Bishop Tengatenga to preach at Episcopal convention in Charleston

Posted Aug 28, 2014

[Episcopal Church in South Carolina press release] The Rt. Rev. James Tengatenga, a distinguished leader and teacher in the worldwide Anglican Communion, will visit Charleston in November as the preacher for the 224th Annual Convention of The Episcopal Church in South Carolina.

Bishop Tengatenga will give the sermon at the opening Eucharist on Nov. 14 as Episcopalians across eastern South Carolina gather for the two-day convention at the Church of the Holy Communion, 218 Ashley Ave. in Charleston.

Bishop Tengatenga is the chairman of the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the four “Instruments of Communion” that serve the worldwide family of Anglican/Episcopal churches. He served as bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Southern Malawi in southeastern Africa from 1998-2013.

In May, he was appointed as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Global Anglicanism at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he teaches courses in missiology, contemporary global Anglicanism, and related subjects.

In announcing the appointment, the Rt. Rev. J. Neil Alexander, dean of the University of the South’s School of Theology, said: “Dr. Tengatenga has few peers in his extensive experience in the leadership of the Anglican Communion and his understanding of the church’s mission throughout the world. His leadership of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion and of the Anglican Consultative Council gives him a comprehensive knowledge of Anglican mission throughout the world that few can equal.”

Bishop Tengatenga has been a member of the Anglican Consultative Council since 2002 and has been its chairman since 2009. The role of the ACC is to facilitate the cooperative work of the churches of the Anglican Communion, exchange information between the Provinces and churches, and help to coordinate common action. The Archbishop of Canterbury serves as President of the ACC.

As chairman, Bishop Tengatenga also serves as chairman of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion.

He has contributed chapters to several books and given talks and lectures in many places. He is the author of Church State and Society in Malawi (2006); he co-authored an HIV/AIDS training manual, Time to Talk (2006) with the Rev. Dr. Anne Bailey; and has edited The UMCA in Malawi: A History of the Anglican Church (2010). He is on the editorial board of two journals: the Journal of Anglican Studies (Cambridge university Press) and Modern Believing (Liverpool University Press) and is a regular reviewer of articles for the Journal of Theology in Southern Africa and the Journal of Gender Relations in Africa. His other fields of interest are post-colonial theory, African traditional religions and, race, and ethnicity studies.

Born in Kwekwe, in what was then Rhodesia, on April 7, 1958, Bishop Tengatenga he began theological training and priestly formation in 1979 at Zomba Theological College in Malawi. He continued his theological training at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, where he earned a master of divinity degree and was ordained a priest in 1985. He has done graduate work at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Malawi, as well as honorary degrees from the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, and The General Theological Seminary in New York City.


Tags