By Madeleine Davies, The Church Times.
Bishops in the United States have reacted with sadness to the demand by Primates that their Church be censured. They have defended their support for same-sex marriage, and two have described the decision as unChrist-like.
At the same time, Bishops belonging to the conservative GAFCON group have cast doubt on the effectiveness of the sanctions, which “must not be seen as an end, but as a beginning”, they say.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church of the United States, the Rt Revd Michael Curry, said on Thursday that the decision would bring “real pain” to many, and invoked the pain of his forefathers, African slaves.
“For so many who are committed to following Jesus in the way of love, and being a Church that lives that love, this decision will bring real pain,” he said. “For fellow disciples of Jesus in our Church who are gay or lesbian, this will bring more pain.
“For many who have felt and been rejected by the church because of who they are, for many who have felt and been rejected by families and communities, our Church opening itself in love was a sign of hope. And this will add pain on top of pain.”
He went on: “I stand before you as your brother. I stand before you as a descendant of African slaves, stolen from their native land, enslaved in a bitter bondage, and then, even after emancipation, segregated and excluded in church and society. And this conjures that up again, and brings pain.”
Referring to scripture, Bishop Curry sought to counter suggestions that his Church’s position on same-sex relationships represented a capitulation to Western culture.
Listen to The Briefing 1/15/16 from Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. It is an excellent explanation of Anglican/Episco
Read the Statement from Primates 2016.
22 Comments. Leave new
For Curry to compare being gay to african americans or slaves is utter nonsense, but then again the pcusa is going down this same road with similar results.
Agree, Curry first and foremost identifying as a descendant of slaves, blah, blah. As a leading/supposed/alleged follower of the Lord God Almighty, he should know better. This saga, and Curry’s ill-advised quotes, are going viral. It’s even on Drudge Report this morning from another major news source.
Drudge linked this Episcopal matter to the Washington Post story. Episcopalians continue to dig a deeper hole for its shrinking group.
Trying to play the race card against the African Bishops who led the way to censure doesn’t quite work, does it ?
The Anglican Communion are moving in the right direction and other Western Christian denominations should follow in their footsteps, if they want to continue to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. The Christian church should not prescribe nor bless unions of adultery and same-sex, although Christians, unlike in the past, must find some Christian ways to minister in Christ’s love to those who are involved in the non-confessional and unbiblical lifestyle.
As the older mainline protestant sects of the ECUSA/PCUSA/ UCC/UU continue their gradual, but inevitable evolution into post-Christian, post-faith cultural and political entities, they have found themselves with more and more in common with the secular and pagan societies they find themselves in, and less and less stuff in common with nominal or historic Christianity . Think of them as all occupying a cul-de-sac in the global highway of Christianity, where the new interstate has by-passed them, and they sit, isolated, adrift, few and fewer people in their houses, grass not cut, the place in disrepair.
And they do not even know it or are aware of it. They assume they have won the culture wars, they assume the bend of history is on their side, they assume the great social victories on LGBT, sexuality matters, de-decriminalization of drugs, abortion on demand still legal, Obamacare, is their victories, their successes, and they all sit and wonder given this, where are all the progressive-millennial-academic-enlightened-informed mass of humanity will start to darken their doors and fill their depleted coffers to pay all the bills they ran up.
The real story is they are not coming, simply because they never believed in what you had to sell in the first place. And they move into extinction in ignorant bliss that they really have lost, and no one is coming to save them. Their is indeed a Savior and Messiah, they denied Him as well.
“must find some Christian ways to minister in Christ’s love to those who are involved in the non-confessional and unbiblical lifestyle.”
You mean like throwing LGBT people in prison, or executing them? Remember that there are several Anglican Bishops in the global south that support imprisonment and the death penalty for LGBT people.
If that’s your definition of “Christian ways to minister” to people, I would suggest rethinking that definition.
This has to be the most dishonest, anti-Christian rant/post on this site in a long time. Please return to your social media anti-Christian site/blog; or crawl back under the rock you slithered from. (Or get counselling).
Well, Lawrence, what Tom has said is in fact true. The only quibble is that Anglican support for the measures imprisoning LGBT people was equivocal before the death penalty was removed from the legislation. These are gross violations of human rights, supported by many of the very people forcing the vote to censure the American Episcopal church.
I trust that one of you, either Tom or West, will be so good as to provide the names of the “several Anglican bishops” whom you accuse of supporting the imprisonment and execution of homosexuals. While I have no doubt that there are individuals in the Global South who self-identify as Anglican and who believe such things, your accusations are directed toward the bishops. So, if you wish to be taken seriously, please provide the names of those bishops and your sources of information.
My guess is that these accusations are nothing more than fabrications or gross exaggerations by denizens of the religious left designed to impeach the character of those Global South Anglican primates who have dared to oppose the homosexualist agenda of their former colonial masters. Can you imagine such a thing? A bunch of uppity Africans having the nerve to oppose the dictates of their American and European betters? These people just don’t know how to stay in their place. (Good for them!)
Donnie Bob – I made it clear that there was not open support for the death penalty. But as far as imprisonment, that is easy and anyone at all informed on these issues is aware. You can begin at the top with Stanley Ntagali in Uganda or Josiah Idowu-Fearon in Nigeria and work your way down the hierarchy from there.
Thank you for replying, West. I expected to hear from you, as you have tended to be much more of a stand-up guy than some of the other adversarial bloggers on this site.
However, there are two things I must say.
First, you need to be aware when you state that in your opinion “there was not open support for the death penalty,” one can easily infer from your words that there was, in fact, support for the death penalty, but that that support was covert and not open. Is this your implication? Or did you mean to say that the bishops did not support the death penalty. The word “open” is a loaded and damning word.
Second, would you please provide the sources for your information? The opposition of the African bishops to homosexuality is well known, and Abp. Ntagali is especially blunt and outspoken on the subject. That does not mean that he supports every measure that the Ugandan government has adopted. When you make accusations, as you have, you need to back them up with information from reliable sources – not just your own personal assurance than everyone who knows anything at all about this matter agrees completely with you. That hardly constitutes supporting evidence.
Donnie Bob: Apologies if you believe that the word “open” can be misconstrued. At the top leadership level, the Ugandan Anglicans did in fact speak in favor of removing that aspect of legislation. One would need to investigate further to discern how active was that opposition. And of course the law still included provisions for life imprisonment. Ntagali clearly spoke in favor of the legislation in its final form, was highly critical of the decision of Ugandan courts in striking down the law on technical procedural grounds, and is pushing its reintroduction. It should not be difficult to find sources, but you can look here: http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2014/08/05/ugandas-anglican-leader-says-anti-gay-law-still-needed/
Regarding Idowu-Fearon who has a long history of supporting attacks on LGBT people, you can search for the quote “The government has criminalised homosexuality which is good” which likely will bring up multiple sources. Again, these are Anglicans leading the attacks on the American Episcopal Church while at the same time directly encouraging enormous violation of basic humans rights. I wish those who support the ideology of this website would give some thought to exactly what that means.
West, I found your response regarding the use of the word “open” unconvincing. I do not believe that I misconstrued the meaning of the term in its context. The implied juxtaposition of open support/cover support is the most logical and reasonable way to understand what you wrote. Had you wished simply to state that the bishops did not support the death penalty provisions of the law, the use of the word “open” would have been pointless and confusing.
Your link to the ENS story on the Ugandan law, and Abp. Ntagali’s support of it, was helpful. Thanks. Within the story was a link to a previous NY Times story that provided more information. I googled the Ugandan law and discovered a fairly large number of similar stories in other publications that seemed, without exception, to be not only hostile to the Ugandan law, but also to evangelical Christianity, and to historic African cultural values regarding human sexuality. All of these stories were, not surprisingly, to be found in Western media of a certain editorial orientation (BBC, LA Times, Huff Post, etc.). I attempted to find articles from African, Middle Eastern, and Asian news sources that might have approached the Ugandan law from a different perspective, but I found not one single such article in my search.
My tentative conclusion about this is a fairly simple one. The defense of the normalization of homosexuality is a thoroughly Western obsession. It is not shared by Africans, Middle Easterners, Asians, or any other identifiable people group. Westerners, and only Westerners, went ballistic about this Ugandan law. For others, it was a non-story, one that was not even interesting enough to merit a few column inches deep within the paper, or a 30-second spot on the television news.
This, I think, tells us something interesting about how out of touch we Westerners are with the rest of the world, and how the vast majority of our fellow human beings really cold care less about what we think.
Well, donnie bob, although you are more willing than some of your fellow layman supporters to explore some issues, you cannot seem to escape being what you are. You criticize posts for not immediately providing documentation for facts that are readily available to anyone with 20 seconds for a web search, immediately after you have, based on nothing at all and with no conceivable reason, accused people of making “fabrications.” Then in the face of incontrovertible evidence, you fall back on some silly parsing of how you interpret the word “open.” The fact is that there is no really significant difference between a death sentence and life imprisonment, given that these are brutal Ugandan prisons with nearly the highest death rates in the world. The only real difference is how the story might play in the western press. Then you seemed more concerned that in your eyes the reporting somehow shows some hostility to evangelicals than you are with extreme human rights violations directly supported by the church. Well guess what…if reporting on a story about gross human rights violations in a context in which the self-identified evangelicals are among the primary culprits, of course the story is going to look a little hostile to those so-called evangelicals. In the end, have you no shame?
And you, dear West, cannot escape being who you are, an imperialistic Westerner seeking to justify the imposition of your own moral values (or lack thereof) on the people of Africa, people who have made it clear that they have no use for sexual perversion, as they perceive it, or for people from other countries and cultures who demand that they acquiesce to its normalization.
Having lived in sub-Saharan Africa, I can assure you that there are aspects of traditional African culture that I also find alien and offensive to my values. But God did not appoint me as some kind of judge, to sit in high and holy judgment on the African people, on their culture, or on their own understanding of Christian morality. Nor did he appoint you to that role. And it is the height of arrogance for you to behave as if he did.
In one way or another Westerners have been condescendingly imposing themselves on Africans for hundreds of years. You and your homosexuality promoting allies are only the latest example of this disgusting pattern of Western aggression. And for that, sir, the shame is all yours.
Donnie bob, be they “western imperialistic” or not, my values include the notion that it is wrong to put people into prisons for life sentences where they are likely to be beaten and abused because they are gay or lesbian. Your so-called values apparently do not, wherever they come from. I align with Tutu, you with Ntagali. Sad.
Once upon a time it was possible to argue with someone of a differing point of view without the argument rapidly devolving into personal attacks. It seems that those good ole days are now dead and gone, and that is what is sad. So, by all means, align yourself with Desmond Tutu, the TEC’s favorite Uncle Tom. And I, in my turn, will align myself with Stanley Ntagali and the GAFCON primates. Then we will wait and see, West, to whom the future of global Anglicanism belongs. Et que le meilleur gagne.
Donnie bob.. Then perhaps you should not initiate a conversation by accusing others of lying and “fabrications” .. Any name calling seems primarily from your direction. Uncle tom? Seriously?
But then we do finally see it in the end … Not embarassed to declare your alignment with Ntagali, meaning that you believe that gay and lesbian people should be locked up in some of the worst prisons in the world. frankly, with that sort of belief system you have no place in civil conversation.
It’s a fact that “west” has always been a stand-up guy capable of carrying on a rational argument with someone who disagreed with him, whereas you “West” are not and never have been such a person.
I look forward to the reappearance of “west” on this web site so that we may continue our discussion. But you, my dear, sweet little child, it’s time for you to go back into your troll hole.
Some may have misunderstood my reply posted on January 16, 2016. I would like to clarify my point here.
This is about my statement “. . . although Christians, unlike in the past, must find some Christian ways to minister in Christ’s love to those who are involved in the non-confessional and unbiblical lifestyle” (see Tom below).
The phrase “unlike in the past” implies that some Christians failed to practice Christ’s love in the past while ministering to those in question. I never heard anyone who throwing people in prison or executing them in the name of “ministering.” Some governments have illegalized lifestyle of LGBT people, although it is recently legalized in the USA. I do not think governments put them in prison in order to minister to them. Christians generally do not use the word “to minister” in that connotation. Beyond that, “Christ’s love” will bring the very opposite of what some may be afraid of what they alleged me of implying.
Love, as set forth and practiced by Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, sums up the gospel. When a Jewish lawyer, who loved to condense and reduce the Law to its essential elements, asked Jesus which is the great commandment in the law, he responded: “You shall love the Lord your God . . . and your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:34-40; Mk 12:28-34). While Jesus was quoting from the OT, he went further than what the lawyer had in mind.
While love in the OT, at least as understood and practiced by Jews, was selective and nationalistic, Christ’ love is not limited to members of one’s family and relatives—primitive meanings of love, nor to one’s immediate neighbors—emphasized characteristically by Jews and Muslims. But Jesus widens the idea of the neighbor to an unprecedented degree. His love is uniquely extended to one’s enemies (Mt 5:43-48; Lk 6:27-36). If the object of love is those one hates or dislikes—the Bible often mean this by “enemy”—Christ’s love helps the Christian overcome his or her self-love when encounters those in need, even if they belong to the group of one’s dislikes. Without practicing such a love no one deserves to inherit the eternal life (Luke 10:25-37).
God’s love (love of Father, Son and Spirit in Trinitarian sense) is expressed in Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. Christians should remember that the Son died to save sinners, never to encourage their sinful lifestyle (Rom 5:8). Jesus commends us: “Love each other as [in the way how] I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends “(Jn 15:12-3). This is the love style of Jesus Christ our Lord.
When the Christian speaks and practices Christ’s love—I do not use the term “agape” here because it is often used interchangeably in Greek Bible with human love, the emphasis lies on the Christian who loves, not the recipient of love, and on his or her willingness to sacrifice for the oppressed or marginalized who suffer in the society or world. Christ’s love is not for the self but for others. Some calls him the “Man for others.”
I hope this will clarify the point I was making in my earlier piece.
It appears the pro-homosexual marriage crowd leaps on the Uganda situation and tarnishes the entire African continent. Is this sound Christian logic? Upon further study, you’ll discover a Christian boom across Africa, with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of new Christians discovering and growing in the faith.