Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea

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The Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea came into existence as a discrete province of the Anglican Communion when the Anglican Province of Papua New Guinea was separated from the Anglican ecclesiastical Province of Brisbane, Australia, in 1976 following Papua New Guinea's independence. Its first Archbishop and Primate was David Hand, the Bishop of Port Moresby. The current Primate is Archbishop James Ayong, the bishop of Aipo-Rongo, centred in Mount Hagen.

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[edit] History

The Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea came into existence as an independent province of the Anglican Communion when the Anglican Province of Papua New Guinea was separated from the Anglican ecclesiastical Province of Brisbane, Australia, in 1976 following Papua New Guinea's independence.

In Anglican terminology the New Guinea Martyrs were eight Anglican clergy, teachers and medical missionaries killed by the Japanese in 1942,[1] although 333 church workers of various denominations were killed. A statue of Lucian Tapiedi, one of the Anglican martyrs, is installed among the niches with other 20th century Christian martyrs over the west door of Westminster Abbey in London. David Hand served as archbishop from 1977 until 1983. James Ayong has served in that role since 1996.

[edit] Today

Although it was historically part of the ecclesiastical province of Brisbane, today its overseas support appears to be substantially from England, notably by the Papua New Guinea Church Partnership, formerly the New Guinea Mission. The Anglican mission was not well funded in years past and it did not compare favourably with other denominations in terms of health and education services. There are two church-affiliated high schools, Martyrs Memorial School in Popondetta, Northern (Oro)[2] Province and Holy Name School in Dogura, Milne Bay Province, and numerous primary schools in Northern and Milne Bay Provinces. The church operates Newton College, a theological seminary for the training of clergy in Popondetta and, in co-operation with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea and the Gutnius Lutheran Church, Balob Teachers' College in Lae.

[edit] Membership

Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea

In accordance with early concordats among European missionaries by which they agreed not to engage in undue competition with each other, Anglican missionary activity was largely confined to the Northern and Milne Bay Districts of Papua; the Oro (Northern) Province remains the only civil province of Papua New Guinea of which a majority of the population are Anglican.

There are pockets of Anglicans in the Western Highlands (and Archbishop James Ayong of the diocese of Aipo-Rongo — Mount Hagen — is the current primate), in the western extremity of West New Britain and of course, significantly, in Port Moresby where the core constituency of Oro and Wedau people is supplemented by foreign residents of the city.

[edit] Structure

The polity of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea is Episcopalian church governance, which is the same as other Anglican churches. The church maintains a system of geographical parishes organized into dioceses. There are 5 of these, each headed by a bishop. There are no metropolitical dioceses as such and the Primate and Archbishop of Papua New Guinea may be any one of the five diocesan bishops, who concurrently retains his designation as bishop of his diocese. The dioceses are:

  • Aipo Rongo (with its see city in Mount Hagen, Western Highlands);
  • the New Guinea Islands;
  • Port Moresby, including the entirety of Papua (ie the former British New Guinea, the southeastern quarter of the island of New Guinea) apart from Milne Bay and Northern (Oro) provinces;
  • Popondota (the authentic Orokaiva pronunciation of Popondetta) with its see city in Popondetta, Northern (Oro) Province; and
  • Dogura, taking in Milne Bay Province. Dogura is the location of the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul, the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea's only traditional European-style cathedral of substantial size and built of masonry. It was consecrated in 1939.

[edit] Worship and liturgy

The Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea embraces three orders of ministry: deacon, priest, and bishop. A local variant of the Book of Common Prayer is used. The churchmanship is Anglo-Catholic.

[edit] Doctrine and practice

See also: Anglicanism and Anglican doctrine

The center of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea teaching is the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The basic teachings of the church, or catechism, includes:

The threefold sources of authority in Anglicanism are scripture, tradition, and reason. These three sources uphold and critique each other in a dynamic way. This balance of scripture, tradition and reason is traced to the work of Richard Hooker, a sixteenth century apologist. In Hooker's model, scripture is the primary means of arriving at doctrine and things stated plainly in scripture are accepted as true. Issues that are ambiguous are determined by tradition, which is checked by reason.[3]

[edit] Ecumenical relations

The Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea participates in the Melanesian Council of Churches and maintains especially close ties with the Evangelical Lutheran and Roman Catholic Churches. With both of the latter it has entered into formal mutual recognition of baptism and Anglican Papua New Guineans seeking membership in the Roman Catholic Church therefore not submit to conditional baptism as in some other parts of the world.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Anglican Board of Missions: The New Guinea Martyrs. Retrieved 20 October 2007.
  2. ^ The Constitution of Papua New Guinea sets out the names of the 19 provinces at the time of independence. Several provinces, including Northern, have changed their names; such changes are not strictly speaking official without a formal constitutional amendment, though "Oro" is universally used in reference to that province.
  3. ^ Anglican Listening Detail on how scripture, tradition, and reason work to "uphold and critique each other in a dynamic way".

[edit] Further reading

  • Anglicanism, Neill, Stephen. Harmondsworth, 1965.

[edit] External links

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