COLENSO, John William. - Anglican missionary and bishop, born in Cornwall, England, on 24 January 1814, died in Natal on 20 June 1883. After completing his studies at Cambridge, he was ordained an Anglican minister and for a time served as an Anglican parish priest. In 1853 he was elected the first bishop of Natal in Africa, where he earned the esteem and affection of the Zulu people in his diocese.
He published a Zulu grammar and dictionary, translated the Prayer Book and part of the Bible into that language, but when faced with the difficulty of converting elderly polygamists, he argued that they could be baptized. It seems that precisely to address various difficulties raised by some Zulus, he wrote in 1861 his *Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans*, and under the pretext of commenting on it "from a missionary perspective," he denied the eternity of the pains of hell. The following year, in *The Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua critically examined*, he denied the historicity of these sacred books. His writings caused a great stir among Anglicans, and many bishops wrote to advise him to resign his see, which he refused to do. Deposed in 1863 by his metropolitan, Robert Gray of Cape Town, he appealed to the Privy Council (v. CANTERBURY), and this tribunal declared the metropolitan’s sentence null and void; but since the metropolitan retained control of the diocesan property of Natal, Colenso had it restored by a decree of the Supreme Court of Natal. The metropolitan then also appealed to the Privy Council, which upheld the Natal Supreme Court’s ruling (1866). The scandal of this affair was enormous in the Anglican world. When Anglican bishops gathered for the first time in 1867 at the Lambeth Conference, they dealt thoroughly with the issue; almost all the resolutions passed reflect some aspect of the South African struggle. Resolution VI directly addresses the "scandal of the Church of Natal," and Resolution VII concerns the consecration of another bishop to replace Colenso. This was done, but Colenso, relying on the decrees and judgments of the civil courts, remained in his position, sharing the cathedral offices with the other bishop by arrangement and retaining control of diocesan property until his death.
This regrettable affair revealed to the world the lack of cohesion within the Anglican episcopate, for there were some who defended Colenso or at least did not agree with others on how to handle him; it also demonstrated the dependence of ecclesiastical power on civil authority and the insubordination of a bishop that went not only unpunished but even triumphant. The Zulus, whom Colenso defended against the arrogance of English colonists, remained forever loyal to him and called him the "father of the people."