Doye Agama

Archbishop Doyé Teido Agama is a Christian leader within the Pentecostal Holiness movement. He is presiding prelate and executive director of Apostolic Pastoral Congress, a collegiate collective of Pentecostal bishops and pastors.^[1] He leads the "Christian Way of Life" group of churches.^[2] He is a prominent figure in the "Churches Together" movement in England and is involved extensively in the African Diaspora and black and multicultural affairs.

Doye Agama is based in the United Kingdom, but has close links with the Federal Republic of Nigeria.^[1]

Early life and family background

Born in England in the mid-1950s to Anglican parents of Nigerian origin, Doye Agama was fostered early as a baby to a white family. In the early 1960s, he joined his natural family in Nigeria, remaining there until the mid 1970s.^[1]

As a young teenager, he was exposed to a time of great upheaval, hardship and turmoil in Nigeria.^{[lower-alpha 1]}

Doye Agama's family were (and are) prominent Nigerian citizens. Doye's father Frederick Abiye Agama (died 2004) was a Shell executive. His mother Beatrice Oyete Agama (née Porbeni) was a nurse and midwife. Beatrice remains active in Nigerian life, especially in matters relating to the Ijaw peoples of the Niger Delta. Frederick Agama was instrumental in the creation of the Bayelsa State as a State within the Federal Republic.^{[4][lower-alpha 2]} Doye's sister Diezani Alison-Madueke is Nigeria's minister of Petroleum Resources and president of OPEC.

Career

Doye Agama was ordained for Christian ministry in 1994, after a secular career in which he attained a range of management, consultancy and engineering skills and qualifications.

He was consecrated bishop in 2004, by Henry Paul Kontor, a Greek Orthodox (Old Calendar) bishop.^{[lower-alpha 3]}

Doye Agama's status as a bishop was reinforced in 2008 and 2010 as follows:

• In 2008, Agama and his wife Helen were accorded special laying-on of hands by the executive board of the Joint College of African-American Pentecostal Bishops, a college led by Archbishop J. Delano Ellis.
• In January 2010, Bishop Agama was received into the House of Bishops of the Pentecostal Churches of Christ (USA), another organisation led by Archbishop Ellis, and was duly granted "apostolic succession" in that House.

Bishop Agama was elevated to the status of archbishop on 19 October 2013, at a ceremony held in Southwark Cathedral, London. Archbishop J. Delano Ellis provided a "Consecration Mandate" which was read during the ceremony. Archbishop Ellis also sent an episcopal delegation from USA to London, England. The delegation consisted of Bishop Darryl Woodson (who presided at the ceremony as chief consecrator) and Bishop Benjamin Douglass (assisting), both of these being bishops among the Pentecostal Churches of Christ (USA). The Bishop Duke Akamisoko Anglican Diocesan of Kubwa-Abuja in Nigeria also joined in laying hands on the new archbishop. Bishop Duke Akamisoko is bishop of the Kubwa diocese, a diocese within the province of Abuja, in the Church of Nigeria – Anglican Communion. Bishop David Chaney, leader of the Anglican Communion of Charismatic Churches, an organisation having its administrative office at Fort Worth, Texas, also participated.^[5] The Archbishop of Canterbury was officially represented at the Consecration event by Bishop of Woolwich, Dr Michael Ipgrave who also represented the Diocese of Southwark. Also present in the Anglican delegation was the retired Bishop of Manchester, Nigel McCulloch.

Doye Agama is a member of the board of directors/trustees of England's national ecumenical instrument, Churches Together in England,^[6] the moderator (2012 - 2015) of the Forum of Churches Together in England, a member of Churches Together in England's reference group for minority ethnic Christian affairs (MECA-CTE), and a co-president of "Greater Manchester Churches Together".

He is abbot of the Order of St Hadrian of Canterbury, a chivalric order under the patronage of Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie, and having President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and Bishop Nigel McCulloch among its members.

Views

Doye Agama has a particular interest in the Christian church of the first millennium in the Atlantic Isles (the British Isles) and in the early monastics such as those at Whithorn (Candida Casa) (St Ninian) in Galloway, Scotland, at Iona, at Lindisfarne, and the north African Coptic (Coptic Church) (Berber) scholar-monk St Hadrian of Canterbury.^[7] He has published regarding the matter of how insights from these times can help people in their personal devotion and prayer life in the 21st century.^[8]

Doye Agama has said that recession is nothing new to the black community in the United Kingdom, and that the experience of the majority of the members of the black community over many years has been of hardship and exile.^[9] It has been said that, in the same way, Bob Marley and other black musicians and poets often sang and wrote of the experience of living in Babylon.^[9]

In May 2013, Doye Agama was one of 53 faith leaders (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist) who signed an open letter to the UK prime minister calling for a rethink of the then proposed same-sex marriage legislation for England and Wales.^[10] The signatories included a Church of England diocesan bishop Mike Hill and three Roman Catholic archbishops. The letter accused the prime minister of rushing the legislation through Parliament without proper scrutiny, and predicted that the Parliamentary Bill would, if enacted, result in serious and harmful consequences for the health of society, for family life, and for human rights such as freedom of religion and of speech.

During an investiture ceremony of the Order of St Hadrian of Canterbury for Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, in December 2013, Doye Agama referred to President Jonathan's stewardship of the 2011 elections in Nigeria as having been "record-breaking", those elections having been (according to the archbishop) the freest and fairest ever held in Nigeria.^[11]

On the same occasion in December 2013, the archbishop also commented that Mr Jonathan was steadily yet progressively piloting the Nigerian ship-of-state.^[11]

Qualifications

Qualifications held or formerly held include:

• Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (USA) (known as "the Eye Triple E"), past member
• Institute of Consulting, fellow
• Institute of Consulting, certified management consultant
• BA Theology in church administration and development (1994)
• MA in Pastoral Counselling (1996)
• Honorary doctorates

Apostolic succession

Through its founder, Archbishop Agama, the Apostolic Pastoral Congress lays claim to a measure of apostolic succession.^[12] The Congress does not consider apostolic succession a requisite for salvation, but does consider it a privilege to be in the chain of historical succession.^[12]

Many lines or streams of apostolic succession converge in Archbishop Agama. The lines or streams cited in the Congress's 2013 ordinal booklet^[12] are as follows:

• through Greek Orthodox tradition (Old Calendar), via Metropolitan Henry Paul Kontor.^{[lower-alpha 4]}

• from the Patriarchy of the East through the Syro-Chaldean Archidiocese of North America (re-named in 1992 as the Evangelical Apostolic Church of North America).^{[13] [lower-alpha 5][lower-alpha 6]}

• through Wesleyan/Methodist tradition, via John Wesley, Thomas Coke (1747–1814) and Francis Asbury (1745–1816) and two hundred years of Methodism in USA to Carl Edwards Williams and Reuben Timothy Jones who on 17 April 1970 consecrated J. Delano Ellis and thereby passed on their succession to the House of Bishops of the Pentecostal Churches of Christ. Williams and Jones were bishops of the Church of God in Christ. Both of them were possessors of Holy Orders from the Methodist Episcopal Church USA, Jones having been ordained by Bishop Frederick Pierce Corson, president of the World Methodist Conference.^{[lower-alpha 7][lower-alpha 8]}

There are other lines or streams of succession in addition to those that are mentioned in the Congress's 2013 ordinal booklet. For example:

• Russian/Ukrainian Orthodox lines also converge in Archbishop Agama from James Andrew Gaines who (in 1965) had been consecrated in that tradition.

• Also, there is a line of succession from Archbishop Makarios (Makarios III) (lived 1913-1977)(Church of Cyprus).^{[lower-alpha 9][lower-alpha 10][lower-alpha 11]}

• A Slavonic Orthodox line of succession comes in via William Andrew Prazsky and Anthony Prazsky who, in 1976, participated as co-consecrators in Schlossberg's consecration.^{[lower-alpha 12]}

• A line of succession via Gerardus Gul of the "Old Catholic" Union of Utrecht comes in via the Polish Mariavites and Hugh George de Willmott Newman.^{[lower-alpha 13]} There is a second or parallel path from Gul to Newman, via Arnold Harris Mathew, though some question the validity of that path.^{[lower-alpha 14][lower-alpha 15]}

• There is a line of succession via Hugh George de Willmott Newman (Mar Georgius) from Church of England archbishops of Canterbury (and therefore stretching back in English history at least as far back as St Augustine of Canterbury (who arrived at Canterbury in 597). The line from archbishops of Canterbury flows via Scottish bishops and then north American bishops and bishops of the Reformed Episcopal Church in north America.^{[lower-alpha 16]}

Numerous lines or streams of succession converge in Hugh George de Willmott Newman (Mar Georgius), thus forming what is, in effect, an ecumenical apostolic succession.^{[lower-alpha 17]}

Published works

• Agama, DT Ancient Prayers For Today, 2011 Chakam Limited, Manchester, England (192 pages) ISBN 978-0-9568126-0-5
• Agama, DT A Word For Your Now, 2012 Chakam Publishing, Manchester, England (a booklet of 70 small pages) ISBN 978-0-9568126-1-2

Further reading

Ellis, J. Delano The Bishopric - A handbook on creating episcopacy in the African-American Pentecostal church, 2003 Published by Trafford, Victoria, BC, Canada. ISBN 1-55395-848-9.

Notes

References