A HUNDRED YEAR VISION

 

An account of the Umzi Wase Tiyopiya by Bishop Michael Wright

 

In 1899 the Archbishop of Cape Town received an unexpected letter. The letter was written by the Reverend James Mata Dwane, Superintendent of the Ethiopian Church, and was a request for valid Catholic Orders for his people, including a Bishop of their own, and such autonomy as would allow them to pursue an unfettered ministry to the unconverted.

 

At this time the Ethiopian Church movement had been in existence for about eight years. It had come into being when a number of black clergy withdrew from the white-dominated Methodist Church in South Africa. Christianity in Southern Africa had been introduced by white missionaries and control of the work remained with their white successors - a situation which had already provoked the creation of independent black Churches in other parts of Africa. Among the black clergy who withdrew from what was fast becoming an unworkable situation there were men of outstanding quality and it was one of them, the Reverend Mangena Mokone, a convert to Christianity, who first used ‘Ethiopia’ to refer mystically to all black Africa (see Psalm 68:31 in AV). The Ethiopian Church movement, established in 1892, grew rapidly and among those who joined was another Methodist minister of great ability, James Mata Dwane.

 

Dwane was slightly older than Mokone and came from an established Christian background. Dwane had conducted a successful fund-raising tour of England but the money, earmarked for the building and staffing of a school at Grahamstown, was taken by the Methodist Church authorities in Cape Town for general purposes. It was this incident which finally propelled Dwane towards the Ethiopian Church but for some time already he had been growing dissatisfied with the Methodist version of Christianity.

 

At the time when Dwane joined, the Ethiopian Church was making contact with the American Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC), an all-black Church which maintained an episcopal form of ministry - but not within the authentic Apostolic succession. Dwane made the journey to America to negotiate a union between the AMEC and the Ethiopian Church and was subsequently consecrated as a Bishop in 1896. In spite of this positive development the new Bishop was by no means satisfied that the Ethiopian Church had attained to the fullness of Catholic Faith and Order which, he was now beginning to feel, must be restored to his people.

 

Dwane made a second tour of America in 1899 and returned yet more discouraged. Not only did the AMEC tend to behave as though the union of the two Churches was tantamount to an American ‘take-over’ of the Ethiopian Church, but Dwane was increasingly doubtful of the status of his Orders.  Dwane now met with an outstanding priest of the Anglican Province of South Africa. Father Julius Gordon, Rector of St Michael’s Church, Queenstown.

 

Father Julius Gordon, subsequently Dean of Pretoria, was a caring pastor, a convinced Anglo-Catholic, and a man of great spiritual dedication. Father Gordon encouraged James Dwane in a further exploration of the Catholic Faith which convinced the latter that the Ethiopian Church needed an episcopate in the true Apostolic Succession. The outcome was Dwane’s initial letter of request to Archbishop West-Jones.

 

The vision of Father James Dwane was of a single Church, possessing the fullness of Catholic Faith and Order, reaching out to draw all Africa to salvation in Christ. This vision required the restoration of the Apostolic Ministry and freedom to pursue the call to evangelism wherever it might lead. To demonstrate that the request to the CPSA was made in good faith Dwane undertook to write to tell  AMEC of this new development. From now on the Ethiopian Church was deprived of sacramental ministrations until the CPSA should supply them.

 

The Archbishop was personally inclined to favour the creation of a distinct ‘black’ Diocese within the Province of South Africa (CPSA), but others among his clergy were pressing for the Ethiopian Church to be absorbed into the existing structure of the Province. Negotiations took place in early 1900. The initial CPSA proposals envisaged an ‘Order’ composed of black clergy and catechists only, with the rest of the Ethiopian Church membership being received into the ranks of the “ordinary” Church. This proposal was unacceptable to the General Conference of the Ethiopian Church meeting soon after at Queenstown. Some members, including Mokone, took no further part in the negotiations and returned to AMEC. The majority, nevertheless, passed the following resolutions:

 

1. That having regard to the great importance of Christian unity, and being convinced that the scriptural and historical safeguard of the same is the Catholic Episcopate, this Conference resolves to petition His Grace the Archbishop of Cape Town and other Bishops of the Church of the Province of South Africa to give our body a valid Episcopate and priesthood, and to make such arrangements as may be found possible to include our body within the fold of the Catholic Church on the lines indicated in our Superintendent’s letters to the Archbishop of Cape Town

 

2. That this Conference accepts and embraces the Doctrine, Sacraments and Discipline of Christ as the same are contained and commanded in Holy Scripture, according as the Church of England has set forth the same in its standards of faith and doctrine.

 

The discussions reached their climax on 21st August 1900 when, in the cathedral at Grahamstown, seven of the ten Bishops of the Church of the Province of South Africa (CPSA) announced the conditions under which the request of the Ethiopian Church would be granted. Basically the Ethiopian Church would be restructured as an Order within the CPSA under the supervision of an Episcopal Visitor; the Order would be directly responsible to a Provincial - normally appointed by its Chapter. The following Sunday 26th August, at a solemn ceremony presided over by the Archbishop, James Dwane was reconciled with the Catholic Church, received Episcopal Confirmation, and was formally appointed as first Provincial of the Order.

 

The new Order of Ethiopia (Umzi Wase Tiyopiya - UWT for short) did not measure up to the hopes of the Ethiopian Church, nor to the ideas of Archbishop West-Jones. Clergy were to be re-ordained only after lengthy instruction and no Bishop for the Order was forthcoming as of right. The Compact, as it was known, remained unclear how the Order related to the Province and to each Diocese. The CPSA, through the action of its Bishops, found itself having to accept a semi-autonomous body in its midst. There were many reservations and much dragging of feet on the part of CPSA members; there were complaints about a  development regarded as being foisted upon the Province by the Bishops - without due Provincial authorisation. It is not surprising that the early years were difficult. The new relationship was to endure and survive many crises.

 

Although provision was made for the possible appointment of a Bishop-Provincial, Dwane was to remain a Deacon for many years, being raised to the Priesthood only in the last years of his life. For the first fifty years of its existence the Order had but one Bishop-Provincial, William Cameron. Bishop Cameron had been involved in the training of UWT Catechists and Clergy during the early years; so he was tasked with resolving the many problems which had come to a head during the eight years after the establishment of the Order. So acute were these problems that there was a real danger of the Order seceding from the CPSA. In this undertaking, lasting two years, Cameron was successful and a concerted effort by all led to the establishment of a working relationship lasting until the nineteen-fifties. James Mata Dwane resumed the office of Provincial until his death in 1916.

 

In 1955 the Annual Conference of the Order, concerned that its special status was being steadily eroded, sent a memorandum of complaints to the Archbishop of Cape Town of the time, the Most Reverend Joost de Blank.  The Archbishop proposed a round of consultations and, inevitably, the original request of the Ethiopian Church for a Bishop of its own was renewed. The Archbishop was suffering from ill-health and his final response was written only at the end of 1962. The response made it clear that the kind of non-territorial diocese which would be created by consecrating a Bishop for the Order was unacceptable. This was not the end of the matter, discussions continued for many years afterward. During this period the character of the CPSA, along with the rest of the Anglican Communion, was changing and innovative ‘liberal’ ideas were coming to the fore.

 

Back in 1899 the CPSA was a stronghold of Anglo-Catholicism - a movement which had been making a triumphant progress within Anglicanism. To men like Father Julius Gordon it seemed that the truly Catholic character of Anglicanism would soon be fully vindicated. More than half a century later the underlying, doctrinally ambivalent, character of Anglicanism was about to be revealed more forcefully than ever before, pushing older Anglo-Catholic certainties to the periphery of a ‘liberal’-dominated Communion.

 

By the time the CPSA was willing to grant the Order a Bishop of its own, confusion was rife in the Anglican Communion. Basic doctrines were under attack and in an increasing number of Provinces women were being ordained to the priesthood and episcopate. Because the Order was unable to agree on a suitable candidate, the CPSA House of Bishops was asked to elect a Bishop for the Order. The choice fell on James Dwane, grandson of the first Provincial. Bishop Dwane however had his own agenda for the future of the Order which included the introduction of women as priests.

 

The actions of the new Bishop were seen by many UWT members as a betrayal of the Faith and a rejection of the vision which had brought the Ethiopian Church into union with the CPSA. About a third of the membership departed from the Order and the CPSA - leaving behind both buildings and funds. This remnant sought help from the Continuing Anglican movement in the USA; first from the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) and then from the Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) - which established a Diocese of Southern Africa. With every change there was a loss of membership, funds and church property. The faithful remnant of the UWT was being reduced to homelessness and poverty.

 

Throughout this unhappy period the root problem remained the same. In spite of the separation between the mainline Anglican Communion and the Continuing Churches the priority of both parties was to maintain institutional unity at the expense of the authentic Catholic Faith. Traditionalism meant little more than opposition to women as priests and to the introduction of modern forms of worship. Continuing Anglicans were at pains to retain membership by ignoring issues which might divide their ‘catholic’ and ‘protestant’ members. Unity in the Faith and Sacraments - the foundation of the unity of the Catholic Church in the first Christian millennium - was set aside in favour of a superficial cohesion.

 

The relationship with the Anglican Catholic Church and its Diocese of Southern Africa collapsed when the Provincial and Bishop-elect was suspended by the ACC’s Episcopal Visitor. Once again the numbers were further reduced and places of worship lost. The faithful Catholic members of the UWT could accept neither the compromised ministrations of the Provincial (the office had not been relinquished with the creation of the ACC diocese) nor the tarnished authority of the Episcopal Visitor. It was at this time of renewed crisis that approaches were made to Archbishop Hamlett of the Holy Catholic Church - Western Rite. In the Summer of 1999, a two-month preparatory visit was made by Father Michael Wright - as part of an agreement between the faithful remnant of the UWT and the HCC-WR. Later the same year Archbishop Hamlett arrived in South Africa to inaugurate the Diocese of Umzi Wase Tiyopiya (DUWT) and to ordain five Deacons. By this time the ordained ministry had been reduced to two Priests, but now the work of restoration was in hand.

 

In May 2000  Archbishop Hamlett, together with Bishops Appleton and Wright, held an Episcopal Synod at Port Elizabeth and elected two of the five deacons (all recently elevated to the priesthood) as the first Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese and as his Assistant Bishop. The consecrations were set for 20th August - a hundred years less a day since the CPSA ‘opened the door’ to the Ethiopian Church. While in Africa Archbishop Hamlett consecrated a church building recently acquired by the congregations in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. The dedication is significant; it is to an African Saint, Athanasius the Great.

 

In his time St Athanasius was the outstanding champion of the one true Faith against the prevailing Arian heresy. In his time also he held the Church to its true unity in the one Catholic Faith which proclaims the one Christ, Our God and Saviour, instead of the many ‘Christs’ of modern ‘liberalism’. Only the one true Christ can save and he does so through his Body the Church. It was this vision which led James Mata Dwane on a painful and seemingly unfulfilled mission. Father Dwane’s vision, however, has not been in vain.

 

A POSTSCRIPT

The establishment of the Diocese of Umzi wase Tiyopiya with Samel Mzukisi Banzana as Bishop Ordinary did not end the difficulties. These returned in 2005 when Archbishop Hamlett attempted, contrary to the Canons, to depose Bishop Banazana and replace him with Bishop Lamani (who had already abandoned the communion of the HCC-WR). Since that time, and with the removal of Archbishop Hamlett, the Diocese of Umzi wase Tiyopiya has achieved the stability which comes from being a manifestation of the Body of Christ.

 

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