When three conservative Southern California parishes fled the Episcopal Church in the culture wars over homosexuality and biblical interpretation, they sought the equivalent of political asylum from the Anglican Church of Uganda.
The welcome they received from Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, Anglican primate of all Uganda, didn't surprise those who knew him. Orombi, 55, has a reputation for two things: welcoming refugees from the civil war and ethnic strife in neighboring Congo and preaching fiery sermons against what he sees as the Episcopal Church's fall from historic Christian teachings.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday October 09, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 3 inches; 124 words Type of Material: Correction
Episcopal Church -- An article in the Sept. 5 California section about three parishes breaking away from the Episcopal Church said the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson led a team to Uganda in 1996, before he became bishop of New Hampshire, to set up an AIDS education program financed by the U.S. government. The trip occurred in 1992. Also, Robinson did not lead the team but was part of a group sent to assess the ability of the Anglican church in Uganda to administer an HIV/AIDS education and prevention program. The article also said that until the time of Robinson's visit, Ugandan bishops had ignored the AIDS crisis in their country. The Anglican bishops of Uganda approved an AIDS prevention strategy in August 1991.
In the confrontation over the three breakaway parishes -- All Saints in Long Beach, St. David's in North Hollywood and St. James in Newport Beach -- Orombi is pitted against Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop J. Jon Bruno.
Whereas Bruno speaks of the church's mission in terms of inclusion, Orombi is ardent in his defense of tradition and in his belief that by deciding last year to approve the ordination of an openly gay priest as a bishop, the Episcopal Church in America has departed from it. The Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church in Uganda are both part of the Anglican Communion, which claims 77 million members worldwide.
"There is a tradition on human sexuality that was passed to us by the apostles, and if we're an apostolic church, how come the Episcopal Church claims they are better than St. Paul?" Orombi said in a telephone interview from Kampala, the Ugandan capital. "Why do they turn their back on the faith their grandparents brought to us?"
The Anglican Church arrived in Uganda with English missionaries in 1887. Uganda became a British protectorate in 1893 and achieved independence in 1962.
It was a few years after independence when Orombi, at age 18, heard someone preach Jesus' parable about the prodigal son.
In the biblical story, found in Luke 15:11-32, the son asked his father for his inheritance and left home, only to squander it on sinful pursuits. Eventually homeless and desperate, the son returned home, expecting to go to work as a hired hand. Instead, his father welcomed him as his son and celebrated his return.
"I could identify with the prodigal son," Orombi said. "I was naughty and difficult. I ran away from my father relationship." The story, he said, took him from the nominal Anglicanism of his father -- and the African spiritualist ways of a grandfather who was a "medium" in his village -- to a life-changing faith.
