The seven years of his episcopate have been marked with controversy. Members of his estranged clergy, who refer to themselves as the Concerned Group, have charged him with allegations of authoritarian leadership, which has caused much resentment and embarrassment.[4] As of 19 August 2011, some two thirds of the clergy in his diocese have written to the Archbishop of Cape Town requesting him to intervene. In consequence, he was under investigation on various charges under canon law. The allegations which were under investigation included simony, nepotism, embezzlement, fraud and sexual harassment. Subsequently, Ngewu was exonerated of the charges by a Provincial task force convened by the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.[citation needed] The Archbishop mandated a pastoral team to undertake a visit in order to meet with the presenters, the Bishop and any others concerned in the matters raised, and to seek to resolve the issues concerned through pastoral ministration,[5] which included the dean of the province and bishop of Natal, Rubin Phillip.
In retaliation, the Concerned Group have initiated calls to secede from the embattled diocese and has withheld all parish assessments, that is, monthly contributions from the parishes to the diocese and severed all communications with the diocesan office. Therefore, Ngewu invited the Provincial Synod of Bishops of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa to intervene and deal with the deep seated and complicated issues of the diocese. On 12 February 2012, the Synod of Bishops resolved to place the diocese under the care of the Provincial Administrative Team. The team, appointed by the Archbishop, was mandated to take immediate action to resolve specific legal and financial issues to offer pastoral care for the people, clergy and the bishop; and to initiate a longer term process of reconciliation - a move widely regarded as futile.[6] The state of the diocese still remains highly volatile. As a result, Ngewu has taken an indefinite leave of absence.[7][8]
Bishop Mlibo Ngewu attempting to extinguish the altar cloth, which had been inadvertently set alight during the Diocese of Umzimvubu's diocesan Family Day service in Kokstad in July 2006
The Church of England is a Christian church which is the established church of England. The archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior cleric, although the monarch is the supreme governor. The Church of England is also the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain by the 3rd century, and to the 6th-century Gregorian mission to Kent led by Augustine of Canterbury.
The Church of Nigeria is the Anglican church in Nigeria. It is the second-largest province in the Anglican Communion, as measured by baptised membership, after the Church of England. As of 2016 it gives its membership as "over 18 million", out of a total Nigerian population of 190 million. It is "effectively the largest province in the Communion." As measured by active membership, the Church of Nigeria has nearly 2 million active baptised members. The Church of Nigeria is the largest Anglican province on the continent of Africa, accounting for 41.7% of Anglicans in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is "probably the first [largest within the Anglican Communion] in terms of active members."
Since the 1990s, the Anglican Communion has struggled with controversy regarding homosexuality in the church. In 1998, the 13th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops passed a resolution "rejecting homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture". However, this is not legally binding. "Like all Lambeth Conference resolutions, it is not legally binding on all provinces of the Communion, including the Church of England, though it commends an essential and persuasive view of the attitude of the Communion." "Anglican national churches in Brazil, South Africa, South India, New Zealand and Canada have taken steps toward approving and celebrating same-sex relationships amid strong resistance among other national churches within the 80 million-member global body. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has allowed same-sex marriage since 2015, and the Scottish Episcopal Church has allowed same-sex marriage since 2017." "Church of England clergy have appeared to signal support for gay marriage after they rejected a bishops' report which said that only a man and woman could marry in church." The Church of England's 2019 General Synod was set to discuss a diocesan motion "to create a set of formal services and prayers to bless those who have had a same-sex marriage or civil partnership". At General Synod in 2019, the Church of England announced that same-gender couples may remain married and recognised as married after one spouse experiences a gender transition provided that the spouses identified as opposite genders at the time of the marriage.
The Anglican Church of Canada is the province of the Anglican Communion in Canada. The official French-language name is l'Église anglicane du Canada. In 2017, the Anglican Church counted 359,030 members on parish rolls in 2,206 congregations, organized into 1,571 parishes. The 2011 Canadian Census counted 1,631,845 self-identified Anglicans, making the Anglican Church the third-largest Canadian church after the Catholic Church and the United Church of Canada. Although Canada has no established church, the Queen of Canada's Canadian Royal Style continues to include the title of Defender of the Faith, albeit not in relation to any specific denomination, and the Canadian Monarch continues her countenance of three Chapels Royal in the Realm.
The Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui, also known as the Hong Kong Anglican Church (Episcopal), is the Anglican church in Hong Kong and Macao. It is the 38th Province of the Anglican Communion. It is also one of the major denominations in Hong Kong and the first in the Anglican Communion to ordain a female priest.
The Anglican Church of Southern Africa, known until 2006 as the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, is the province of the Anglican Communion in the southern part of Africa. The church has twenty-five dioceses, of which twenty-one are located in South Africa, and one each in Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and Saint Helena. In South Africa, there are between 3 and 4 million Anglicans out of an estimated population of 45 million.
A provincial episcopal visitor (PEV), popularly known as a flying bishop, is a Church of England bishop assigned to minister to many of the clergy, laity and parishes who on grounds of theological conviction, "are unable to receive the ministry of women bishops or priests". The system by which such bishops oversee certain churches is referred to as alternative episcopal oversight (AEO).
The Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem is the Anglican jurisdiction for Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. It is a part of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, and has diocesan offices at St. George's Cathedral, Jerusalem.
In 2003, the Lambeth Commission on Communion was appointed by the Anglican Communion to study problems stemming from the consecration of Gene Robinson, the first noncelibate self-identifying gay priest to be ordained as an Anglican bishop, in the Episcopal Church in the United States and the blessing of same-sex unions in the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster. The Commission, chaired by Archbishop Robin Eames, published its findings as the Windsor Report on 18 October 2004. The report recommended a covenant for the Anglican Communion, an idea that did not come to fruition.
The Anglican Diocese of Perth is one of the 23 dioceses of the Anglican Church of Australia. The constitution of the Diocese of Perth was passed and adopted in 1872 at the first synod held in Western Australia. In 1914, the Province of Western Australia was created and the diocesan bishop of Perth became ex officio metropolitan bishop of the new province and therefore also an archbishop.
The Anglican Diocese of Quincy is a member of the Anglican Church in North America, and is made up of 34 congregations in the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Hawai'i, Colorado, Tennessee, and Florida, in the United States. The diocese was a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America in 2009.
The Anglican realignment is a movement among some Anglicans to align themselves under new or alternative oversight within or outside the Anglican Communion. This movement is primarily active in parts of the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada. Two of the major events that contributed to the movement were the 2002 decision of the Diocese of New Westminster in Canada to authorise a rite of blessing for same-sex unions, and the nomination of two openly gay priests in 2003 to become bishops. Jeffrey John, an openly gay priest with a long-time partner, was appointed to be the next Bishop of Reading in the Church of England and the General Convention of the Episcopal Church ratified the election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay non-celibate man, as Bishop of New Hampshire. Jeffrey John ultimately declined the appointment due to pressure.
The Province of the Anglican Church of Burundi is a province of the Anglican Communion, located in East Africa between Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, and the Congo. The Archbishop and Primate of Burundi is Martin Nyaboho, bishop of Makamba.
The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada is the chief governing and legislative body of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC), the sole Canadian representative of the Anglican Communion. The first General Synod session was held in Toronto in 1893, with the proviso that the parameters of its authority would not undermine the local independence of dioceses.
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is a Christian denomination in the Anglican tradition in the United States and Canada. It also includes ten congregations in Mexico, two mission churches in Guatemala, and a missionary diocese in Cuba. Headquartered in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, the church reported 30 dioceses and 1,037 congregations serving an estimated membership of 134,593 in 2017. In 2020, the denomination reported 972 congregations and 126,760 members. The first archbishop of the ACNA was Robert Duncan, who was succeeded by Foley Beach in 2014.
The College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, is the only provincial residential college of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, offering a contextual approach to theology studies.
The Diocese of Quincy was a diocese of the Episcopal Church in western Illinois from 1877 to 2013. The cathedral seat was originally in Quincy, Illinois but was moved to St. Paul's Cathedral in Peoria in 1963. In order to avoid confusion with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria, the diocese retained the name of the location of its original "home" city, Quincy, where its cathedral seat was St. John's.
The ordination of women in the Anglican Communion has been increasingly common in certain provinces since the 1970s. Several provinces, however, and certain dioceses within otherwise ordaining provinces, continue to ordain only men. Disputes over the ordination of women have contributed to the establishment and growth of progressive tendencies, such the Anglican realignment and Continuing Anglican movements.
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