Doye Agama

Archbishop Doyé Teido Agama is a Christian leader within the Pentecostal Holiness and Convergence movements.

He is the founder of Apostolic Pastoral Congress, a collegiate collective of Pentecostal bishops and pastors adhering to paleo-orthodoxy and was for many years the organisation’s President and its presiding prelate.

He leads the Christian Way of Life group of churches.

He has been a prominent figure in the Churches Together in England movement and is involved extensively in the African diaspora and black and multicultural affairs.

Agama lives in the United Kingdom, but has close ties with Nigeria.

Agama wrote on how insights from the first millennium can help people in their personal devotion and prayer life in the 21st century.

Agama has said that recession is nothing new to the black community in the United Kingdom, and that the experience of the majority of the members of the black community over many years has been of hardship and exile.

It has been said that, in the same way, Bob Marley and other black musicians and poets often sang and wrote of the experience of living in Babylon.

Born in England in 1956 to Anglican parents of Nigerian origin, Agama was fostered early as a baby to a white family.

In the early 1960s, he joined his natural family in Nigeria, remaining there until the mid 1970s.

Agama was ordained for Christian ministry in 1994, after a secular career in which he attained a range of management, consultancy and engineering skills and qualifications.

Agama was consecrated bishop in 2004, by Henry Paul Kontor, a Greek Orthodox (Old Calendar) bishop.

Agama's status as a bishop was reinforced in 2008 and 2010 as follows:

Agama became a member of the board of directors/trustees of England's national ecumenical instrument, Churches Together in England, the moderator (2012-2015) of the Forum of Churches Together in England, a member of Churches Together in England's reference group for minority ethnic Christian affairs (MECA-CTE), and a co-president of "Greater Manchester Churches Together".

He became abbot of the Order of St Hadrian of Canterbury, a chivalric order under the patronage of Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie, and Goodluck Jonathan (a former President of Nigeria) of Nigeria and Bishop McCulloch among its members.

Agama has a particular interest in the Christian Church of the first millennium in the British Isles and in the early monastics such as those at Whithorn (Candida Casa) (St Ninian) in Galloway, Scotland, at Iona, at Lindisfarne, and the north African Coptic (Coptic Church) (Berber) scholar-monk St Hadrian of Canterbury.

Agama was elevated to the status of archbishop on 19 October 2013, at a ceremony held in Southwark Cathedral, London.

Ellis provided a "Consecration Mandate" which was read during the ceremony.

Ellis also sent an episcopal delegation from USA to London, England.

The delegation consisted of Bishop Darryl Woodson (who presided at the ceremony as chief consecrator) and Bishop Benjamin Douglass (assisting), both of these being bishops among the Pentecostal Churches of Christ (USA).

Bishop Duke Akamisoko of the Anglican Diocesan of Kubwa-Abuja in Nigeria also joined in laying hands on Agama.

Akamisoko is bishop of the Kubwa diocese, within the province of Abuja, in the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion).

Bishop David Chaney, leader of the Anglican Communion of Charismatic Churches also participated.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was officially represented at the consecration event by Michael Ipgrave, (then Bishop of Woolwich), who also represented the Diocese of Southwark.

Also present in the Anglican delegation was Nigel McCulloch, retired Bishop of Manchester.

In May 2013, Agama was one of 53 faith leaders (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist) who signed an open letter to the UK prime minister calling for a rethink of the then proposed same-sex marriage legislation for England and Wales.

The signatories included a Church of England diocesan bishop Mike Hill and three Roman Catholic archbishops.

The letter accused the prime minister of rushing the legislation through Parliament without proper scrutiny, and predicted that the Parliamentary Bill would, if enacted, result in serious and harmful consequences for the health of society, for family life, and for human rights such as freedom of religion and of speech.

Through its founder, Agama, the Apostolic Pastoral Congress lays claim to a measure of apostolic succession.

The Apostolic Pastoral Congress does not consider apostolic succession a requisite for salvation, but does consider it a privilege to be in the chain of historical succession.

Many lines of apostolic succession converge in Agama.

The lines cited in the Apostolic Pastoral Congress's 2013 ordinal booklet are as follows:

There are other lines or streams of succession in addition to those that are mentioned in the Congress's 2013 ordinal booklet.

For example:

Numerous lines or streams of succession converge in Newman, thus forming what is, in effect, an ecumenical apostolic succession.