Today, the Anglican Church consists of more than 86 million members worldwide in over 165 countries.
Collectively, these national churches are known as the Anglican Communion, meaning all are in communion with and recognize the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the United States, the American church of the Anglican Communion is called the Protestant Episcopal Church, or simply the Episcopal Church. In most of the rest of the world, it is called Anglican.
Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1809 – 31st December 1891) was a clergyman, and the first African Anglican Bishop of West Africa, he also translated the English bible to Yoruba language in 1843. He was also, a pathfinder that brought in the Anglican church and place it on a firm ground in Nigeria. He was born with the name Ajayi in Osogun, near Oyo in present day Oyo state, Nigeria. On a certain morning, his native town of Osogun was surprised and overwhelmed by slave captors. Crowther and his compatriots fled but “were seized by the enemies with a noose of rope thrown over the neck of every individual to be led in the manner of goats tied together.” In Crowther’s gripping narration, “a family was violently divided between three or four enemies who each led his preys away to see one another no more.” On that tragic morning, the last view Crowther had of his “unhappy, comfortless father” was when he came to give his family the signal to flee.
Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the slave boy who became the first African bishop of the Anglican Church, was guided by the hand of God which turned the tragedy of violent enslavement into immeasurable blessing. In those harsh days of mindless savagery, men were displayed as merchandise in slave markets, tied and manacled, and exported to distant lands.
Crowther was an embodiment of a true Christian, a servant of God and His gospel, for even as bishop, he was constantly marked out for detraction; but he took it all in his stride.
In 1864, Crowther was ordained as the first African bishop of the Anglican Church; he was consecrated a Bishop on St Peter’s day in 1864, by Charles Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Canterbury Cathedral, England. By 1857 the CMS was fully engaged in Nigeria and a diocese in 1864 with the consecration of Samuel Ajayi Crowther as the first diocesan Bishop.
Anglican faithful resident in North America took the Anglican faith and models of practice and worship to America with the usual Nigeria rumbles and tumbles. The Church of Nigeria Anglican communion, is the second-largest province in the Anglican Communion worldwide, as measured by baptized memberships, after the Church of England.
