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Ex-Bishop of Botswana held in Zambia poll-crisis raid

By
George Conger
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The Zambian government has confirmed that the Rt Rev Trevor Mwamba, the retired Bishop of Botswana who for the past five years has led a faction of one of Zambia’s oldest political parties, is among eleven people arrested and charged following a violent security operation carried out at the Lusaka home of the country’s leading opposition presidential candidate.

The confirmation, given on 17 August by Secretary to the Cabinet Patrick Kangwa, came two days after the government had publicly denied that Bishop Mwamba and several other opposition figures had been detained at all, and one day after the bishop’s wife, a former senior Botswana diplomat, made a public appeal for his safe return, saying the family had had no word of his whereabouts since he vanished on 14 August. Mr Kangwa told the state broadcaster ZNBC that police, acting on a tip-off and what he said had been years of surveillance, apprehended “suspected militia” and “persons of interest” connected to “military plans involving foreign nationals and illegal military training camps” that posed a threat to state security, and that those detained had been found in possession of “high-grade military weapons, ammunition and other materials for use in armed insurrection,” according to a report on the arrests carried by the Zambian Observer and Anadolu Agency.

Bishop Mwamba, 68, was consecrated Bishop of Botswana in the Church of the Province of Central Africa in February 2005 and resigned in 2013, going on to serve as Team Rector of Barking in the Diocese of Chelmsford and as an honorary assistant bishop there until his retirement from parish ministry in 2019. Zambian by birth, born in Mansa in Zambia’s Luapula Province, he trained in law at the University of Zambia before reading theology at Oxford, and received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Yale in 2009. He is married to Mmasekgoa Masire-Mwamba, a former Botswana ambassador to Germany and Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General from 2008 to 2014, and the daughter of Botswana’s second president, the late Sir Ketumile “Quett” Masire, reports a tribute published by Pan African Visions.

In April 2021, having returned to Zambia, Bishop Mwamba was elected president of the United National Independence Party, the party founded by Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda, at a national congress in Lusaka. That leadership has been contested ever since by a rival faction under a former army officer, Lt Henry Muyoba, who was declared party president at a disputed congress the following month, Zambia Monitor reported. The High Court and the Court of Appeal have both since barred the Muyoba faction from interfering in UNIP’s affairs, and as recently as May 2025 the Lusaka High Court again affirmed Bishop Mwamba as the party’s lawful president, notwithstanding an intervening decision by the Registrar of Societies to recognise Muyoba’s group. Under Bishop Mwamba, UNIP joined the Tonse Pamodzi Alliance, the coalition of opposition parties that backed Brian Mundubile’s bid for the presidency in this month’s general election.

Zambians voted on 13 August for a president, members of the National Assembly, and local officials, in a 14-candidate presidential race pitting incumbent President Hakainde Hichilema of the United Party for National Development against Mr Mundubile, standing under the National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity as the Tonse Pamodzi Alliance’s candidate. The vote followed months of warnings from Amnesty International and independent observers that Mr Hichilema’s government had been tilting the field against the opposition — restricting rallies under the colonial-era Public Order Act, reshaping the judiciary, and prosecuting opposition figures, journalists, and activists. Days before the vote a businessman known to support the opposition was murdered, and Mr Mundubile had to be rushed from a campaign rally after police used tear gas on the crowd, the New York Times reported.

Official counting has since been slow and contested. The Electoral Commission of Zambia’s staged tally showed Mr Hichilema leading 1,544,140 votes to 1,030,662 for Mr Mundubile after 135 of 226 constituencies had reported as of 17 August, but the count was suspended at one point amid reports of violence against poll workers, and Mr Mundubile at one stage declared himself the winner on the basis of his party’s own parallel vote tabulation — prompting accusations from the ruling party of an attempt to subvert the process. Both camps have alleged irregularities, including stolen ballot boxes and disputed constituency totals.

It was against this backdrop that, on the night of Friday 14 August — the day after the election — heavily armed personnel, described by Mr Mundubile and his allies as Zambia Army special forces working alongside police, stormed his residence in the Kabulonga area of Lusaka. In a telephone account given live on the EMV podcast after his release, Mr Mundubile said more than thirty armed men broke down the gate, smashed windows and fired shots as they forced their way into the house; he said he hid in a bedroom wardrobe before being found, beaten, and dragged to a waiting vehicle, and that his wife and young twin daughters were caught up in the violence. He said his ally, former Transport Minister Mutotwe Kafwaya, was shot twice during the operation, and that he did not know the fate of several others present, including his spokesman George Chisanga and Patrick Mwansa, son-in-law of former President Edgar Lungu — an account echoed by IOL’s reporting on the raid.

Bishop Mwamba, who had been accompanying Mr Mundubile, was among those unaccounted for in the raid’s aftermath. On 15 August a government spokesman publicly dismissed reports that Mr Kafwaya had been shot or that Mr Mwansa had been detained or killed, calling the claims false. With still no word of her husband the following day, Ambassador Masire-Mwamba wrote to former Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi, who is leading a regional election observer mission in Zambia, appealing for help in securing the bishop’s “immediate and unconditional return.” She described him as “a man of peace and gentleness who has devoted his entire life to preaching love and reconciliation,” and warned that Zambia’s standing as what she called “the last bastion of democracy and peace” in the region was now in peril, according to the letter published by the Zambian Observer, which a day earlier had carried the government’s denial that anyone had been detained.

The government’s account shifted again the next day, when Mr Kangwa named Bishop Mwamba among the eleven apprehended and charged, alongside Mr Chisanga, Mr Mwansa, and three others identified as Simon Phiri, Richard Banda and Francis Mulenga — all said to be held in lawful custody at various police stations in Lusaka, with access promised to their families and lawyers. Mr Kangwa said Mr Mundubile himself had also been found at the scene, though the government did not say whether he too had been arrested.

No formal charges have yet been made public, and independent Zambian media have been unable to verify either the government’s account of a counter-insurgency operation or Mr Mundubile’s account of an attempt on his life carried out to disrupt a disputed election. There has as yet been no statement on Bishop Mwamba’s arrest from the Church of the Province of Central Africa, the Diocese of Botswana, or the Anglican Communion Office. Investigations, the Zambian government says, are continuing.

Joint statement from the Anglican primates of the Americas

By
Anon
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Anglican primates and provincial secretaries from across the Americas met in São Paulo Aug. 10-12 for a time of prayer, learning, and mutual discernment. The primates in attendance included the Most Rev. Sean Rowe of The Episcopal Church; the Most Rev. Marinez Rosa dos Santos Bassoto of the Anglican Episcopal Church Brazil; the Most Rev. Shane Parker of the Anglican Church of Canada; the Most Rev. Alba Sally Sue Hernández García of the Anglican Church of Mexico; the Rt. Rev. Juan David Alvarado Melgar of the Anglican Church in Central America; the Most Rev. Brian Williams of the Anglican Church in South America; and the Most Rev. Phillip Wright of the Church of the Province of the West Indies. They offered the following joint statement at the end of their gathering: 

Grace and Peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We, as primates serving God’s people in the Anglican Communion provinces of the Americas, met in São Paulo from 10 to 12 August 2026, at the invitation of our regional primate, the Most Rev. Marinez Rosa dos Santos Bassotto. We prayed together, learned from one another and discerned how we are called to participate in God’s mission. For the first time, we gathered alongside the secretaries of our respective provinces, and we are grateful for their ministry and companionship.

We give thanks to God for the gift of our communion, which we receive as the Body of Christ. At this meeting, we strove to embody that gift as we spoke honestly and with hope about the realities of ministry in our contexts and sought to enter one another’s realities. Meeting in Brazil, where Indigenous peoples are stewards of the Amazon and faithful voices in the struggle for climate justice, we affirmed the dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples whose ancestral lands span the Americas.

Although we are from richly diverse provinces, we share the experiences of living in cultures shaped by forces that call us to action, including colonialism, secularism, polarization, migration concerns, economic and social insecurity, corruption and climate change.

Our Anglican tradition teaches us to find unity in service to God’s mission, and we pledge to work together with mutual accountability and hope for the people of our provinces. We leave this gathering with the conviction that we have begun a new chapter in our life together in Christ.

We return home with joy and thanks for what we have shared, which has been profoundly good, and for the fruit that it will bear across the Americas.

São Paulo, Brazil – August 12, 2026
 
Primate Marinez Rosa dos Santos Bassoto – Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil and Regional Primate
Primate Shane Parker – Anglican Church of Canada
Primate Juan David Alvarado Melgar – Iglesia Anglicana de la Region Central de America
Primate Alba Sally Sue Hernández García – La Iglesia Anglicana de Mexico
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe – The Episcopal Church
Primate Brian Williams – Iglesia Anglicana de Sudamerica
Primate Phillip Wright – The Church in the Province of the West Indies

Miracle on the Vistula? Mary, War, and the Perils of Holy Nationalism

By
George Conger
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Jerzy Maciej Kossak, Miracle on the Vistula (1931), Polish Army Museum, Warsaw

Pope Leo’s remarks to Polish pilgrims on August 12 raise a question Anglicans have never answered in one voice: how should Christians speak of God, Mary, and history? The issue is not whether God governs the nations. The Prayer Book assumes that he does, and Christians rightly pray for deliverance, justice, and peace. The issue is whether the Church may identify a particular military victory as the result of Marian intervention.

This essay argues that Anglican Evangelicals should decline to do so. The claim exceeds Scripture, sits uneasily with Article XXII and the Prayer Book’s Godward discipline of prayer, and risks converting national deliverance into a badge of divine preference. Anglo-Catholics may make a narrower claim: Mary, as part of the communion of saints, prays with and for the Church. But prayerful intercession is not the same thing as an independent heavenly agency, still less a warrant for sanctifying national victory.

According to reports of the Pope’s audience, he told Polish-speaking pilgrims that “through Mary’s intercession” victory was achieved at the Battle of Warsaw on August 15, 1920, an event that changed the history of Poland and Europe. For Polish Catholic devotion, this is familiar language. The battle, often remembered as the “Miracle on the Vistula,” helped preserve the newly reconstituted Polish state against the Red Army. It did not give Poland its independence—that had been restored in 1918—but it helped prevent the loss of that independence almost as soon as it had been regained.

For Anglicans, the question is not whether gratitude is proper. It plainly is. The question is what the Church is entitled to say in gratitude. There is a difference between thanking God for deliverance and publishing an account of how heaven achieved it. 

Anglicanism, at least in its healthier moments, has never imagined that God is a ceremonial ornament wheeled out for coronations, funerals, and public emergencies, then packed away again with the silver. The Prayer Book tradition assumes divine providence. It bids Christians pray for rulers, peace, justice, and the relief of human misery. Episcopal liturgical texts speak freely of God’s providence in the raising up of prophets, martyrs, and servants of the Church.

J. I. Packer gave the doctrine its familiar evangelical formulation in the  New Bible Dictionary. Providence, he wrote, is the Creator’s continuing activity: God upholds creatures in ordered existence, governs events and free acts, and directs all things to their appointed end for his glory. This is not the theology of a church that believes history is spiritually inert. God has not abandoned the world to chance, bureaucrats, or the editorial pages.

Yet providence is not a communiqué from heaven. To say that God rules history is not to say that the Church can identify the divine chain of causation behind every historical result. Christians may say that God overruled evil for good. They may say that a people under threat were preserved. They may say that prayer was heard. But a further claim is being made when a saint’s intercession is identified as the explanation for a battlefield victory.

The Prayer Book tradition is restrained for a reason. Its public prayers are addressed to Almighty God, through Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. They seek justice, repentance, wisdom, concord, and peace. They do not provide a liturgical script for canonizing military outcomes. This is not because war lies outside God’s concern; it is because war exposes human motives at their most mixed and human judgments at their least reliable.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is not an Anglican embarrassment, nor ought she to be. She is the mother of the incarnate Lord, the handmaid who received God’s word in faith, and the one whom all generations call blessed. Episcopal liturgical resources honor her as the mother of Christ and as a model of faithful discipleship.

Yet honoring Mary is not the same thing as making her responsible for military results. The classic Anglican treatment of Mary praises God for her, acknowledges the unique grace of her vocation, and asks that Christians may imitate her faith and obedience. Mary points to Christ. The question is whether the Church should also address Mary in prayer, and whether that language can bear the much heavier weight of a national military legend.

Scripture calls Mary blessed. It does not depict her as the patroness of Polish uhlans or a heavenly director of emergency geopolitics. That does not settle every theological question, but it establishes a proper presumption: the Church should not assert more than Scripture has taught it to assert.

For classical Anglicans, the principal difficulty is Article XXII of the Thirty-Nine Articles.. It rejects “the Romish Doctrine” concerning purgatory, pardons, images, relics, and “also invocation of saints” as “a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.”

The wording is not subtle. Nor is it a historical curiosity. Article XXII belongs to the Anglican doctrinal inheritance. Its target was not merely bad taste or exaggerated medieval decoration. It was a system in which devotion to the saints could become a practical alternative route of access to divine favor.

The post-Reformation Prayer Book reinforces the Article’s direction. Its public prayers are Godward. It does not train the faithful to petition Mary or the saints. This was a theological judgment, not a clerical oversight.

That does not end the argument. Anglo-Catholic writers have long contended that Article XXII condemns appeals to saints for benefits as though they exercised an independent power, while leaving open a more limited request that they pray for the Church. One may think that distinction fails, as Evangelicals do, but it is not a frivolous distinction and should not be treated as one.

Still, it sharpens the present issue. A cautious request that Mary pray for the Church is one thing. A declaration that Mary obtained victory for an army is another. The latter is not merely private devotion. It is a public theological explanation of history—and one that the formularies do not supply.

The Evangelical case is not a matter of anti-Roman irritation or parish-hall folklore. It is embedded in Anglican history. J. C. Ryle’s  Knots Untied, first published in 1874, was written as a defense of the evangelical religion of the Church of England. In his discussion of the Thirty-Nine Articles, Ryle urged Churchmen never to be ashamed of the doctrines “so nobly set forth in the Articles,” calling them “the religion of the Bible and of the Church of England.”

Ryle’s point was not that Mary should be ignored. It was that Christian confidence must not drift from Christ toward a network of saintly patrons. Article XXII, in his hands, was not an antiquarian insult to Rome. It was a warning about the way devotion, once detached from scriptural discipline, can become a substitute theology.

JI Packer supplies the needed balance. His doctrine of providence does not produce an absentee God. On the contrary, it confesses the Creator’s active rule over all things. But Packer’s account of prayer remains resolutely Godward: Christians pray as children to their heavenly Father, in and through Christ. That is the proper Anglican Evangelical grammar. God governs; Christians pray; the Church gives thanks; and no one assumes that she has acquired access to the minutes of the heavenly war council.

This matters because battle language curdles quickly. Once the Church attributes military victory to a saint’s intervention, a nation can become not merely grateful but providentially flattered. Its cause is retrospectively purified. Its enemies become more than political opponents; they become foils in a sacred drama. The Church begins to serve, almost without noticing, as chaplain to national legend.

Poland’s history gives every reason for memory, gratitude, grief, and patriotic devotion. The Battle of Warsaw was consequential. But historical importance is not revealed interpretation. A decisive event may be worthy of commemoration without furnishing the Church with a prophetic explanation of why God permitted it or how he brought it about.

War should make Christians slower, not faster, to assign heavenly motives. Even a just defense is fought by sinners. A necessary victory may leave moral wreckage. A people may be preserved from conquest and still have no warrant to imagine itself morally ratified. The Church may thank God for deliverance without canonizing the battlefield.

The Anglo-Catholic reply begins with the communion of saints. The faithful departed are not absent from Christ, removed from his life, or severed from the Church’s fellowship. If Christians on earth ask one another to pray, why should the Church in glory be presumed silent?

There is Anglican evidence for this position. The Episcopal Church’s glossary includes the familiar petition of the Hail Mary: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” The Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission’s Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ seeks to describe Mary as exemplar and sign of grace in a way that advances ecumenical understanding. Contemporary Anglo-Catholic defenders of invocation argue that asking a saint to pray is not the same thing as requesting benefits from an independent supernatural power.

On this account, Mary’s intercession is subordinate to Christ’s unique mediation, not competitive with it. She does not become a second redeemer, a source of grace alongside Christ, or a celestial minister of defense. She prays, as the Church prays, for mercy, peace, and the deliverance of the afflicted.

That is a coherent argument, even if Evangelicals remain unconvinced. It permits an Anglo-Catholic to say that Mary intercedes for peoples at war without claiming that she manages campaigns. The difficulty begins when a theology of prayer turns into a theology of national destiny.

Archbishop Rowan Williams helps clarify the distinction. In his reflections on the saints, he describes holy lives as lives in which Christ becomes visible—lives “immersed in, soaked in the life of Jesus.” Sanctity is not an alternative spiritual power operating beside Christ. It is Christ’s life becoming credible in particular human beings.

In a 2009 All Saints sermon at All Saints, Margaret Street, Williams reflected on Hebrews 11:40: “apart from us they should not be made perfect.” Francis of Assisi, John of the Cross, and Mother Teresa, he said, do not possess holiness as private spiritual property. Their witness reaches its intended end as the rest of Christ’s Body receives and embodies the life of God made visible in them.

This account of the communion of saints is important. The saints are neither a detached heavenly elite nor spiritual subcontractors to whom believers assign work that Christ cannot manage. Their glory is bound to the glory of the whole Body. They make Christ credible in their lives; that credibility comes alive as the Church is drawn into the same faith and obedience.

The homily given at the Marian Shrine at Lourdes by Williams is often invoked in this debate as it contains explicit Marian intercessory language. Williams called Mary “mother of the Church and of Church unity, because she is our restless intercessor to her Son,” adding: “To her we can trust our prayers.” The force of the statement is clear. Mary’s role, as Williams describes it, is prayerful, ecclesial, and directed to Christ.

Williams therefore gives no basis for treating Mary as an independent cause of Poland’s military victory. At most, his theology supports the narrower Anglo-Catholic claim that Mary, as part of the glorified communion of saints, prays with and for the Church in danger, grief, and need. God remains the actor in providence. Mary’s role, if one accepts it, is derivative rather than executive.

An Evangelical Anglican may still object that even this restrained invocation sits uneasily with Article XXII and with the Prayer Book’s settled practice of addressing prayer to God through Christ. That disagreement remains. But Williams helps keep the categories clear. The question is not whether Mary may be turned into a heavenly patron of national success. The question is whether the Church may ask her to pray that God will show mercy.

Anglicans need not choose between providence and sobriety. They may thank God for Poland’s preservation in 1920, mourn the dead, condemn tyranny, and pray for peoples threatened by war. Anglo-Catholics may also, on their theological premises, ask Mary to pray for the Church.

But the Church should resist declaring that Mary secured a military victory. That language exceeds the restraint of the Anglican formularies and confuses gratitude for deliverance with certainty about God’s hidden purposes. God governs history; the Church does not possess his campaign diary.

The General Theological Seminary welcomes 17 MDiv students

By
Nicky Burridge
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The General Theological Seminary (GTS) has welcomed 17 new Master of Divinity (MDiv) students for the 2026-27 academic year.

The students, who come from 15 dioceses ranging from the Episcopal Diocese of Northern California to the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont, are the fifth cohort to enroll in the hybrid MDiv program.

The formal entry of the new students was marked with GTS’ traditional Matriculation Ceremony in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, during which students signed their names in the Seminary’s more than 200-year-old Matriculation Book. Every student at General since 1822 has signed their name in the book to affirm their commitment to the Seminary’s values.

The Very Rev. Ian S. Markham, Ph.D., President of The General Theological Seminary, said: “It is wonderful to welcome our fifth cohort of hybrid MDiv students to General and watch them sign the Matriculation Book that generations of GTS students have signed before them. Demand for the hybrid program continues to be strong. General is growing. It is an exciting moment.”

GTS launched its innovative hybrid MDiv program in 2022. The program enables students to study in their own context through synchronous and asynchronous online learning, as well as coming to GTS’ historic home, the Close, in Chelsea, New York, for week-long intensives. The tuition-free program is significantly oversubscribed.

In August 2025, GTS signed an agreement to lease the Close to Vanderbilt University for 99 years. Under the arrangement, the Seminary maintains a year-round presence on the Close, with intensive weeks held there in August and May, and programming for alumni taking place in June. Commencement and Matriculation continue to be held in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. Under the terms of the lease, Vanderbilt is also carrying out significant building improvements.

Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal in case of the Rev Canon Andrew Cornes

By
Press Release
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A Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for the Diocese of London has upheld a complaint brought by the Director of the National Safeguarding Team against the Reverend Canon Andrew Cornes under the Clergy Discipline Measure 2003.

The complaint related to criticism of his actions contained in the Makin review, which looked at the Church’s handling of allegations against the late John Smyth. 

The Tribunal was satisfied that in 1982 Mr Cornes received a disclosure of abuse from a victim and survivor of John Smyth. The Tribunal found that Mr Cornes was under a duty, as part of his office as a priest in the Church of England, to take action to protect the young and vulnerable from harm by reporting the information he received, and that by failing to do so he was neglectful in the performance of his duties.

The judgment has been published in full on the Church of England website. The Tribunal has today imposed a conditional discharge for 12 months on Mr Cornes. A further written decision with reasons will be published in due course.

The NST brought complaints under the Clergy Discipline Measure against 10 members of clergy who were criticised in the Makin Review. The allegation against Mr Cornes was one of four complaints that have been referred to a tribunal or court for determination.

Response from the Church of England’s Lead Safeguarding Bishop, Robert Springett, and National Safeguarding Director Alexander Kubeyinje:

“We acknowledge the Tribunal’s decision and welcome the outcome while recognising that this judgment cannot undo the harm, pain, and lasting impact experienced by victims and survivors. 

“The National Safeguarding Team pursued this matter because we believed it was right to do so based on the information available to us and in line with the relevant policies and procedures for bringing complaints of misconduct. 

“This was an important part of responding well and listening to the voices of victims and survivors who had suffered horrendous abuse at the hands of Smyth. We remain committed to advocating for victims and survivors and to seeking accountability where safeguarding concerns are identified.”

decision-on-cdm-re-cornes-04.08.26-002Download

Cleansing the temple: Discipline imposed on CoE priest for failure to act

By
Julian Mann
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The censure of a Church of England cleric over the John Smyth abuse scandal is actually a victory for traditional Anglican doctrine and practice.

The C of E announced on August 6 that a Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal has upheld a complaint by the Church’s National Safeguarding Team (NST) against the Revd Canon Andrew Cornes.

The C of E press release said: ‘The Tribunal was satisfied that in 1982 Mr Cornes received a disclosure of abuse from a victim and survivor of John Smyth. The Tribunal found that Mr Cornes was under a duty, as part of his office as a priest in the Church of England, to take action to protect the young and vulnerable from harm by reporting the information he received, and that by failing to do so he was neglectful in the performance of his duties.’

After the tribunal ruling against Cornes, the Revd Bernard N. Howard, a respected commentator on the various abuse scandals in English conservative evangelicalism, posted on X:

‘Finally, nearly ten years after John Smyth’s abuse was exposed by Channel 4 News, at least one Church of England minister has been formally censured for negligence.’

Howard posted the most significant part of the tribunal’s ruling:

‘Having considered all the evidence presented, we do not consider that the respondent [Cornes] acted on the information in a way which was appropriate or to be expected even in 1982. No safeguarding policy was necessary or training required to appreciate that disclosures such as that which he had received needed to be passed on to others for a number of reasons: the account needed to be confirmed, the victims were entitled to protection and the perpetrator had to be exposed and desistance and discontinuance of those activities brought about.’

The tribunal continued:

‘Without further enquiry the respondent could not know that was taking place. There did not need to be a safeguarding or any other policy in place to appreciate that the response to the disclosure would be part of the duties of a cleric. Perhaps more so in this case where there was clearly more than one victim involved and the scriptures appeared to be being used to justify what were at least unacceptable and at worst appalling practices in the name of the church.’

Cornes’s defence that there was no church safeguarding policy in place in 1982 failed because of the Ordinal, the Ordering of Deacons, Priests, and Bishops in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The duty under the Ordinal for an ordained minister to uphold the teaching of Holy Scripture and to care for Christ’s people does not require a safeguarding policy to become valid and binding.

Cornes, a retired clergyman in Chichester Diocese, was handed a conditional discharge for 12 months, which means he could resume ministry provided the diocese restored his Permission to Officiate (PTO) and he kept a clean sheet in that period.

On X, the Revd Dr Charlie Bączyk-Bell, a prominent LGBT campaigner in the C of E, called on Cornes, a conservative evangelical and former Vicar of All Saints Crowborough, to resign his membership of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), the body that appoints diocesan bishops. He also called on Cornes to resign as an honorary canon of Chichester Cathedral.

But Cornes is no longer eligible to be a member of the CNC. He was a member of the last General Synod, whose five-year term ended in July. Having been elected to the CNC by the previous Synod, he automatically comes off that committee. Surely he would have to be out of his mind to try to get re-elected to Synod in September?

As for his honorary canonry, would he really have the brass neck to exercise his preaching rights at Chichester Cathedral? Unless his self-awareness level is about 1000 degrees below zero, what is the likelihood of that?

In December 2024, the Religion Media Centre (RMC) reported that 10 clergy named in the Makin review, published the previous November, had stepped back from ministry.

‘One of them is Canon Andrew Cornes, a retired clergyman attached to All Souls Eastbourne, a member of the General Synod and the Crown Nominations Commission, which will appoint the next Archbishop of Canterbury,’ the RMC said. Chichester Diocese says it has yet to decide whether to allow Cornes to resume ministry under PTO.

Out of the 10 clergy named in the Makin review against whom the NST brought disciplinary complaints in February 2025, the Church’s President of Tribunals, Sir Stephen Males, has cleared six of them. These include former Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey; the Revd Paul Perkin, former Vicar of St Mark’s Battersea Rise; the Revd Canon Hugh Palmer, former Rector of All Souls Langham Place; the Revd Tim Hastie-Smith, an incumbent in Gloucester Diocese; the Ven Roger Combes, former Archdeacon of Horsham in Chichester Diocese; and the Revd John Woolmer, a retired clergyman in Leicester Diocese.

Three clergy still have disciplinary actions hanging over them – former Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler; the Revd Sue Colman and the Revd Nick Stott.

Whatever the outcome of the actions against these clergy, the tribunal’s ruling in the Cornes case upholds the Ordinal, which states clearly that ordained ministers are called by God. Therefore, they must uphold biblical godliness in the waythey treat Christ’s people and they don’t need a safeguarding policy to tell them what godliness is.

Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire, UK.

Beach’s 2020 probe cleared Dobbs of claims now driving defamation suit

By
George Conger
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A confidential November 12, 2020 report and set of Godly Judgments issued by the Most Rec. Foley Beach of the Anglican Church in North America has emerged as a central exhibit in the federal defamation lawsuit the Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs filed against the Rt. Rev. Derek Jones.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama as Exhibit N in Dobbs v. Jones (Case 2:26-cv-00267-MHH), the document records a thorough provincial investigation into the very financial allegations Bishop Jones has publicly repeated since 2025. Those allegations—centered on claims that Bishop Dobbs mishandled or “absconded with” tens of thousands of dollars in chaplaincy funds sent to the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA)—form the heart of Bishop Dobbs’ lawsuit. The 2020 investigation concluded that the specific presenting charge of $3,750 in misdirected checks did not support a finding of impropriety or personal diversion of funds. The report and Archbishop Beach’s accompanying judgments therefore speak directly to the truth or falsity of the statements now at issue in court.

The document’s appearance in the docket captures the ACNA’s formal response, after hundreds of hours of work and thousands of dollars spent, to complaints first raised by Jones and the Special Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplains (SJAFC) against Dobbs and the Diocese of the Living Word (formerly CANA East). Six years later, those same complaints have been revived in public forums, Zoom calls with chaplains, court filings, and media interviews, prompting Dobbs to sue for defamation.

CANA was created by the Church of Nigeria as a missionary jurisdiction to serve orthodox Anglicans in North America during the realignment of the early 2000s. It became a founding partner of the ACNA in 2009 while retaining formal ties to Nigeria. Over time it developed constituent structures, among them CANA East under Bishop Julian Dobbs and a chaplaincy that evolved into the Special Jurisdiction under Bishop Derek Jones.

In 2013, at GAFCON in Nairobi, Archbishops Robert Duncan of the ACNA and Nicholas Okoh of Nigeria signed a Second Protocol that addressed the chaplaincy’s future. Paragraph 7 stated that the parties were working in good faith to transition the existing CANA Missionary Diocese for the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy fully into the ACNA as a diocese or diocese-in-formation, so that it would “no longer be affiliated with CANA as a subjurisdiction of the ACNA.” The protocol was signed in October 2013 but understood to take effect from June of that year. Dobbs signed it when he became CANA Missionary Bishop in January 2014.

Practice, however, diverged sharply from the text. The Special Jurisdiction continued participating in CANA meetings, events, and financial contributions for years, treating itself as a deanery of CANA on the basis of an earlier draft that never entered the final protocol. Archbishop Okoh continued referring to the chaplains as “his Chaplains.” Provincial Chancellor Scott Ward, who also served as CANA chancellor, spoke at a 2017 CANA Council meeting as though the chaplains remained part of the structure. The Jurisdiction itself cited the practical need for continued Nigerian Anglican Communion connections for overseas chaplains until the Church of England recognized ACNA orders in 2016. Contributions from the Special Jurisdiction to CANA continued, exceeding $40,000 over the period.

Meanwhile CANA’s corporate governance withered. Its board, chaired by the Church of Nigeria Registrar, did not meet after 2017. No annual budgets, formal financial accountability processes, or corporate minutes appear after that date. The latest available profit-and-loss statement, from 2018, showed a $36,000 loss. CANA was dissolved as a legal entity on October 6, 2020.

Against this backdrop, Bishop Jones and the SJAFC brought specific charges to Archbishop Beach. The presenting issue was $3,750 in checks written to CANA that had been stamped “CANA EAST” and appeared to have been deposited into a CANA East bank account. Broader concerns involved designated contributions and the failure to implement the 2013 protocols.

Beach assigned the inquiry to Bishop David Anderson (who stepped down for health reasons in September 2020), Assistant Chancellor Jeff Garrety, and certified forensic investigator Leah Turner.

On the $3,750 checks, investigators found that CANA East had used two accounts as the original CANA structure evolved into separate dioceses. CPA Paul Cusano reviewed the records and determined that funds were placed in appropriate bookkeeping accounts and spent accordingly. The bookkeeper had mis-stamped the checks, but there was in fact no separate CANA East account receiving the money; the funds were appropriated for CANA and properly recorded as such. The report concluded that the stamping error was improper and could theoretically be prosecuted under federal banking law, yet the monies were used for the intended CANA ministry and recorded correctly.

CANA East argued that it had itself supplemented CANA’s budget deficit by approximately $27,000 because other dioceses were not contributing adequately, and requested return of those funds if any repayment to SJAFC were ordered.

A 2014 email from Jones had requested that SJAFC contributions to CANA be “designated” solely for office support. No evidence showed that Dobbs acknowledged the email or that the designation was honored in the accounting. The funds were not recorded as restricted under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles; they were treated as general income. The report noted that this constituted a potential violation that could render CANA liable, and that the SJAFC had a valid complaint against CANA and its Board of Trustees for improper accounting of designated funds. Fiduciary responsibility rested with the Board, of which the Missionary Bishop and the CANA bishops—including Jones—were ex-officio members.

The report also documented the widespread failure to circulate or implement the 2013 Second Protocol. There was no evidence that Duncan, Okoh, or Dobbs shared it with CANA bishops or the CANA Council. Parties continued acting as though the chaplaincy remained a CANA deanery. A pre-protocol letter from Duncan in April 2013 had already described any arrangement short of full transfer of the chaplaincy to the ACNA as “politically and ecclesiologically unsustainable.”

On corporate governance, the report found the CANA Board’s inactivity after 2017 constituted negligence under U.S. nonprofit law by the Chairman. Because the Chairman and Treasurer were Church of Nigeria officials under Okoh’s supervision, and because Dobbs as Missionary Bishop received direction from and was accountable to Okoh, the report stated that the Primate of Nigeria would also be considered negligent in fulfilling legal and fiduciary responsibilities as de facto CEO. Notes in the report carefully qualified these determinations: they assumed sufficient grounds for a federal investigation or trial but did not presume any particular verdict.

Additional concerns about use of a 501(c)(3) status and a $10,000 contribution from The Falls Church Anglican for a CANA audit were addressed. DOLW produced documentation of its own New York and IRS filings. On the Falls Church gift, Dobbs testified that a review rather than a full audit had been performed at the request of the outgoing bishop, with remaining funds used to establish the accounting system thereafter employed. The chaplains shared the same EIN at the time, limiting access. The report directed any dissatisfied party to pursue explanation or remedy through canonical and legal channels.

After reviewing the investigative report and conducting further conversations, Beach issued a series of Godly Judgments and Admonitions to Bishops Dobbs, Jones, Mark Nordstrom, and Mike Williams, invoking the bishops’ oath of canonical obedience.

He required Dobbs to have the Diocese of the Living Word Standing Committee commission a full CPA audit of the final year of CANA East and the first year of DOLW, to be shared with the Standing Committee, synod, and the Archbishop by November 2021. He further directed the development and adoption of diocesan financial policies consistent with generally accepted practices. These steps aligned with the ACNA Constitution’s requirements for financial responsibility and accountability at every level and with DOLW’s own canons requiring annual independent audits.

On the $3,750 matter, Beach affirmed the investigation’s conclusion that the funds had been used for CANA ministry. If the SJAFC remained unsatisfied, it could petition for a Provincial Tribunal. Citing Matthew 5:25–26 and 1 Corinthians 6:1–8, he urged Jones to pursue ecclesiastical rather than secular remedies, warning that litigation would publicly involve the bishops, the Church of Nigeria and its primates, the ACNA, the Diocese of the Living Word, and the SJAFC itself—damaging the Church’s witness.

Pastoral directives followed. Dobbs was ordered to undertake counseling for spiritual abuse inflicted by Archbishop Okoh (with Beach offering to fund it if necessary) and to take a minimum three-month sabbatical or leave of absence in early 2021. Multiple pairs of bishops—Jones and Dobbs, Jones and Dave Bena, Mike Williams and Dobbs, Mark Nordstrom and Dobbs, and Dobbs and Felix Orji—were directed to meet with a bishop mediator to work on their relationships in a Christian and biblical manner, with status reports due by the June 2021 College of Bishops meeting. Beach repeatedly invoked Matthew 5:24 on reconciliation before offering gifts at the altar.

Regarding residual financial claims against the dissolved CANA, Beach asked the parties to consider that gifts had been used for Kingdom work and to leave concerns with the Lord. If that proved unacceptable, Christian mediation rather than secular courts should be employed, with the parties bearing the cost. Finally, he observed that all involved parties—including Okoh, the CANA Board, Dobbs, Jones, Williams, Nordstrom, Orji, and Bena—had been confused or ignorant regarding the protocols’ meaning and application. All were complicit. Ultimate responsibility for CANA rested with Archbishop Okoh. Beach called those still in the ACNA to move forward in the Holy Spirit with humility and grace, leaving past concerns of complicity and deception at the foot of the Cross.

The document concludes with Beach’s signature at Holy Cross Cathedral in Loganville, Georgia, on 12 November 2020.

The 2020 report and judgments represent a sustained provincial effort to address real accounting irregularities, corporate governance failures, and the practical non-implementation of a signed protocol, while insisting on biblical process, financial transparency, and relational reconciliation among bishops. It found that the specific $3,750 allegation did not support the claim of misappropriation into personal or improper accounts. At the same time, it did not whitewash systemic problems in designated-fund accounting, board inactivity, or the long ambiguity surrounding the chaplaincy’s status.

That the same document now appears as a court exhibit illustrates how unresolved personal and institutional tensions from the CANA era continue to shape ACNA life years later. The public witness of the Church—precisely the concern Archbishop Beach sought to protect by directing parties toward ecclesiastical rather than secular forums—has been drawn into civil litigation. The 2020 record remains the primary source for understanding both the substance of the earlier dispute and the Province’s attempted resolution of it.

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Mark Short speaks to Anglicans on hope in an era of distrust: ‘the folly of enshrining one culture as normative’

By
Mark Short
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An excerpt from the Presidential Address by Bishop Mark Short to the 19th Anglican General Synod

Describing the growth of distrust in our society, particularly post Covid, Bishop Short turns to the rise of anti-semitism as a prime example.

The current Royal Commission into antisemitism and social cohesion has highlighted the exclusion and hostility experienced by our Jewish neighbours and colleagues in the lead-up to and in the aftermath of the December 14th, 2025 terrorist attack at Bondi. 

This is worthy of particular reflection on the part of Christians, not least because of our own tragic history of complicity in this area. Several years ago, I spent a sobering afternoon reading translations of mediaeval Hebrew poetry. So many of them being laments, composed on the occasion of pogroms initiated by those claiming to act in the name of Christ.

As I reflected on the events of December 2025 and October 2023, I felt that pogrom-like character. How much more so the community that was on the receiving end of such atrocity. More broadly, in the level of online reference and public debate, there is a tendency to see those who differ from us in some regard as a potential threat rather than a potential partner. Increasingly, we find it easier to ascribe motives and intentions to others on the basis of their religious, political and cultural identities rather than as a result of patient conversation. Perhaps downstream from these developments, we have seen growing uncertainty at the political level. The clearest manifestation of this has been the declining share of votes going to the two traditional political blocs and the rise of independents and political parties on both the left and the right.

Bishop Mark Short addresses General Synod. Image from Archbishop Jeremy Greaves Facebook

Beyond and beneath these developments, there are more fundamental questions being asked at a national or indeed an existential level. What does it mean to be Australian? What are the tacit assumptions and frameworks of meeting that finders together notwithstanding our disagreements? Are we a multicultural or monocultural nation? If it is the latter, who gets to decide what constitutes that culture? 

In recent years, two books, Julianne Schultz’s The idea of Australia and Tony Abbott’s Australia: A History have explored these questions through an overview of our national story. And notwithstanding their different politics and their different narrative styles, they both engage with Noel Pearson’s framework for understanding Australia in terms of our ancient indigenous heritage, our British legal and cultural foundations, and our post-war immigrant flavouring. 

Both also regard the result of the referendum on the Voice to Parliament in October 2023, 2023 as profoundly revelatory. For Schultz, because it showed our inability to reconcile our egalitarian aspirations with anxieties around race. For Abbott, because it represented the triumph of a liberal emphasis on the rights and equality of individuals over against privilege afforded on the basis of group identity.

So let’s begin with hope. Uncertainty is not merely a problem to be solved. It can also be an invitation to rediscover the source of our confidence. Christians have never located their home in social cohesion or economic prosperity; all their possibilities are located in the faithfulness of God. …

So what are the defining features of Christian hope? First of all, it is personal. In 1 Peter 1:3, believers are assured that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Christian hope is also communal. In passages such as 1 Thessalonians 1:2–3, the fledgling church is commended for your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope is something they manifest together. And finally, and ultimately, Christian hope is cosmic. It looks forward not just to the salvation of individuals or the redemption of the people, but to the liberation of creation itself when Christ returns, as in Romans 8. …

Hence, when we come to consider the relationship between the gospel and Noel Pearson’s three aspects of our national identity, our indigenous heritage, our British foundations, our immigrant flavourings, we must resist any attempt to co-op the gospel as if it were merely another ideology to be deployed to advance the interests of one group at the expense of the others, nor should the gospel be regarded as somehow depending for its progress on the ascendancy of one strand over the others. Instead, we should ask ourselves, how has, how is, and how might God be at work through the gospel in the three aspects of our national life?

Here, for example, we might point to the faithfulness of God in Christ, who has revealed to us his presence in the vastness of this land, his love and its fruitfulness and his purpose in its cycles of death and renewed life for thousands of years. We might also remember and celebrate the faithfulness of servants like James and Angelina Noble, Aboriginal Christian leaders who in the first part of the 20th century travelled across Northern Australia to share Christ and to bring shameful acts of dispossession and murder to light. You might also rejoice that an ancient and living culture has become the means through which the good news is embodied and communicated in fresh ways. 

Next, let’s consider that second strand, our British legal and cultural foundations. Here we might point to the rich heritage of the Catholic faith renewed in the English Reformation through which God continues to nurture our discipleship as the scriptures are read and as we gather together in all of worship. …

Finally, in considering that through a third strand, our post-war immigrant flavourings, we might point to the many leaders and churches God has raised up in the last 50 years from those who come to our shores and how the Anglican Church of Australia would be a much smaller and less interesting group of people without their presence and contribution. Most of all, we might and should give thanks that the word of God across these three strands has never been in competition, but always complementary because we worship a God of abundance whose grace is never a zero-sum game. Hence the absolute folly of enshrining one culture or one expression of culture as normative, since culture is as dynamic as the God who is constantly at work in and through and above it for his glory.

Main Image: Mark Short. Image Credit: Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn

Insert image: Bishop Mark Short addresses General Synod. Image Credit: Archbishop Jeremy Greaves Facebook

£100 Million in Reparations Is Virtue Signalling, Not Justice

By
Daisy Mae Inglese
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The Archbishop of Canterbury has reaffirmed the Church’s commitment to a controversial £100 million reparations fund for communities affected by the transatlantic slave trade. This is about more than a single financial pledge. It reflects a growing cultural expectation that institutions should respond to historical wrongs through ideological gestures and identity-based politics. If left unchallenged, symbolic acts of collective guilt will replace principled stewardship and biblical justice allowing moral signalling to take precedence over meaningful Christian charity. Justice means giving each person what is truly due, not distributing resources according to political symbolism.

The Church of England has long been called to stand apart from the shifting moral fashions of the age, yet this decision suggests an institution increasingly shaped by them. We live in a culture preoccupied with inherited identity and historical grievance, where moral authority is often claimed through ancestral victimhood rather than personal responsibility. Instead of scrutinizing this worldview through the lens of Christian justice, the Church appears to have embraced it uncritically. Its calling is to proclaim timeless truth, exercise wise stewardship and give each person their due, not baptise the ideological assumptions of the age.

The BBC reported that, during Dame Sarah Mullally’s visit to Ghana, she laid a foundation stone for accommodation linked to the government’s “Year of Return“ initiative, which encourages members of the African diaspora to reconnect with their heritage. Since its launch in 2019, the Year of Return has been promoted as both a cultural and economic program, attracting significant numbers of visitors from the diaspora. The government has also led an international campaign urging nations and institutions connected to the transatlantic slave trade to pay reparations. Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa praised the Archbishop’s commitment for sending “the right signals” to others. These developments raise a legitimate question: is this £100 million commitment primarily intended to deliver practical justice, or to support a wider reparations campaign intertwined with Ghana’s cultural and tourism strategy?

Advocates of reparations argue that descendants of enslaved people continue to experience disadvantages rooted in historical injustice and that institutions which profited from slavery have a moral responsibility to respond. Yet this logic establishes a standard applied almost nowhere else. The descendants of those who endured famine, persecution, war or forced displacement do not ordinarily claim to have inherited the victimhood of their ancestors or seek compensation for centuries-old wrongs. Remembering history is not the same as inheriting its injuries. True justice also requires us to confront the suffering that exists today, not only the injustices of the distant past. Today, millions of people are trapped in modern slavery, trafficked across borders or exploited as children. We should resist a culture that elevates inherited victimhood over present suffering and allows historical identity to become a shield against scrutiny rather than a call to personal responsibility and genuine justice.

GAFCON Europe launches funding appeal

By
David McClay
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These are challenging days and yet times of opportunity for all Christians and Anglicans who are biblically orthodox. This is true both for those who are committed to staying within the existing structures, as well as those who have reached the decision to establish new and alternative Anglican structures.  Both seek to strategically remain biblically orthodox and missional and Gafcon Europe is committed to seeing both prosper and play a significant role, alongside other bible believing Christians, in reaching Europe for Christ. 

I have been appointed as Regional Secretary for Gafcon Europe. Gafcon Europe supports church leaders in calling the church to evangelism and a renewed focus on the task of making disciples of Jesus Christ. 

Our vision is that we play our part in reaching the United Kingdom and the nations of Europe with the good news of the Gospel. 

Would you please be willing to partner with us, in helping to establish Gafcon Europe as a strong support network for Orthodox Anglicans, committed to the missional work of Evangelism and Church Growth?

As a first step, Gafcon Europe is calling all to come together for a Conference on “Evangelism Today” – to be held in Belfast from 12-15th November 2026. 

The goal of these days will be:

  • To help the church of Christ live under the authority of God’s Word. 
  • To help embolden leaders to act with courage in the strength of Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit 
  • To equip and enable the Church in the proclamation of biblical truth. 
  • To strengthen a sense of unity within Anglicanism, so that we unite around the common focus of gospel proclamation
  • To resource the church to reach Europe, a continent that so desperately needs the life changing message of eternal salvation through saving faith in Jesus Christ. 

Why we need your help

Gafcon Europe has no endowment funds and only seeks financial assistance when required. That time is now. I am writing to ask the Ardbarron trust to consider supporting us in two specific ways:

  1. Ongoing, regular income: To supply an annual Operating budget from churches and individuals of £75,000, to “underwrite” the costs of the operational and the outreach needs of Gafcon Europe, as it urgently seeks to support biblical ministry in evangelism. 
  3. A One off gift: To create a foundational fund from individuals and Trusts, to enable Gafcon Europe in substantially increasing its impact for the Gospel. Once established, this fund would, for example, provide bursaries for those who otherwise could not afford to attend such events as the Belfast Evangelism Conference and “seed fund” additional initiatives that will follow. 

I have been reluctant to contact you asking for help and would only want you to assist us financially if reaching the continent of Europe was something you believed was important and secondly that supporting this work would not regularly impact your crucial support and help with other work. I also lead in the Diocese of Down and Dromore and I would be happy meet with to discuss this new work if that would be helpful. 

Bishop David McClay

Gafcon Regional Secretary for Europe

On behalf of Gafcon Europe Trustees

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