OPEN COMMUNION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15563, 21 March 1914, Page 7

OPEN COMMUNION.

THE KIKUYU DISPUTE. PROPOSAL BY BISHOP. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. London, March 19. The Bishop of Zanzibar (Dr. F. Weston) proposes a council, on which the Episcopal and non-Epis-copal churches, and also the Africans shall be represented at Kikuyu, avoiding the difficulties concerning the ministry of the sacraments. One feature would be a common service of prayer. ANIMATED CONTROVERSY. An animated controversy has been in progress for some time in England in consequence of open communion being observed in East Africa by the Bishops of Uganda and Mombasa. The Uganda Railway has opened up vast fields, but the division in non-Roman Catholic churches has given Roman Catholicism and Mahommedanism a. great advantage. A conference of missionaries, held at Kikuyu in June, proposed a scheme for federation on the basis of all parties accepting the Bible and the Apostles' and the Nicene creeds and baptism in the name of the Trinity. It was further proposed that those not confirmed should not be repelled from communion, and that a form of common prayer should be adopted, based on the Anglican Prayer Book. To this the Bishop of Zanzibar refused to agree, and he wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury very strongly on the matter. Dr. Davidson, however, has refused to charge the Bishops of Uganda and Mombasa with heresy.