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The Diocese of Mthatha is a diocese of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Before 2006 it was known as the Diocese of St John's, and earlier still as that of Kaffraria. The diocese currently has 96 parishes.

History

When the Diocese of Grahamstown in the south under Bishop John Armstrong, and Diocese of Natal in the north-east under Bishop John William Colenso were founded, they each included part of an area which in 1872 became the diocese of St John's.

Bishop Henry Callaway was consecrated in Edinburgh in 1873 as the first bishop of the diocese. In Bishop Callaway's new diocese, apart from the mission station he started at Clydesdale, there were five or six other centres of missionary work. The oldest being St Mark's. The first part of Callaway's work was spent trying to find the best way to organise the diocese. The chief problem was to link Clydesdale with the St Mark's group in the south. He first attempted to establish the See at Clydesdale, which was too far north, and then at St Andrew's, not far from Lusikisiki, which turned out to be inaccessible except by sea. He finally settled on a place on the Mthatha River. A town sprang up around the bishop's mission station and Pro-cathedral.

The first Pro-Cathedral of the diocese was built of wood and iron and was also the first church in Mthatha. It could seat a congregation of 250. It was dedicated at the Diocese of St John's second synod on 24 June 1876.

By the turn of the twentieth century a stone-built cathedral had been erected on the top of a hill leading to the administrative and commercial centre of Mthatha. George Fellowes Prynne was the architect and originally designed an impressive looking cathedral. His plan shows a cruciform church, with a nave 147 feet in length, by 36 feet in width, divided into 7 bays. The chancel is 67 feet long by 30 feet wide. The north and south transepts from chapels accommodating 189 and 146 people respectively. East of the chapels are the vestries and organ chamber, the latter being over the clergy vestry, and speaking into the south chapel and chancel. Only the nave was completed, which is the present cathedral of St John the Evangelist.

In 2010 the southern part of the diocese, around Ngcobo and Butterworth, was separated and constituted as the new Diocese of Mbhashe.

List of bishops

Assistant bishops

In 1962, Alphaeus Zulu was Assistant Bishop of St John's.

Coat of arms

The diocese assumed arms around the time of its inception, and had them granted by the College of Arms in 1954: Azure, Saint John the Evangelist Argent holding a chalice Or.

Notes

1. "Around the Diocese – and beyond" (PDF). The Anglican. Pietermaritzburg: Diocese of Natal. p. 4 col C. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-09-04. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
2. Bertie, David (2000). Scottish Episcopal Clergy, 1689-2000. London: Bloomsbury. p. 663. ISBN 9780567087461.
3. ^ Stanier Green 1974.
4. Hinchliff 1963.
5. Gibson 1891.
6. "Umtata - St John's Cathedral". gfp.sharville.org.uk. Retrieved 2017-10-23.
7. Ngubo, Immanuel B (2011). "Consecration of new Mbhashe Bishop blessed with rain". Umbuliso. Vol. 34, no. 1. Diocese of Grahamstown. Retrieved 10 April 2013.
8. "Anglican Archbishop to Inaugurate New Diocese - and Commend Madiba's Birthday as a 'Day of Thanksgiving'" (Press release). Anglican Church of Southern Africa. 22 July 2010. Retrieved 10 April 2013.
9. "Bishops elect new Bishop of Mthatha". Anglican Church of Southern Africa. 27 September 2017. Retrieved 2017-10-23.
10. "Black bishops and white in Africa". Church Times. No. 5193. 24 August 1962. p. 13. ISSN 0009-658X. Retrieved 28 August 2019 – via UK Press Online archives.
11. Brownell 2002, p. 79.

References

• Gibson, Alan George Sumner (1891). Eight Years in Kaffraria, 1882-1890. London: Wells Gardner, Darton.
• Stanier Green, Dora (1974). The first hundred years 1873-1973: the story of the Diocese of St. John's South Africa. Paul's Mission Press.
• Hinchliff, Peter Bingham (1963). The Anglican Church in South Africa: An Account of the History and Development of the Church of the Province of South Africa. Darton, Longman & Todd.
• Brownell, F. G. (2002). Heraldry in the Church of the Province of Southern Africa, 1847-2000: Coats of Arms of the Dioceses, Collegiate and Parish Churches, and the Order of Ethiopia. Heraldsholme CC. ISBN 978-0-620-28606-0.

Further reading

• Sedding, E. D., ed. (1945) Godfrey Callaway, missionary in Kaffraria, 1892-1942: his life and writings. London: S. P. C. K. (Father Callaway, SSJE)
• Callaway, Godfrey (1995) The Re-appearing Moon: letters of a missionary priest in Pondoland, 1892-1942; edited by Anne R. Kotzé, provincial archivist, Church of the Province of South Africa. Johannesburg: University of Witwatersand ISBN 1868381595
• Gibson, Alan (1891) Eight Years in Kaffraria

External links

• Official website
• Contact details

• 1872 establishments in the Cape Colony
• Anglican Church of Southern Africa dioceses