Updated Thursday evening
The Archbishop of Uganda writes in the East African Business Weekly:
Church cannot heal this crisis of betrayal
So, why did the bishops of the Church of Uganda and I decide not to attend the present Lambeth Conference? Because we love the Lord Jesus Christ and because we love the Anglican Communion. St Francis of Assisi said: “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary use words.” We believe that our absence at this Lambeth Conference is the only way that our voice will be heard. For more than ten years we have been speaking and have not been heard. So maybe our absence will speak louder than our words…
From New Vision we have Museveni backs church against gays:
PRESIDENT Yoweri Museveni has praised Anglican bishops for resisting homosexuality.
“I salute the Archbishop and bishops of Africa for resisting disorientation and a decadent culture, which he said was being passed by Western nations.”
Describing homosexuality as mtumbavu (Swahili for stupid), the President said: “Don’t fear, resist and do not compromise on that. It is a danger not only to the believers but to the whole of Africa. It is bad if our children become complacent and think that people who are not in order are alright…”
And earlier in the month, New Vision had Canterbury hits back at Archbishop Orombi:
THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has dismissed a suggestion by the Archbishop of Uganda that his position as head of the worldwide Anglican Communion is a left-over from British colonialism…
Update Thursday evening
There is a further report by Ecumenical News International via Episcopal Life Online UGANDA: Anglican leaders support president’s speech on homosexuality by Fredrick Nzwili:
…Some Ugandan Anglican church leaders have expressed support for a statement by President Yoweri Museveni in which he commended the denomination’s bishops for resisting homosexuality.
“It was great of the president to speak about the issue,” Anglican Bishop Stanley Ntagali of Masindi–Katara told Ecumenical News International on August 20. “We have been inspired by the president’s positive comments.”
and
“When he speaks in this manner to the bishops, it will energise the resolve against homosexuality,” said the secretary of Uganda’s Anglican church, the Rev. Aaron Mwesigye, in an interview with ENI. “The Uganda church has been very bold against homosexuality.”
I am looking forward to all those bishops who support a moratorium to take up their part in shaping the future and tell President Museveni that his views about homosexuality are not scientific.
He can remain anti-gay but he should at least be aware of the truth about the people he wishes to exclude.
That is the very least bishops in the West are now required to do if their call for a moratorium is to have any value at all.
Can we expect to hear their voices in the next few days?
Substitute “Jewish” for “homosexuality” and you have Hitler’s position. (And indeed, since homosexuals were targeted by Nazis also, you don’t even need to stretch to make the connection). Can we see the evil that is being perpetrated here? I am sorry, dreadfully sorry, if it comes from Africa, a place that has seen and still sees more than its share of oppression. But it is evil nonetheless.
England ordains partnered gay men and lesbians as priests and gay men as bishops, at least one of whom lives with his partner, but the conservative narrative continues. TEC and Canada alone stand condemned. Orombi repeats the myths about Lambeth 1.10, Biblical authority and interpretation, the myth of homosexuality being unknown in Africa, the myth of the authority of the Primates. Against such a constant and deliberate false narrative, the voices of those who attempt to speak to the Communion honestly and truthfully about the holiness of LGBT Christian life and vocation will be drowned out. The deeper challenge is… Read more »
It’s amazing that Orombi thinks he and his allies have not been heard…to those of us on the other side of this issue, it seems as if they are the only ones who HAVE been heard.
Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi said in an article published in The Times of London last week that the “spiritual leadership of a global communion should not be reduced to one man appointed by a secular government.” New Vision article. From the above, it seems clear that Archbishop Orombi spurns the present leadership of the world-wide Anglican Communion. His reason? The ABC’s restraint in the matter of issuing edicts against the provinces which have ordained a gay bishop and have countenanced the blessing of same-sex unions. But it is patently much more than these matters that are exercising this Ugandan prelate.… Read more »
Colin, people with all sorts of sexual attractions and desires are a reality in every country.. but that doesn’t mean that every attraction and desire is good, or healthy… never mind holy. Many people experience changes in their sexual orientation in adolescence (~10% experience some same sex attraction in adolescence but only 2-3% experience them as adults) and many people experience changes in their sexual orientation as adults (more women than men in their twenties, quite a lot of men in mid life). A recent famous example being the late great George Melly. LGBT describes the sexual attractions or identity… Read more »
Colin
“The deeper challenge is not to argue back against false teaching and ideas. The challenge is to survive this period of false teaching and chip away patiently at the myths from an awareness of God as infinite and intimate love and goodness. Jesus saves through teaching us to love”
While that it true, the period of false teaching will only end if and when more and more people point out, loud and clear, that it IS false teaching. And there, those who now call a moratorium on gay inclusion at all levels, have a special responsibility.
Yes Phylis, some of us know where that pink triangle came from, and also remember about another horrific dictator from a certain part of Africa. And I’m sorry Colin, some of us will not take this nonsense from societies with a background of violence and injustice, not to mention historical amnesia, sitting down. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, s***s like a duck, then it darn well is one. Where are your friends when you need them? Now you know. Remember the joke about the priest and bishop going to heaven together… Read more »
“For more than ten years we have been speaking and have not been heard” Excuse me!?!?! And precisely how much have you listened to gay people? There’s a word for this. “the authority to discipline that erring province? We in the Global South believed the Primates’ Meeting had this authority” And you were wrong. Sorry, but your mistaken understanding of the authority structure of the Anglican Church does not give you the right to slander those who do understand that structure. Indeed, such a power sturcture is not part of our tradition, it was what the English reformers were most… Read more »
Erika Baker is making the same type of connection that Colin Coward accuses of Orombi,namely repeating a myth. There is no established scientific link that is proven, certainly no gay gene. The argument for the recognition that is sought for the gay connunity will have to be won on other grounds.
“SO much money”! Dancing away with them what brung him.
And now they are dragging out Francis to justify hatred and schism. Every time I think that these people can’t get any lower, they prove me wrong.
It gets harder and harder every day to recognize anything even marginally Christian, much less Anglican, about the so-called “orthodox.”
So he stayed away. Then what? Does he now say the silence of absence was very loud and join in again, or does he carry on staying away? I think we know, because there will soon be a Primates’ Council and it will soon approve a new province of GAFCON. And it won’t be the only one…
The relationships of these bishops to the state is chillingly like that of Pius XII to the Reich.
Hmm, isn’t this pretty much the article he wrote for The Times during Lambeth?
So Orombi and the AngChUganda are praised by the President of Uganda.
Funny, I haven’t heard TEC’s stand in favor of LGBT inclusion praised by President Bush!
Who’s “captive to culture” here?
Nice to see Canterbury speak up against the ignorant bullies.
Of course LGBT people and christians are a reality in Uganda. The blindness of these pastors is pitiable. They are probqbly totally out of touch with their long-suffering flock.
Peter James: “There is no established scientific link that is proven, certainly no gay gene.”
That it occurs in most animal species as a natural phenomenon is a fact that science is trying to discover. Science also recognizes that there is more than we know, is your Christianity ready for that Mr. James?
Davidwh: “Many people experience changes in their sexual orientation in adolescence (~10% experience some same sex attraction in adolescence but only 2-3% experience them as adults) and many people experience changes in their sexual orientation as adults (more women than men in their twenties, quite a lot of men in mid life). A recent famous example being the late great George Melly.” All of which merely reinforces the fact that sexual orientation is not an “either-or” choice made consciously, but a spectrum, influenced by nature and nurture. The majority feel such a strong pull in one direction or another, so… Read more »
There’s one problem with those (arch)bishops who constantly use 1998 Resolution 1.10 as a sword and shield: The only part they seem to read is the first clause, and only the first clasue, of 1.10 section (d). They completely ignore the rest of (d) and the whole of (c). They don’t respect the humanity and Christianhood (if that’s a word) of LGBT believers, and they certainly don’t “listen” to LGBT Anglicans. Their ability to listen to or read from Resolution 1.10 doesn’t start until the beginning of (d) and ends with the comma after “incompatible with Holy Scripture”. They have… Read more »
“people with all sorts of sexual attractions and desires”
The first same-sex couple married in California in June, were Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons.
They have been together *55 years* DavidWh. Del is now in a wheelchair. Do you honestly believe that any two people could stay together this long, if all that united them were “sexual attractions and desires”? Get your mind out of the gutter already!
Lord have mercy…
For me the issue is not whether people chose to be gay or not. Think about it. People can also be born with all kind of handicaps and defficiancies just as they can get them anytime during the time of their life. So is the attitude of Jesus? He loves them and heal them. He restore them to what they are meant to be. The problem we have today is that people seem to forget that we are sinners in need of repentance and healing. Our sins can have various consequences for all kind of our orientations not just sexual… Read more »
Choirboy. there are plenty of things going on in the animal kingdom,do we approve of them all,even more celebrate them? No,of course not, humankind has evolved beyond these behaviours. Again look at the science,it does not help. All I was seeking to do was to point out that the cause will not be won in this area
Peter James I’m not making any comments on the science of homosexuality. Actually, that doesn’t interest me at all. My contention is that there is sufficient good and deep pro-gay theology to make it at least possible that God has no problem with faithful, committed, loving and stable same sex relationships, whatever their root cause may be. And my contention is that these relationships are lived out exactly like straight marriages, with the same challenges, the same ups and downs, the same responsibilities. Their participants are as faithful or faithless as straight people. They may be Christian, Muslim, Jewish or… Read more »
“None of this changes the fact that, for the vast majority of both straight and gay human beings, there is no conscious “choice” made to be one or the other. It simply is what they are.”
And those who are truly bisexual make their choice depending on the one person we fall in love with, as completely, deeply and lastingly as any completely straight or gay person.
It’s about individuals and about love, not about body bits and sex.
Nab
and what, please, is the special thing straight people have over gays?
I live in a loving same sex relationship, we are both committed parents and grandparents, we have many friends, a deep faith, a wonderful church community, we work, we pay taxes, we cook dinners, we take out the rubbish, we cut the grass, we even remember to feed the guinea pigs and walk the dog….. what is that special thing you have that I don’t?
Nab wrote: “Should we teach our children that being blind for example is simply an other way of being (it is normal). Or that it is a problem that the Lord would surely fix to make us as he meant us to be?”
How b l i n d is this?
How narrow a definition of “normal”??
How narrow a definition of “fix”???
How narrow a definition of meant to be????
How narrow a definition of the Gospel?????
How narrow a definition of the Lord??????
: – (
Think seriously for just a moment you nay-sayers on the question of whether a homosexual person can be capable of loving both God and same-sex persons at the same time, and be advised that there have been many priests, monks and nuns who have subjugated their same-sex feelings – simply because they have been taught (by the Church) that abstinence is the only possibilitiy for them. No-one could be quite so stupid as to think that all religious vocations have happened because of the willingness of a heterosexual person to surrender their ‘right’ to spouse and family. There are many… Read more »
“10% experience some same sex attraction in adolescence but only 2-3% experience them as adults” Interesting. Last week we had robroy claiming, accurately, that results from non-anonymous polling are not to be trusted. Yet, here is another person who argues against gay inclusion claiming that only 2-3% of adults “experience same sex attraction”, a statistic that comes from non-anonymous polling! I also appreciate the deftness with which you produce an unsubstantiated statistic about adolescents to subtly underline the point that we wickedly choose our sexuality in open defiance of God! Of course, you didn’t come right out and say it… Read more »
Conservatives always have answers to put glbt people down. If we argue nature, they argue people are apart from and better than animals. If we argue social norms and laws, they argue “natural law”, but see the sentence above. If we try to marry our same-sex partners, they argue we’re destroying Western Civilization, and possibly, the entire planet. If we stay single they argue we’re immature and promiscuous. We can’t win arguing with them, they’ll always insist they’re right, and we’re wrong. Nab reminds us we’ve all fallen. But I guess some of us have fallen less than others, Nab?… Read more »
“Science and social observation is telling us homosexuals, too, are ‘made in the Image and Likeness of God’.” That strikes me as an observation both strange and illustrative of these conversations. Of course homosexual people are in the image and likeness of God. That is the teaching of scripture and of all Christian bodies. It is a religious and theological proposition, with ethical implications. But to say that science tells us that is puzzling. How does science establish what God is like, and how we are similar? What has science to say at all about how we ought to live?… Read more »
“Should we teach our childreen that being blind for example is simply an other way of being (it is normal). Or that it is a problem that the Lord would surely fix to make us as he meant us to be?” Speaking as an educator, I absolutely teach my students that being blind is another way of being (not so sure about the “simply” part). What would you have me do – continually remind seeing students that their blind friends and family members cannot see? Punish blind students for using Braille, or for not reading what I write on the… Read more »
“10% experience some same sex attraction in adolescence but only 2-3% experience them as adults”
Oh, well, in other words, if it’s only 2-3%, then surely it’s okay to discriminate agdainst them!?
Dear me!
Nat
The question is ultimately cast in terms of the value of tradition, “tradition” being, very broadly, what we have received from the past…. Some think it a great gift to be confessed, lived, and passed on. Some think it superceded, to be sloughed off as, at best, an embarrassment, at worst, an active obstacle to progress.” I think if you stop a minute and consider the things that most are saying, you’ll find that those who support gay inclusion consider themselves to be standing just as solidly in the Tradition we have received as those who oppose it believe of… Read more »
“”Science and social observation is telling us homosexuals, too, are ‘made in the Image and Likeness of God’.” That strikes me as an observation both strange and illustrative of these conversations. Of course homosexual people are in the image and likeness of God. That is the teaching of scripture and of all Christian bodies. It is a religious and theological proposition, with ethical implications. But to say that science tells us that is puzzling. How does science establish what God is like, and how we are similar? What has science to say at all about how we ought to live?… Read more »
Nat, Erica, CBfH, My point was that sexuality is not fixed – so there is no such thing as “LGBT people” in that sense. For instance you aren’t “born gay” in the sense that you might be born male. Even if one of a pair of identical twins experiences same-sex attraction as an adult the other one is 50-80% likely to not experience SSA. So it’s not just genetics, womb environment or family environment – though all three seem to play a role (The identical twin of a gay man is more likely than average to experience SSAs too, and… Read more »
DavidWh said: “My point was that sexuality is not fixed – so there is no such thing as “LGBT people” … in that case, DavidWh, there is also no such thing as “straight people” – you might yet be gay! However, current research points to brain differences that occur within the womb, so you are plain wrong on the nature side. Of course, scientific research is always open to new insights, but the important point is that no research, anywhere and at any time, indicates that homosexuality is a choice. DavidWh also said “is such behavior in animals evidence of… Read more »
“sexuality is not fixed – so there is no such thing as “LGBT people” in that sense. For instance you aren’t “born gay” in the sense that you might be born male.” But you are “born gay” in the sense that you might be born heterosexual. “it’s not just genetics, womb environment or family environment – though all three seem to play a role3 And should we be thinking in these etiological terms at all? “And the sex organs we have are perfectly compatible only for opposite sex sex.” Nature is rich in variants; and variety is the spice of… Read more »
Where do you get your facts to support your twisted logic davidwh? Is it out of an accepted university textbook for psych majors? Back up your pronouncements with hyperlinks. “The question is whether same-sex sex should be in that group or not?” I believe it should not. My back up is my life, my experiences, and my belief in Christ. You can disagree, but the minute you try to split a faith community, I’ll fight you tooth and nail. To say that a couple that have loved and lived together for fifty plus years are living in sin is absolutely… Read more »
” Nab reminds us we’ve all fallen. But I guess some of us have fallen less than others, Nab? “ Well, what do you think? Well, in any case I am not sure what you mean by ‘level’. Sin have consequences on both our spirits and our bodies. Alchol abuse can cause a simple dispute, an organ defects, a divorce, a terrible accidents, or …. If I call the Lord will to my rescue after the incident, I am sure he would heal me and say something like this “you are made whole, go and sin no more…” Even if… Read more »
DavidWH. Can you tell us – are you a scientist working in the intricate fied of sexual attraction? Somehow I think not – simply because of your dismissive attitude towards the word ‘discrimination’. Your statement that: “just because SSA, at least in young adults, has little to do with personal choice doesn’t mean that it is not evidence of a problem” betrays some trace of naivete, in that most SSA people are already aware of the very considerable problems associated with being gay. One of these is the official attitude of the Church, which is prone to consider all such… Read more »
“And the sex organs we have are perfectly compatible only for opposite sex sex.”
Phhhhhttttt!!!
This is so laughably pathetic: DavidWh, PLEASE quit while you’re behind!
And when has it been met with sensitivity, compassion, and support by the leaders of the Global South? By leaders such as +Akinola or +Orombi? Or by the leaders of the secessionist movements within TEC? These people can’t stand to be in the same room as an openly gay bishop.
Furthermore, as far as I’m concerned, all too often “sensitivity, compassion, and support” seem to come across as paternalism, condescension, and pity.
“Oh, look at me, see how noble I am to treat and counsel that man who is seething with vile sinfulness, how well I minister to him.”
Ford Elms wrote: “I think if you stop a minute and consider the things that most are saying, you’ll find that those who support gay inclusion consider themselves to be standing just as solidly in the Tradition we have received as those who oppose it believe of themselves.”
Moreover, the anti Moderns into American (1970ies) and Roman (1966) social politics are traditional i s t s, not traditional. A radical redefinition, precisely. That is a whole lot different.
DawidW wrote: “Even if one of a pair of identical twins experiences same-sex attraction as an adult the other one is 50-80% likely to not experience SSA”
According to what I have read is considerably less, these identical twin surveys say some 50%, which is much to low according to your line of reasoning (= re-hashed Dr Fraud cum cum naughty bits ;=)
“If it is dis-ordered…”
The American Psychological Association decided some time ago that homosexuality is not disordered.
“My point was that sexuality is not fixed…”
It is truly your own experience that you yourself could have chosen another sexual orientation if you had decided to do so?
David Wh
You seem to be making the same comments every four weeks or so, using almost verbatim the same arguments.
I suggest that for our response you trawl the TA archives.
This is just too boring for further words.
If it is dis-ordered it should be a met pastorally with sensitivity, compassion and support – but not with approval!
How does your approach work in practise? Tell people they should have no sex (including autosexual behaviour)? Hardly a healthy choice – and the benefits of regular sex are well documented.
From today’s Church Times, a report about Todd Bentley, the revivalist behind the Florida Outpouring, who has resigned from the Board of Fresh Fire Ministries and agreed to “refrain from all public ministry for a season”, after it emerged that he has had “an inappropriate relationship” with one of his staff. Commenting, a Dr Stibbe said: “The most important thing to say is that Todd’s marital difficulties in no way undermine the integrity of the outpouring of the Spirit at Lakeland, nor the salvations and countless healing miracles that have happened there and in many other places since April of… Read more »
Father Ron, disapproval is not discrimination – I thought it was only teenagers that argued “you don’t love me” when adults won’t let them do what they want. Paul H, Thanks for addressing the issues I raised. In response: I agree, there is no such thing as a “straight” person- sexual orientation is not an ontological category of the same type as sex or race. Current research has speculated that same-sex sex may occur where there may be some benefits to species – that is not proof. The existence of occasional SS behaviors (eg in a pair of captive penguins)… Read more »