(Picking back up my Recent Anglican History series.)
As with any series of events my perspective on the collapse of AMiA is limited. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is anyone else out there who is digging into the sources, interviewing people, and creating a cohesive narrative, so my limitations are all I have. And really, AMiA was small, the ACNA is small, and so the heavy lifting of coming up with a true history of those days is probably never going to happen. But I can come at this from a good angle, because I had a bit of “insider” knowledge in those days.
One of the problems with a story like this is where to start. I will write about the whole backstory of AMiA origins some other time, but for those new to this, the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) was a group of churches who broke away from the Episcopal Church in the early 21st century. They had theoretical episcopal oversight from the Anglican Church in Rwanda (Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini) and the Anglican Church in Southeast Asia (Archbishop Yong Ping Chung). In the USA, the main leader was Bishop Chuck Murphy. In those days there was a lot of jockeying for who was going to lead the orthodox wing of Anglicanism in America. There was talk of “inside strategies” and “outside strategies.” Churches in America had oversight from Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya, Bolivia, and Uganda. It was a free for all.
As far as I can tell, there was no real episcopal oversight of AMiA from Rwanda. It was more of AMiA doing whatever it wanted to do, while giving lip-service to the Rwandan and Asian leadership, inviting them to its annual Winter Conference, and sending mission teams over to Rwanda from various churches to help out in some way. If you think that ACNA is the Wild West, you should have seen AMiA. People were ordained who had no business being in ministry, some of whom have gone on to be catastrophic in ACNA. Disparate groups who loathed each other each came together to maintain a seat at the table. And there was also good within this movement. It wasn’t all bad, by any means. But in 2011-12 the group imploded, sending churches and clergy in different directions, bringing hatred out into the open, and ending the first phase of Anglican realignment in North America. To this day I think many if not most people who went through those days have no idea what happened or why. When people look back on those days, there is a lot of revisionist history that goes on and generally it seems to be swept under the rug now, invisible to newcomers to ACNA. So I thought I should make an attempt to talk about what happened, but in an imperfect way as I said, lacking so much information—much of which is probably lost to us.
One issue was money, specifically, money that the United States sent to Rwanda. The AMiA said it had a “10-10-10” giving principle, where members gave 10% of their income to the local church, which gave 10% to the AMiA, which in turn gave 10% to the global partners. I don’t know how that was divided between Rwanda and others. According to someone close to Rwandan Bishop Alexis Bilindabagabo, the central issue was missing money, and this issue had surfaced as early as 2009. This source wrote:
In approximately 2009 it came to the attention of the Rwanda HOB that for several years the annual financial statements of the AMiA showed about $300,000.00 per annum being given to the Province of Rwanda under this 10-10-10 tithing arrangement. Unfortunately, the annual financial reports of the Province of Rwanda showed only $100,000.00 per year coming into the Province of Rwanda…Above the tithe was an additional $400,000.00 given to ‘the Province’ that never showed up in the Provincial Accounts. The total ‘missing’ monies seem to total at least 1.2 million US dollars.1
This issue bubbled to the surface at the same time as Rwanda elected a new Archbishop. On January 23, 2011 Onesphore Rwaje was elevated to the office of Archbishop of Rwanda, replacing Emmanuel Kolini who had served since 1998. According to Murphy loyalists, Rwaje was elected with only one dissenting vote, which went to Bishop Alexis Bilindabagabo. An AMiA priest from Mobile, Alabama named Tim Smith who was loyal to Chuck Murphy publicly tried to blame Alexis as the problem, writing: “A current Rwandan bishop has sought the archbishopric every time it has been open, including the last time when he only got one vote, his own.”2
Whatever personal animosities may or may not have existed between Bishop Alexis and others, the change of guard from Archbishop Kolini to Archbishop Rwaje marked a real shift in how Rwanda related to AMiA. Trying to get a clear picture of the timeline is difficult, but around the time that the new Archbishop took office and Alexis started looking into missing money, Chuck Murphy and other started advocating for a totally new arrangement of how AMiA was organized. If you are skeptical, you might think that the search for missing money was the trigger for this suddenly urgent issue, if you accept what Murphy says, it was a coincidence.
I was told:
The problem arose when we inquired about the discrepancy in what the AMIA reported as being given to Rwanda in 10-10-10 funds and what actually arrived in PEAR, i.e., about one third of the money. When the House of Bishop began to demand to know who this money was given to and into which particular bank accounts it was sent the real problems began.
The request for this information was first made verbally to the head of the finance Committee of the Province, the former bishop of Kibungo.3 After checking with Archbishop Kolini, he began to stonewall. When Archbishop Kolini was approached directly about this by Bishop Alexis he refused to discuss it.4
According to my source, at the 2011 AMiA Winter Conference, Bishop Alexis asked Chuck Murphy for an accounting. Murphy told Alexis to see H. Miller,5 who would give him all the information he needed. When Alexis asked H. Miller for the information, Miller told him that he could only give that information to the Archbishop.
This response was very unsatisfactory to Bishop Alexis, so while still at the Winter Conference, he drafted a letter to Archbishop Rwaje specifying the problem and asking for a clear accounting of what happened to the 10/10/10 funds. This letter was given to the Archbishop and all the bishops of both the AMiA and PEAR who were at the Winter Conference. For whatever reason, the newly elevated Archbishop Rwaje chose to ignore the letter.
In February 2011, the AMiA provided Archbishop Rwaje with a spreadsheet containing general descriptions of their past spending in Rwanda. Someone who saw the spreadsheet said that most of the distributions were listed as ‘designated support’, ‘medical expense’, and ‘designated travel’. This was not satisfactory to Bishop Alexis. He wanted to know specifically who the money had been given to, in particular which Rwandan bank accounts AMiA had deposited money into.
Bishop Alexis responded to this spreadsheet with the following letter:
As the most senior bishop in the House of Bishops I feel it is my responsibility to uphold our tradition of ‘walking in the light’ so that we may enjoy unbroken fellowship with the Lord, with each other, and enjoy the fruit of true revival ministry.
This tradition of ‘walking in the light’ is a tradition of complete honesty and transparency in all matters. It has come to my attention that there is evidence that there may be a lack of transparency concerning the issue of the Tithe and other funds paid to the Province of Rwanda by our brethren of the AMiA. Financial reports from the Provincial Finance Committee indicate that far less money is being reported that what the AMiA has actually given. This discrepancy seems to be confirmed by discussions I have had with senior AMiA people.
To bring this matter into the light and remove all unnecessary speculation I want to make you aware that I have two urgent requests. First of all I have asked the offices of the AMiA for a complete report of all monies sent to Rwanda for the last five years. These reports should make it very clear exactly which bank accounts these funds were transferred to. These reports should be distributed to every bishop of the Province of Rwanda. Secondly, as soon as this information is available there should be a meeting of the House of Bishops to discuss any apparent discrepancies concerning the receipt and distribution of these funds.
I want to make it clear that I am taking these steps because previous efforts to resolve this issue have been totally unfruitful. Those steps were as follows. At the beginning of 2010 I spoke to the former Archbishop about this matter and he was not forthcoming. The next step was to speak to the chairman of the Provincial Finance Committee several times. In nearly a year he has been unable to provide any satisfactory answers.
On the 23rd of January of 2011 I had the opportunity to speak to Bishop Chuck Murphy about this issue. I was pleasantly surprised by his forthcoming and helpful attitude. He assured me that all the information we need to clarify things is readily available.
I sincerely hope you share in my concerns for transparency in all these important issues. Thank you for your cooperation in addressing our concerns.
Bishop Alexis copied the letter to all his fellow Rwandan bishops and H. Miller. Bishop Alexis followed up in March by writing another “more specific and demanding letter” and he made it clear that the problem would not go away without resolution.
To be continued.
- http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/40067/ accessed 11 February 2015. ↩︎
- http://www.virtueonline.org/insiders-rebuttal-unholy-mess-tim-smith accessed 10 Feb 2015. ↩︎
- Bishop Josias Sendegeya. ↩︎
- The account that follows relies heavily on a source close to Bishop Alexis. ↩︎
- H. Miller was Executive Director of the AMiA at that time. ↩︎
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