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The archbishop of Canterbury still lives and works at Lambeth Palace in London, but the balance of moral authority has moved in the Anglican Communion. This year's meeting marked the first time, apart from the once-per-decade Lambeth Commission, that Global South primates began leading accordingly. If Jenkins is right, what's happening in the Anglican Communion foreshadows what may happen in other Christian bodies over the next few decades.

Akinola was born in 1944 and his father, whom Akinola described as a bushman, died four years later. Akinola was working as a carpenter when he felt called to the Anglican priesthood. He earned a degree from the Theological College of Northern Nigeria in 1978, began his ministry as a vicar at St. James Church in Suleja, then moved to the United States to earn a master's degree from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1981. He was a provincial missionary from 1984 to 1989, became bishop of Abuja in 1989, and was elevated to an archbishop in 1998.

"I did not ever dream of being a bishop, let alone of being primate," Akinola said. When he was chosen as a bishop, he sobbed and asked the primate if there had been some mistake. Looking back on his fatherless childhood, on years of fending for himself, and on earning his first theology degree by correspondence course, Akinola did not feel like bishop material: "Nobody knew me, except God."

Akinola felt a similar astonishment when he was chosen in 2000 as the successor to Joseph Adetiloye, who had been primate of Nigeria since 1988 and led the church through a period of vigorous growth during the Anglican Communion's Decade of Evangelism. (There were about 5 million Nigerian Anglicans in the late 1970s. Today there are nearly 18 million. Akinola wants to double Nigeria's Anglican dioceses, to more than 160, within three years. "He's planting dioceses faster than we're planting congregations," said the Rev. Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Church in Virginia, which helped coordinate a recent Akinola visit to Washington.)

"For me to think of being the primate would have been the height of foolishness," Akinola says, brushing his hands together as if he's just disposed of trash. "It was entirely by God's grace and providence."

One of the core affirmations of Anglicanism is the archbishop of Canterbury's centrality to Anglican unity. He is not an Anglican pope, but the first among equals (sharing authority with 37 other primates). Churches may call themselves Anglican, but if they are not "in fellowship with Canterbury"—recognized as Anglicans by the archbishop, and invited to participate in Anglican councils, such as the Lambeth Conference—they move in an ecclesiastical limbo, like the splinter churches that believe they are more Catholic than the pope because they reject Vatican II. Akinola remains in communion with the archbishop of Canterbury, as does Griswold, but one of his most repeated remarks—"We do not have to go through Canterbury to get to Jesus"—indicates his willingness to challenge Western control.

Asked by CT about the importance of being in fellowship with Canterbury, Akinola first responded with a smile and a rhetorical question: Is the Church of England an Anglican church?

"The church did not start in Canterbury, the church did not start in Rome," he said. "Whether Canterbury is Anglican or not is immaterial. We are Anglicans. They are the Church of England." Akinola stresses that he's not trying to replace Williams, who is six years his junior: "Nobody is asking for the position of Rowan. We love him, we respect him. Akinola is not looking for a new job. I have enough to do at home."

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July 2005, Vol. 49, No. 7