Sir, — We have just returned from the Third International Conference on Afro Anglicanism in Toronto, Canada. This broad caucus was set up to give a voice to those of us who see our origins as from the African diaspora. There are two main points we would like to share.

First, the future of the Anglican Communion is now in question,  given the exclusion of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the US from the Anglican Consultative Council.

Together with the considerable dismay and distress this has caused to members of these two Churches, some of whom questioned this exclusion, citing the well-established Anglican position of letting the local Church run its own affairs while remaining in broad communion with Canterbury, it seems to those with whom we have been in dialogue that a new historical question has been set in an arbitrary, not to say a high-handed, fashion. The mood of the conference was to decry this act of marginalisation.

Second, and far more important, as a general principle, a Black consensus view must of necessity contain an innate understanding of the Church’s experience of other marginalised groups including those God has called to homosexuality.
DAVID ISIORHO
LINDA ISIORHO
The Vicarage, Cleveland Street, Kempston, Bedford MK42 8DW