THE Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Rev John Gladwin, blamed the Devil yesterday for difficulties that disrupted and nearly destroyed a mission to Africa to strengthen ties with his Essex diocese.

Bishop Gladwin, 64, was leading a party of 20 in Kenya when local newspapers reported — accurately — that he had become a patron of a lesbian and gay lobby group, Changing Attitude. The Kenyan Church took this to mean that the purpose of his visit was to promote the group’s agenda.

As a result, the Archbishop of Kenya, Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, a conservative evangelical who opposes the liberal agenda of many in the Western Anglican Church, cancelled the official programme and instructed all his clergy to do likewise.

The visitors, including Bishop Gladwin’s wife, Lydia, Canon Roger Matthews, the mission director, and 12 curates were deep in the Saburu game park at the time and were unable to contact Archbishop Nzimbi to sort out the misunderstanding for 24 hours.

Speaking about the difficulties for the first time yesterday, Bishop Gladwin, who is chairman of Christian Aid, said: “We were really downhearted. That was a very low moment. We thought we were in deep trouble.”

The party prayed a lot, asking God for help. The Bishop added: “When the Lord is doing something important the Devil is at work. It is absolutely essential that we make sure that the Devil does not destroy the good that is going on. It could have been utterly destructive. It was not.” He later met Archbishop Nzimbi, they resolved their difficulties and the programme continued as planned.

Bishop Gladwin, a former evangelical who has moved to the liberal wing of the Church, said this year that one of his aims was to give the Diocese of Chelmsford a higher public profile.

The visit, planned as part of continuing relations between Kenya and Chelmsford that have been in place for 30 years, covered the four dioceses of Meru, Mbeere, Kirinyaga and Embu.

Bishop Gladwin said he had no regrets about becoming patron of Changing Attitude and did not believe this brought him into conflict with either the Church of England’s position on the gay issue, or that of the wider Church as expressed through the resolution of the 1998 Lambeth Conference that pledged the Church to a strictly biblical, conservative stance.

“When we finally did get to talk to Archbishop Nzimbi, he wanted to assure us that a warm Kenyan welcome continued to surround us, and that the planned programme should continue,” he said.

“We decided to avoid any high-profile occasions to avoid being drawn into any controversies that would divert us from the principal aim of the visit.”

If anything, the relationship between Kenya and Chelmsford had grown deeper as a result of the controversy, he said.

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