Interview with Joaiah Fearon

This article appeared in the Conference edition of the Church of England Newspaper on 23 September 2003 and is reproduced here with their permission.

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones

A row of epic proportions in the Anglican Communion can be contained, says one of the Anglican Communion's youngest Archbishops, the Most Rev Josiah Fearon.

The Nigerian Primate predicts that the messy issue of a homosexual bishop and same-sex blessings in North America will not mean the complete break-up of the Anglican Communion. However, underlying his words is an uncompromising message, that those who brought this defining issue upon the Anglican Communion had better be prepared to stand by the Lambeth Resolutions or leave. "A line has been drawn, and those who want to remain must recognise that."

For three years in the wake of the Lambeth Conference, Archbishop Josiah was a frequent flier to England and America, taking part in the international conversations on sexuality, speaking to the General Synod, and most recently giving the address at the General Convention Eucharist of the Episcopal Church in July.

And he now longs for the Anglican Churches to give their international attention to much more than just the issues of human sexuality. "Tribalism and ethnicity are much greater problems than even Aids in Africa," he says. "In Kaduna, 3,000 people were killed in three days, Aids cannot do that much damage," he says.

He first came to prominence in 1998 when at the Lambeth Conference he brilliantly gave worldwide bishops an insight into the plight of persecuted Christians in Muslim majority areas in Nigeria. His almost prophetic insight into the problem of 'dhimmitude', which as a traditional Islamic system treats non-Muslims as second-class citizens, by taxing them and giving them protected status in return, is a chilling account of his own experience and that of many in mid and northern Nigeria.

He recalls as a student in Birmingham studying for an MA in Islamics that he broke down in tears when reading from his essay on Dhimmitude. When asked what was wrong, he said that this was the story of his life.

"I do not know my own children," he says referring to the fact that he and his wife were forced to send their now grown-up children to boarding school in Jos because they could not get an education for their children anywhere else. He describes sending his five-year-old to school many hours away, knowing what the cost would be to their family relationships for many years to come.

These are the costs of living as a Christian in northern parts of Nigeria, where he says the Muslim population regards itself as true heirs to the era of Mohammed in Mecca and Medina. And in the past few years it has become even worse, as large parts of the country have adopted Sharia law, a system of Islamic justice, which in most cases are imposed on non-Muslim minorities. In Kaduna itself the system of Sharia has been installed as a parallel system alongside traditional common law courts thus separating the Muslim majority from the Christian minority.

He contrasts this with different attitudes in the South, where Muslim governors uncompromisingly reject Sharia and points to a diversity within Islam which the most hard-line extremists entirely reject.

There is a fear in the North of Christianity, he says, because of the impact that it is had on the region. Before independence, when a census was taken in 1958, there were 11 million Muslims and only half a million Christians. Today, there are more Christians than Muslims, he reports.

This fear has led to persecution, and he knows several cases of converts who have had to flee. "If in the West, Muslims enjoy freedom, why should they not allow Christians in their part of the world to propagate their faith? Until Christians in the Western world speak on our behalf we will never be out of the woods."

As a bridge-builder between Christian and Muslim leaders in Kaduna and beyond, Archbishop Josiah has never discarded Christian distinctives. In fact, as a scholar, he takes the controversial view of regarding Islam as a Christian heresy. The picture of Christ in the Koran, he says is incomplete and incorrect. The task of an evangelist to the Muslims is to show them the true Christ.