Raising African bishops in the Anglican Church in Malawi 1924-2000

Abstract

The process of raising African bishops in the Anglican Church in Malawi between 1924 and 2000 was a long one hampered by many setbacks. The basic obstacle was the missionary consideration that the Anglican episcopate was essentially an administrative position which required its incumbent to possess fairly good administrative skills. Since the Malawian clergy were not regarded as possessing such skills, they were excluded from higher positions. There was also a more general and fundamental weakness: the standard of education for the Malawian clergy was very low, which made them unfit to take up senior positions in the church. Yet this was not a weakness of their own making, but rather a legacy of their training background. More critically, there was a deepseated and widespread view that Africans were naturally less capable than their European counterparts. By much the same token, the UMCA’s close association with the colonial state restricted the possibilities of extending the episcopate, itself symbolically identifiable with the colonial power, to Malawians.