Anglican Church of Tanzania
The Anglican Church of Tanzania ( Swahili Kanisa Anglikana Tanzania , English Anglican Church of Tanzania ) is a member church of the Anglican Community in Tanzania .
The Anglican Church in the area dates back to a mission station from 1864. In 1884 the Diocese of Eastern Equatorial Africa was founded, which in addition to Tanzania also encompassed today's Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Malawi. After several partitions, the dioceses in Kenya and Tanzania became an independent Anglican ecclesiastical province as the Church of Province of East Africa . In 1970 the church was divided into the Anglican Church of Kenya and the Church of the Province of Tanzania . It has had its current name since 1997
The area coincides with the mentioned country. There are 26 dioceses here (Central Tanganyika , Dar es Salaam , Kagera , Kiteto, Kondoa, Lweru, Mara , Masasi, Morogoro , Kilimanjaro , Mpwapwa, Newala, Rift Valley, Rorya, Ruaha, Ruvuma, Shinyanga, Southwest Tanganyika, Southern Highlands, Tabora, Tanga, Tarime, Victoria Nyanza , Western Tanganyika, Ziwa Rukwa, Zanzibar ).
The church says its membership is 2 million. It maintains the St. John's University of Tanzania and two theological colleges .
At the head of the church is the Archbishop of Tanzania (since 2018 Maimbo Mndolwa ) as primate . It is elected every five years by the general synod, which forms the highest authority of the ecclesiastical province and is composed of the house of bishops , the house of the clergy and the house of the laity .
Like other Anglican churches, the ecclesiastical province of Tanzania has condemned the ordination of the homosexual Gene Robinson as bishop and declared the church fellowship with the Episcopal Church of the USA to be over.
The Anglican Church in Tanzania has no ordination for women .
Archbishops
The office of archbishop was initially linked to that of bishop of the capital Dodoma . In the meantime, one of the diocesan bishops has been appointed archbishop for a five-year term.
- John Sepeku , 1970-1978
- Mussa Kahurananga , 1979-1983
- John Ramadhani , 1984-1998
- Donald Mtetemela , 1998-2008
- Valentino Mokiwa , 2008-2013
- Jacob Chimeledya , 2013-2018
- Maimbo Mndolwa , 2018-present
literature
- Phanuel L. Mung'ong'o, Moses Matonya: The Anglican Church of Tanzania. In: Ian S. Markham et al. (Ed.): The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Anglican Communion. John Wiley & Sons 2013, pp. 204-220.
Web links
- Official website of the Church of Tanzania (Engl.)
- Anglican Church of Tanzania on the WCC website