An Anglican diocese in Borneo, Malaysia, which was first pioneered 150 years ago by missionaries from Britain, may soon be sending their own missionaries back to England. The Rt Revd Jonathan Gledhill, the Bishop of Lichfield, has recently been in Sarawak to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Diocese of Kuching.
The diocese of Lichfield in England and the diocese of Kuching in Malaysia have been linked together since the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in 1988. But the two were linked before that when the second Bishop, the Rt Revd Walter Chambers (1870-1881) who was ordained as a priest in Lichfield Cathedral by the Bishop of Lichfield, the Rt Revd John Lonsdale, in 1849 moved to Borneo to assist Bishop Thomas McDougal, the first bishop of Borneo.
Walter Chambers was appointed Archdeacon of Sarawak in 1868 and was made Bishop of Sarawak and the Straits Settlements upon McDougal' resignation in 1870.
Bishop Gledhill has toured a number of parishes in Kuching Diocese this week. "It has been a wonderful experience to meet people in parishes in rural villages here and to see people who in living memory were head-hunters and animists in the jungle now converted to Christ," he said.
