Why Ask What African Anglicanism Is?
The story behind a gathering in Oxford
What is African Anglicanism?
It sounds like a straightforward question. But the more closely you look at it, the more complicated it becomes.
Is African Anglicanism simply Anglican Christianity as it is practised on the African continent? Is it the inheritance of missionary Christianity, shaped over generations by African churches and communities? Is it something that can be understood through theology, worship, culture, history or geography?
Or is it still becoming?
These were some of the questions behind the African Anglicanism Conference, held at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford from 12–19 September 2026.
Convened by Relay Trust, the conference brought together people from different parts of the Anglican world to explore African Anglicanism through three interconnected themes: Roots, Routes and Rites.
The conference began with a question.
That question opened up a much larger conversation.
STARTING WITH THE QUESTION
To understand why the question matters, it helps to understand something about Anglicanism itself.
The Anglican Communion is a worldwide family of churches connected by shared history, theology, worship and the historic episcopate. Although Anglicanism emerged from the Church of England, it developed into a global Christian tradition with churches across Africa and many other parts of the world.
Its story is also inseparable from England.
Anglicanism emerged from the English Reformation and subsequently became a global tradition through missionary movements that brought Anglican Christianity into different parts of Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Americas.
But that history was complex.
Missionary Christianity often developed alongside European colonial power. At the same time, African Christians translated, adapted, taught, led and reshaped the faith they received.
That history raises an important question:
If Anglicanism travelled beyond England and became deeply embedded in African societies, what does it mean to be Anglican in Africa today?
And perhaps an even deeper question:
Who gets to define what African Anglicanism is?
ROOTS, ROUTES AND RITES
The conference approached these questions through three interconnected ideas: Roots, Routes and Rites.
Roots asks where African Anglicanism comes from.
That story does not begin simply with European missionaries arriving in Africa.
In his contribution on African theological roots and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, Revd Dr Justyn Terry challenged the idea that Anglican theology can be understood simply as an English religious product that was later exported to Africa.
He drew attention to figures such as Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage, Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, and Augustine of Hippo — African Christian thinkers whose theological work contributed to doctrines and theological language that later became foundational to Christianity and shaped traditions inherited by Anglicanism.
This reframes the story.
Africa was not simply somewhere Christianity eventually arrived. African Christians and theologians were already part of the intellectual and theological history of Christianity.
Routes asks how Anglicanism travelled.
Revd Steve Muneza explored this through the life and legacy of Bishop Alfred Robert Tucker.
His contribution presented Tucker neither as a simple colonial hero nor as a figure to be dismissed, but as part of the complicated bridge between English missionary Christianity and the emerging churches of East Africa.
Tucker's story brought questions of vernacular translation, theological education and African leadership into the conversation, while also exposing the contradictions of missionary work carried out within imperial structures.
Then came the question of what African Christians did with what they received.
In her contribution on the East African Revival and its relationship to African Anglicanism in Kenya, Bishop Emily Onyango explored the Revival as a foundational influence on Kenyan Anglican identity, theology and practice.
The Revival was not simply something that happened to African Christians.
It was an indigenous, predominantly lay movement that emphasised conversion, confession, ethical transformation, restitution, reconciliation, fellowship and social responsibility.
It showed African Christians actively receiving, interpreting and reshaping Anglican Christianity.
And then there are Rites.
How is Anglican Christianity actually lived?
Revd Canon Hilda Kabia examined this through the experience of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika, exploring the role of local languages, music, movement and communal practices in worship.
Revd Canon Abishai Auta Gaiya explored similar questions through Anglican worship in Northern Nigeria, where Hausa, Ngas and Mwaghavul languages, indigenous music, proverbs and culturally intelligible rites have become part of the ongoing work of inculturation.
The question is not simply whether African culture can appear in Anglican worship. It is much deeper: What happens when the Christian faith is genuinely embodied within a culture?
And how does the Church discern what can be received, what must be transformed, and what cannot be reconciled with Christian faith?
WHY WYCLIFFE HALL?
The setting mattered too.
The conference took place at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, a place with a long history of Christian witness and theological education.
Founded in 1877, Wycliffe Hall emerged as a centre for biblical, theological and pastoral preparation for Christian ministry within the Church of England. Today, it remains a Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford with a distinctive evangelical identity.
That history gave the location a particular significance.
A gathering exploring the future of African Anglicanism was taking place in one of the historic centres of English theological education.
That does not mean the conference was about returning African Anglicanism to England.
In some ways, the setting made the questions of history, inheritance, power and ownership even more interesting.
What happens when a tradition that travelled from England becomes something that is now lived, interpreted and shaped in many different places?
What happens when the people who once received a tradition increasingly become the people defining its future?
A CONVERSATION ACROSS CONTEXTS
The programme brought together bishops, clergy, theologians, academics and practitioners working across different contexts.
The contributions explored Anglicanism in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Madagascar, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, alongside wider theological and Anglican perspectives.
The range of contributions was itself revealing.
Revd Simion Kinono explored African Anglicanism through the experience of Burundi and Rwanda, including the East African Revival and the challenge of engaging African cultural and spiritual contexts faithfully.
Bishop Victor Atta-Baffoe asked what it means for Africans to inhabit the Anglican tradition faithfully as Africans in a postcolonial context.
Archbishop Miguel Uchoa approached indigenisation through the Brazilian ecclesial experience, raising questions about what is essential to Anglican identity and what belongs to particular cultural forms.
The conversation therefore did not assume that there is one African Anglican experience.
The history of an Anglican church in Kenya is not identical to that of one in Nigeria. The questions facing a theological college in Sudan during war are not the same as those facing a growing congregation elsewhere.
Questions of worship, culture, finance, leadership, discipleship and identity take different forms in different contexts.
So the purpose was not to produce one neat definition.
It was to create space to ask what African Anglicanism has been, what it is becoming, and what it might mean for African Christians to take greater responsibility for the tradition they now carry.
FROM RECEIVING TO OWNING
Perhaps that is where the deeper significance of the conference lies.
African Anglicanism is not simply a story of something that was brought to Africa.
It is also a story of what African Christians did with what they received.
They translated it.
They preached it.
They sang it.
They questioned it.
They contextualised it.
They built institutions around it.
They developed their own forms of leadership.
They lived it through revival movements, communities, families, schools, theological institutions and churches.
And now, with the demographic centre of Anglicanism having shifted significantly towards the Global South, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, questions about African Anglicanism are also questions about the future of the wider Anglican Communion.
The question, then, is not simply: What is African Anglicanism?
It is also: What does it mean for African Anglicans to inhabit, interpret and shape their own ecclesial future?
The conference gathered people around that question.
What followed was an attempt to go deeper.
Kelly Mutizira