In Pretoria I hardly ever met, even casually, any priest or minister of any other Christian Church, except at the big Kilnerton Methodist mission. In Swaziland our only real contacts were with the Methodists at Matspha, I used to visit to see Anglican secondary school students. Arthur Matthews, the minister in charge, resigned to become an Anglican priest. “You have a bishop as a father. We have only a Board” he gave as his main reason. It served me as a model which I wish I had followed more faithfully.
In Nyasaland Presbyterians and Catholics vastly outnumbered Anglicans. The largest Church, known as CCAP – the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian – was made up of three synods.
Presbyterians
Livingstonia Synod in the north had been created by Robert Laws, a human dynamo and a doctor of medicine, theology and law. He came to Nyasaland in 1885 and returned to Scotland fifty-two years later. By 1922, although the area served was thinly populated, Livingstonia had 768 schools with 40,000 pupils. Laws was a personal friend of William Percival Johnson the tireless UMCA archdeacon based on Likoma Island. In more recent years there had been little contact with UMCA.
Nkhoma Synod in the Central Region was the offspring of the Dutch Reformed Church of the Western Cape and still in the missionary age with an Afrikaans medium school. Their medical work was superb. Dr Blignaut was one of the third generation of doctors of that name and Nkhoma hospital was renowned for its eye surgery.
Blantyre Synod in the south was our natural partner with the diocesan office first at Mponda’s and then at Malosa. Jonathan Sangaya, a wonderful man, had been appointed General Secretary in 1960, with similar authority to an Anglican bishop. He remained in that post until his death in 1978. The Synod was reinforced by members of the Iona Community, three of whom, Richard Baxter, Hamish Hepburn and Ken Pattison were our neighbours when serving at Chilema Lay Training Centre.
In my enthronement address I said, “We who brought the gospel to Africa are deeply conscious of our sin and folly in brining it in broken parts. The prayer of Christ the High Priest still goes on: “May they be one that the world may believe.” I said that in India all the major Churches, other than Catholics, had pledged themselves to seek visible unity and thanked God for the wise leadership of Pope John XXIII, who was urging his people to open their bibles and listen to the Holy Spirit.
Catholics
This raised the eyebrows of a few white lay people but it also brought an invitation to meet Fr van Asdonk, Secretary to the Catholic Episcopal Conference. He lent me The Council, Reform and Reunion by Hans Küng, then a little-known Swiss theologian. The seventy-seven year-old caretaker Pope, as he had been seen, was calling together the Second Vatican Council in October 1962 to be a new Pentecost which would renew the life of the Church and bring about reunion. “Only when the Church appears healthily modernised and rejuvenated can we say to these separate brethren: “Look, brothers, this is the Church of Christ. Come! The way lies open.”
Hans Küng listed his hopes – Mass in the vernacular; better preaching, bible-study by lay people; reform of marriage laws – among many others.
We had similar needs. Most Anglican churches, except at Nkhotakota, used the dialect used on Likoma Island. Rural parishes had up to fifiten ‘outstations’ where all preaching and pastoral care was given by laymen, generous but untrained. Few people had a copy of the bible, or of the New Testament; if they had one, there were no guides available. The marriage laws showed no mercy to the many mothers whose husbands had gone off to work in other countries and had never come back. If they found another man to support their orphaned children, they were excommunicated and left in limbo.
Later I asked Fr van Asdonk, why he and others were so involved in re-union. “Most of us were in the underground during the war. We never asked questions about each other. If we were tortured, we had nothing to reveal. When peace was declared we threw off our inhibitions. I disclosed for the first time that I was a Catholic priest and learned that my half-section was a Protestant engineer. We both said, “We believe in the same God. Let’s work together to rebuild our community.”
Soon afterwards I put this new relationship to the test. An Anglican student at a Catholic secondary school had just been told that he would not be allowed to sit for his final exams there unless he was re-baptised. I sent his letter on to Bishop Fady, the French catholic Bishop of Lilongwe. His reply came by return of post. The student would write his exams. The head of the school had been moved. Would I please let him know of any similar incident in the future.
When we returned from the United States in 1963, I was delighted to know that the Catholic Diocese of Zomba had agreed to be a junior partner in Chilema Lay Training Centre, along with the Churches of Christ. The latter is now part of the United Reformed Church in England, though it retains its identity in Malawi as a Church founded with the reunion of Christendom as its major aim. The Diocese of Zomba withdrew from Chilema two years after its opening, not through any disagreement but because following Vatican II, the founding of catechetical centres throughout Africa had become a major target.
Chilema Ecumenical Lay training Centre
Meanwhile the Revd John Leake and Alison, who I had met in York, had arrived with their children in 1963 to help staff Chilema for the next eight years. After John’s sudden death from asthma in 1974, two years after their return to England, Justus Kishindo, the Chairman of Chilema, wrote movingly:
In 1965 Chilema opened its doors with Richard Baxter (of Blantyre Synod and the Iona Community) as Warden and John as his assistant. He and Richard made a very good team – Richard would pour out ideas and John would put them into action. During the three years that John was later Warden, one could always think of Chilema as John Leake and John as Chilema. He was quiet and shy but also kind and loveable. He always respected people as people and it was this which made him popular with students and visitors.
In January 1965 twenty Malawian students, some from Karonga, four hundred miles to the north, came to Chilema on the first ecumenical work-camp ever held in Malawi. They painted the new buildings, planted 100 flamboyant trees, cleaned up rubble and met for study sessions on ‘Service’. On the Saturday they hiked up the Domasi valley, where villagers sold hem apples, a fruit some of the had never seen. On Sunday there was a united Eucharist led by John Leake in the outdoor chapel at Chilema, a vast fig-tree that had partly fallen over and then re-rooted itself. It seemed a fitting symbol of what we were being called to do and be.
It is often the impromptu that it the most memorable. At a Saturday meeting of official representatives of the four Churches involved in Chilema, the invited speaker failed to turn up. We had no programme – someone suggested that the representatives of the four Churches should first meet separately and list the things they felt to be essential in a future united Church. Then we came together, and each Church read out its list. Anglicans, trained in the Anglo-catholic traditions of UMCA, wanted (for example) the sacrament of absolution, and so did the Catholics. No problem! Presbyterians wanted synodical structures at every level. No problem! The Churches of Christ wanted the reunion process to be ongoing until every denomination in Malawi was involved. No problem! And in the room were the heads of all the four Churches that sponsored Chilema.
Unity spreads
The drive towards unity spread throughout the country, even in the Central Region, where Josiah Mtekateka as bishop and where Nkhoma Synod with its South African Dutch Reformed tradition had not been speaking terms with Roman Catholics. Maxwell Zingani describes the Week of Prayer for Unity at a Catholic church in the Central Region in 1970:
The introductory prayers and blessing were taken by the Roman Catholic Father. The first sermon was preached by a Presbyterian minister, Rev Magombo, who said it was a new experience for him, a Presbyterian minister, to preach in a Roman Catholic church. He asked for everyone to pray hard for the guidance of the Holy Spirit that our prayers for the unity of the all churches, in Malawi and in the world, might be fruitful. The second sermon by an Anglican priest, Canon James Mwenda. Hymns were conducted by Fr. Dunstan Ainani. These were Anglican, Presbyterian and Roman Catholic hymns. They were beautifully sung.
In 1972 many expatriate Catholic bishops in Africa were replaced by Africans. This should have added strength to the ecumenical movement, but this was not so. To be senior enough to be a bishop meant that you had learned your theology in the 1950s and expatriate bishops, who had absorbed new insights by attending Vatican II were replaced by priests who had learned their hard-line theology in pre-Vatican days. Now they in turn have moved and the new leaders of all Churches are being trained in theological colleges and seminaries in Zomba enabling students to be in contact with each other. There is hope.