. So,
combined with our churches, there are schools and
health clinics, all under the apostolic oversight of
the bishop, whose charge is to preach (evangelism), to
teach (schools), and to heal (health clinics). 
The incarnation of Jesus Christ has been described as
the “scandal of particularity.” The One who came, as
Savior of all, was born as a particular man—Jesus of
Nazareth—at a particular place, with a particular
ethnicity, and at a particular time. Our particular
experience of Anglicanism in Uganda, too, has some
universal applicability. The pillars of Anglican
identity in Uganda—the martyrs, revival, and the
historic episcopate, all resting on the Word of
God—suggest themes with historic precedent from the
formative years of Anglicanism in Britain. 

Consider, first, the centrality of the Word of God in
faith and life. No honest reading of historic Anglican
formularies and the English Reformers can deny the
central place of Scripture in Anglicanism. Our
worldwide communion is in danger today of confusing
doctrine and discipline. The various disciplines of
the autonomous provincial churches can be
contextualized, but doctrine, based on Scripture,
transcends all such cultural distinctions. 

We would not be facing the crisis in the Anglican
Communion if we had upheld the basic Reformation
convictions about Holy Scripture: its primacy,
clarity, sufficiency, and unity. Part of the genius of
the Reformation was its insistence that the Word of
God and the liturgy be in the language of the
people—that the Bible could be read and understood by
the simplest plowboy. The insistence from some
Anglican circles (mostly in the Western world) on
esoteric interpretations of Scripture borders on
incipient Gnosticism that has no place in historic or
global Anglicanism. 

At the Anglican Communion’s Global Conference on
Dynamic Evangelism in Kanuga in 1995, delegates from
most of the communion’s provinces gathered to evaluate
the “Decade of Evangelism” at its halfway point. The
pattern that emerged from reports was that the growing
churches, mostly in the Global South, possessed a
confidence in God’s presence and his ability to act
and intervene in human affairs; the declining churches
seemed to lack such confidence. 
But the lesson of the martyrs is exactly this—that we
must have confidence in God—and their universal appeal
derives from their heroic example. The gospel exists
to challenge the worldview of all—even Anglicans—who
do not see the joy and beauty of a life lived with
confidence in a great and dynamic God who can and does
intervene in the affairs of human beings. 

The legacy of the East African Revival is its strong
emphasis on the need for a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ. This emphasis is not unique to Uganda;
it is a part of historic Anglicanism, especially in
its Reformation heritage and the evangelical
tradition. I long for the day when the global
reputation of Anglicans is our insistence on a
relationship with Jesus Christ that is characterized
by personal experience and repentance, and shared
through testimonies. “Oh, those Anglicans! How they
always talk about a personal relationship with Jesus
Christ!” 

Finally, a passion for evangelism and mission is at
the heart of an apostolic and missionary church. The
reason there is a global Anglicanism today is that
Anglicans were compelled by the Word of God to share
the gospel throughout the expanding British Empire and
beyond. In the absence today of such a convenient
infrastructure, the future of the Anglican Communion
is found in embracing the key Reformation and
evangelical principles that have had such an impact in
Uganda. 

Without a commitment to the authority of the Word of
God, a confidence in a 
God who acts in the world, and a conviction of the
necessity of repentance and of a personal relationship
with Jesus Christ, we will be hard-pressed as a
communion to revive and advance our apostolic and
missionary calling as a church. 
If, as I have suggested, the future of Anglicanism
lies in a revival of the key Reformation and
evangelical principles that shaped the Church of
Uganda and our mother Church of England, then our
instruments of communion need to find a way to serve
that vision. I fear, however, that our conciliar
instruments are in danger of losing their credibility
and being rendered irrelevant. The resolutions of the
Lambeth Conference of Bishops have always had a moral
authority among the communion’s autonomous but
interdependent provinces, yet some of those
resolutions are now flagrantly defied and even mocked.


We primates have worked hard in recent years to find
consensus even in our present situation of broken or
impaired communion. Through the grace of God, our
communiqués have been consensus statements,
unanimously agreed upon, and they are evidence of our
commitment as primates to “make every effort to keep
the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace”
(Eph. 4:3). Yet some provinces have not taken our
communiqués seriously, and the primates, as an
instrument of communion, have been scorned. 

The current crisis presents us with an opportunity to
mature into a global communion that represents not
just historic bonds of affection but also an advancing
mission force for the Kingdom of God that Jesus
inaugurated. For this to happen, our instruments of
communion may also have to become instruments of
discipline. As a member of the primates’ standing
committee, I was invited to come to the United States
in September 2007 to attend the meeting of the
Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops. But I recently
wrote the archbishop of Canterbury and informed him
that I could not participate. 

Among my reasons is this: In February 2007, the
primates of the Anglican Communion met in Dar es
Salaam, Tanzania, and made certain requests of the
Episcopal church. It is my conviction that our Dar es
Salaam communiqué did not envision interference in the
American House of Bishops while they are considering
our requests. For me to violate our hard-won agreement
in Dar es Salaam would be another case of undermining
our instruments of communion. My decision to uphold
our Dar es Salaam communiqué is intended to strengthen
our instruments of communion so we will be able to
mature into an even more effective global communion of
the Church of Jesus Christ than in the past. 
In December 2006, the House of Bishops of the Church
of Uganda unanimously adopted “The Road to Lambeth,” a
statement drafted for a council of African provinces.
Among other things, it stated, “We will definitely not
attend any Lambeth Conference to which the violators
of the Lambeth Resolution [1.10] are also invited as
participants or observers.” Accordingly, if the
present invitations to the Lambeth Conference stand, I
do not expect the Ugandan bishops to attend. 
It is important that this decision not be
misunderstood as withdrawing from the instruments of
communion. On the contrary, our decision reflects the
critical importance of the Lambeth Conference: Its
value as an instrument of communion is greatly
diminished when the persistent violators of its
resolutions are invited. If our resolutions as a
council of bishops do not have moral authority among
ourselves, how can we expect our statements on world
affairs to carry weight in the world’s forums? An
instrument of communion must also be an instrument of
discipline in order to effectively facilitate
meaningful communion among its autonomous provinces. 

The Church of Uganda takes its Anglican identity and
the future prospects of the global Anglican Communion
very seriously. Our thoughtfulness in how we
participate in the instruments of communion reflects
our fundamental loyalty to our Anglican heritage.
Likewise, our devotion to the Word of God—expressed
through our martyrs, revival, and the historic
episcopate—reflects our commitment to the ongoing
place of the Church of Uganda as a province of the
Anglican Communion. 

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Henry Luke Orombi is the Anglican archbishop of
Uganda.