After last session's focus on Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, this session we needed to focus on the Anglican Church, the "state church" of Uganda for at least part of its history. As a former British Protectorate, Uganda was seeped in Anglicanism for many decades. Our students have attested that tribal kings were forced to convert to Anglicanism in order to retain their status under British rule. Consequently, many people here self-identify as Anglican, though they may not be practicing Christians. Some of the men in our TEE class were even former lay leaders in the Anglican Church here.
This weekend, I presented the meat of the introduction to the Anglican Church, its history, its theology, and its current state. Remarkably, even though almost all of our men in TEE are familiar with the Anglican Church in Uganda, almost none of them had any idea about the history and origins of the Anglican Church, or about its theology. Or course, teaching on Anglican theology is pretty difficult, since they have no formal theological writings, no declarations of councils, and no statement of faith. But I tried to express how wide open their theology is and how their primary cause for a theological stance is to be as accepting and inclusive of as wide a breadth of opinions as possible. My fellow missionary, Rev. Jacob Gillard, presented the Lutheran response to Anglican theology.
I find that teaching is something I really enjoy, as long as I have time to prepare for the lecture. With adequate preparation time, I am able to feel confidence in the material, to own it, and to get excited about it - which I consider to be very important. If I can't be excited about what I'm teaching it's going to be miserable for those participating in the lecture.
As to what a typical TEE weekend is like, here's our schedule for this weekend:
Friday - class goes from 9am to 5pm
- Devotion by one of the students
- Attendance is taken, housekeeping items - Vicar Trump
- Students give reports on items of interest/evangelism/special events since we last met
- Verbatims (review of last weekend) are provided by students
- Test is administered covering last weekend's topics - Vicar Trump
- The Lutheran Confessions - Rev. Gillard
- Student's questions from last time are addressed: burial, suicide, and homosexuality
- The History of the Anglican Church - Vicar Trump
- Anglican Theology - Vicar Trump
Saturday - class goes from 8am to 3pm
- Devotion by one of the students
- Attendance is taken - Vicar Trump
- Lutheran Rebuttal to Anglican Issues - Rev. Gillard
- Translation Workshop on Baptism and Holy Communion Liturgies
- Tests are handed back - Vicar Trump
Our schedule is quite fluid - we do take lunch around 1pm, and most students (and us facilitators) walk just down the road to one of the itty-bitty restaurants on Ggaba Rd, where lunch usually costs around $1. We usually have too much scheduled for Friday and end up pushing one of Friday's lectures to Saturday morning. We have a question box up at the front of our "classroom" all the time and students write their questions about anything at all (as you can see, the questions we were addressing this time were on Christian burial, suicide, and homosexuality). The translation workshop is a time for students to gather in their language groups (we have 5 local heart-languages represented in our class) and translate the current projects (Baptism and Holy Communion) into their local language. Our hope is that by the end of the first year of TEE we'll have local translations for most of the key events in the Christian church - Baptism, Holy Communion, confirmation, marriage, and burial. These can be published fairly inexpensively here and distributed to the congregations in that language group.
I think I've mentioned before that I write the tests, with the exception of 2 or 3 essay questions provided by my coworker Jake and I also grade the tests although I do ask Jake to grade the short essay questions he wrote. We consistently have one to three students practically ace the test, which is very encouraging to us.
Here's the Anglican Test from this session and the answer key. -Shauen