VirtueOnline - News - Exclusives - Kenyan Archbishop and Episcopal Presiding Bishop Clash over Lenten Message:
Kenyan Archbishop Eliud Wabukala has issued a strong rebuke to US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori's understanding of Lent.
The Presiding Bishop has called on Episcopalians to focus on the Millennium Development Goals for Lent 2012. "I invite you to use the Millennium Development Goals as your focus for Lenten study and discipline and prayer and fasting this year. I'm going to remind you that the Millennium Development Goals are about healing the worst of the world's hunger. They're about seeing that all children get access to primary education. They're about empowering women. They're about attending to issues of maternal health and child mortality. They're about attending to issues of communicable disease like AIDS and malaria and tuberculosis. They're about environmentally sustainable development, seeing that people have access to clean water and sanitation and that the conditions in slums are alleviated. And finally, they are about aid, foreign aid. They're about trade relationships, and they're about building partnerships for sustainable development in this world. The Millennium Development Goals are truly reflective of several of the Five Marks of Mission."
Archbishop Wabukala took issue with the Presiding Bishop saying the Millennium Development Goals have grown out of a secularized Western culture that is pushing Christianity to the margins and using the language of human rights and equality to promote irresponsibility in social life and diminish personal responsibility.
What the Bible says, more often than anything else, is to tend to the needs of the widows and orphans, those without. Jesus himself says, "Care for the least of these." I invite you to consider your alms-giving discipline this Lent and remember those in the developing world who go without, said Jefferts Schori.
In his pastoral letter, the archbishop said his mission, as the Anglican Church of Kenya, is "to equip God's people to transform society with the gospel. This is an holistic transformation much deeper and more lasting than any government or international agency can bring because it addresses our deepest need, that of a restored relationship with the God in whose image we are made and whose workmanship we are."
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