Malawi ends missionary era with first indigenous bishops

Indigenous clergy have been elected to the episcopate in Lake Malawi and Northern Malawi this week, ending the era of missionary bishops from Britain and the United States leading the church in Central Africa.

The Aug 1 elections of the Rev Leslie Mtekateka as bishop-elect of Northern Malawi, and the Ven Francis Kaulanda as bishop-elect of Lake Malawi permits the province to elect a new archbishop and ends a 150-year tradition of foreign bishops --- begun by the Universities Mission to Central Africa of selecting British and American priests to serve as bishops for one of the poorest regions in Africa.

Rector of St Timothy’s, Chitipa, Fr Mtekateka was the sole candidate on the ballot in Northern Malawi to succeed the Rt Rev Christopher Boyle, who has returned to England to serve as Assistant Bishop of Leicester. Fr Metekateka is the son of the Rt Rev Josiah Mtekateka, the first African bishop of Malawi, consecrated in 1965 as Suffragan Bishop of Nyasaland, and in 1971 as the first Bishop of Lake Malawi.

Last month, the Rev J Scott Wilson, SSC of the Diocese of Fort Worth withdraw as sole candidate in Northern Malawi, prompting the diocese to conduct an abbreviated internal search for a new candidate. Leaders of the House of Bishops had urged the dioceses to look within Malawi for its new bishops, however this call to Africanize the episcopate had been met with some resistance.

Four years after its last bishop died, on Saturday the Diocese of Lake Malawi elected the Archdeacon of Lilongwe, the Ven Francis Kaulanda as bishop. In 2007 the election of London vicar the Rev Nicholas Henderson as bishop of the diocese was rejected by the provincial House of Bishops, which found Fr Henderson’s theological views unsound.

As chairman of MicroLoan Foundation Malawi, Archdeacon Kaulanda has been active in bringing microfinance to Central Africa. Pioneered by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, microfinance offers small loans to the poor to help them engage in entrepreneurial enterprises to build the economy of rural and deprived urban areas through self-help and self-improvement.