James Tengatenga

James Tengatenga (born 7 April 1958 ) is a Malawian Anglican bishop and theologian. As an Anglican leader in the Global South—and as a member and later chairman of the Anglican Consultative Council—he was known for attempting to hold provinces of the Anglican Communion together amid the Anglican realignment and controversies over LGBT clergy in Anglicanism. He was the bishop of Southern Malawi in the Church of the Province of Central Africa from 1998 to 2013, when he was appointed to a deanship at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, United States. This appointment was controversially rescinded by Dartmouth president Philip J. Hanlon over comments Tengatenga had made years before criticizing the consecration of Bishop Gene Robinson, an openly gay man. Tengatenga was later appointed to a post at the School of Theology at Sewanee: The University of the South.

Early life and education Tengatenga was born in Que Que, Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), on 7 April 1958, to parents of Ngoni origin in Malawi. He was educated at Zomba Theological College, after which he received an M.Div. from the Seminary of the Southwest in the United States. He did further graduate work at the Selly Oak Colleges in Birmingham.

Ordained ministry Ordained to the priesthood in 1985, Tengatenga was a parish priest in Lilongwe for eight years. From 1993 to 1998, he taught theology at Zomba Theological College and the University of Malawi's Chancellor College.

Tengatenga was elected bishop of Southern Malawi in 1998, succeeding Nathaniel Aipa. He was initially based in Likwenu, a town in the Machinga District, until the Diocese of Upper Shire was carved out of the Southern Malawi diocese in 2002. In 2003, Tengatenga was a visiting fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, where he completed his Ph.D dissertation at the University of Malawi.

Global Anglicanism In 2002, Tengatenga was named to the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the Anglican Communion's four "instruments of communion". —Tengatenga dealt with controversies over the consecration of LGBT bishops and recognition of same-sex blessings in the United States and Canada. He was quoted in the Los Angeles Times criticizing the Episcopal Church's 2003 consecration of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Anglican bishop, saying, "I come from a very frustrated church, a church that feels it has been betrayed by its brothers and sisters." In 2011, he told the Church of England Newspaper that "the Anglican Church hasn't changed, yes we are against homosexuality. . . . The church's position and an individual's are two different things."

Dartmouth controversy In July 2013, Tengatenga was announced as the next dean of the William Jewett Tucker Foundation, the spiritual life unit at Dartmouth College. Students and faculty led by the campus chapter of the NAACP criticized the appointment based on Tengatenga's prior public statements on homosexuality. Randall Balmer argued that Tengatenga's remarks on his frustration with the Episcopal Church had been triggered by Bishop John Shelby Spong's controversial comments criticizing African Christianity as "superstitious." Adrienne Clay, a department program coordinator in African and African-American studies, called Tengatenga's statement "a little too ambiguous for my taste."

Dartmouth president Phil Hanlon revoked the offer to Tengatenga.

In the fall of 2013, Tengatenga was a presidential fellow at Episcopal Divinity School. In 2014, Tengatenga was appointed distinguished visiting professor of global Anglicanism at the School of Theology at Sewanee.

Personal life Tengatenga married his wife, Joselyn, in 1984. They have three children.