Africa to Evangelize Heathen Europe and North America: It's About Time!

Bravo for Henry Orombi, the head of the Anglican Church of Uganda, who recently called for African Christianity to take the Gospel back to the part of the world that originally brought it to Africa but has now lost its way.

Eschewing homosexuality, the leader of Uganda's Anglican Church of 10.2 million Anglicans says African Anglican leaders are poised to take the gospel back to Europe and North America.

Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi told 400 African Anglicans bishops in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams and Uganda's Prime Minister that there is a hunger for the Word of God in England where he recently spoke to 17,000 people. "I called back home to send missionaries to America and Europe to take back the gospel from these sending nations. It is an ailing church in need of guidance."

Addressing delegates to the All Africa Bishops conference sponsored by CAPA - the Council of Anglican provinces of Africa, Orombi said, "We must be free to go to Europe and to the Mother Church [CofE] desperate for the gospel."

At a later press conference Orombi elaborated on this theme saying that the faith from whence it came [Europe] is now so corrupt, that the African church has a responsibility to go to the outside world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Isn't it exciting the way he gives us a post-colonialist, view from underneath to challenge our Euro-centric preoccupation with sexual hedonism. But the news is his forthright words about the corrupt West. Obviously, when Western missionaries took the Gospel to Africa they unleashed a force that quickly evolved out of their control.

If Africa were embracing the same old, tired, worn-out cultural conformism as the Western liberal Protestants are then we it would still be a colonial project under the direct control of the West. Instead, however, African Christianity is finding freedom in the wide river of historic orthodoxy while Western liberal Christianity trudges up a narrow side creek where it will eventually peter out and die.