Religious Left

by George Pitcher The Telegraph, UK Leadership in the West is “a mess and unable to understand the post-colonial reality”. The best thing to do would be to “dismantle” the western establishment to usher in a post-colonial world. Who might this be speaking? The increasingly beleaguered Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in one of his more mild-mannered moments? Actually it is Canon Vinay Samuel, who was yesterday addressing the alternative Anglican conference in Jerusalem, Gafcon, for bishops who feel that they cannot in conscience attend the decennial Lambeth Conference at Canterbury next month, so long as they have to be in communion with openly homosexual bishops. Not that Canon Samuel is a bishop. He is from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. But he reveals what Gafcon is really about. The Global South’s spiritual leader, Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, is fond of saying that the post-colonial West demonises him and that a new order must be ushered in. So this conference of Anglica...

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent Times Online UK The "alternative Lambeth" conference organised by conservative evangelicals in the Anglican church in Amman has been forced to up sticks and move to a different country after the Archbishop of Nigeria was denied entry to Jordan. So, putting into practice the proverb that if Mohammed won't go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed, the entire conference is this morning checking out of the hotel in Jordan and getting on a bus to Jerusalem, where they will meet up with Dr Akinola. Archbishop Akinola was travelling on his diplomatic passport. After being questioned for four hours, he was turned back, although the rest of the Nigerian delegation was allowed in. -- end of Times Online article -- According to the folks over at akinolarepent : Why? They want to know his role in an anti-Muslim riot in Nigeria in 2004 which killed 660 people. This was in response to an anti-Christian riot two months earlier in the t...

by Jason Byassee The Christian Century Many observers of the Anglican splits assume that the key issue is homosexuality, but a closer look reveals that several other factors are also at work. In fact, the local Anglican story is largely about charismatic leaders coming and going, and congregations growing in their presence or folding in their absence. Among the AMIA folks, the juiciest disagreements have been over the ordination of women rather than the ordination of gays. And the biggest fight to date has been over the relationship between church and state in Rwanda, not in the U.S. full article

Giles Fraser Church Times I get my fair share of hate mail writing this column. But I don’t get half the nastiness received by the Revd Colin Coward, the UK director of Changing Attitude. Here is a sample: “Evil homosexual promoter, we gave your Nigerian homosexual representative and his followers long time to repent but he underrated us. Come and save them if you can.” Then there was the equally charming: “You will loose ur life for what u re doing go and write todays date u have few days to live.” And again: “WE HAVE NOT STARTED AND YOU ARE PANICKING, HOMOSEXUAL PROMOTERS. WAIT AND SEE WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ALL YOUR AGENT IN NIGERIA SOON, ONE BY ONE.” The Archbishop of Canterbury has rightly commented: “The threats recently made against the leaders of Changing Attitude are disgraceful.” But I do not think we as a Church are taking all this nastiness seriously enough. It is not at all impossible to imagine that the hatred coursing through the veins of the Anglican Communion could soon r...

LAGOS, March 21, 2008 – A shocking story of mob violence has emerged which almost culminated in the death of one of the leaders of the Changing Attitude Nigeria (CAN) group in Port Harcourt. The violent attack occurred at the funeral ceremony for the sister of Davis Mac-Iyalla, attended by six members of the Port Harcourt group on Thursday 20 March 2008 “I suffered in the hands of a mob group that attacked me at the Service of Songs for Davis’s late sister. While hymn singing was going on a muscular man walked up to me and asked me for a word outside the compound." “The next thing I saw was a mob group who were there to attack me." “They started slapping and punching me, kicked me on the ground and spat on me." “Violence against LGBT people has been encouraged by Archbishop Peter Akinola and the leaders of the Church of Nigeria. They have attacked the presence of LGBT in church and society, and supported a bill which would reinforce prejudice against LGBT people....

Peter Akinola, the Nigerian archbishop, and his pals in the conservative “Global South” movement gave North American “brothers” until the end of September to cease and desist in ordaining queer clergy. You can read the entire article at: http://www.queerty.com/news/the-akinola-ultimatum-20070820/