Thinking Anglicans

Akinola in the news

on Friday, 9 September 2005 at 9.30 am by Simon Sarmiento
categorised as Anglican Communion

Update Saturday
Stephen Bates reports in the Guardian on all this: Church in new row after Nigerian primate bans Brazilian archbishop from conference
Also, here is Homosexuality’s Destructive Effect on Church & Culture apparently written by Peter Akinola and published on the website of the Kairos Journal that gave him (and others) the award mentioned below.
later note I have added the content of that extraordinary Kairos webpage below the fold here, to ensure the full text gets safely archived.

Update Sunday
Trevor Grundy Scotland on Sunday Africans set to found rival Anglican church
Somewhat to my surprise, the New York award event is reported on ACNS Digest Archbishops honoured.

First, some correspondence has been published concerning the attendance of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil at the upcoming III Global South Encounter scheduled for Alexandria, Egypt October 24-29 this year.

There is a letter from Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria to Archbishop Orlando Santos de Oliveira of Brazil, and his response. Also a letter from Bishop Jubal Neves, another Brazilian bishop.

For the full text of these letters, see here.

Mark Harris has already commented about this exchange in Let Brazil Through the Door!

Church Times Pat Ashworth Akinola blocks Brazil from Global South meeting

Second, there is an Associated Press report quoting both Archbishop Peter Akinola and Archbishop Henry Orombi, on the subject of the Church of England and Civil Partnerships, African Archbishops Fault Church on Gays (here from the Washington Post but published on newspaper websites all across the USA)

This matter is also mentioned in a report from the Daily Independent Nigeria, Anglican Church Synod begins Saturday in Onitsha

Further reports about this synod are on the Nigerian provincial website:
Akinola invites journalists to be abreast of developments in the Church
Church of Nigeria 8th General Synod holds at Onitsha. An extract:

The relationship of the Church of Nigeria with other national churches of the Anglican Communion in the wake of the controversy generated by homosexuality and same- sex unions is also expected to engage the Synod.

“Before, it was America and Canada, but now England is joining the bandwagon to say that homosexuality and same -sex unions are acceptable practices,” Akinola said, adding that the Nigerian church will review what her level of relationship will be in the Communion.

Homosexuality’s Destructive Effect on Church & Culture

Archbishop Peter Akinola is primate of over 17 million Anglicans in Nigeria. Here he responds to the practice of appointing homosexual bishops in the Anglican Church.

Within the ambit of this ‘hand over’ [Romans 1] lie many destructive tendencies, understandings and conjectures which war against the Church and society and what they stand for. These include for the Church:

• The removing of the ground on which the Christian faith has stood since its inception—the Scriptures. By indicating that a particular prohibition in the Scriptures can be blatantly violated with impunity . . .
• The revisionist trend thereby initiated is such that no one can say where it will eventually lead to or end. Once the water source is muddied/poisoned, the down-stream cannot expect to be better.
• Official recognition by the Church of the practice of homosexuality portrays her as a morally confused entity—condemning some sins and sanctioning others. It therefore implies, as some have advocated, that the Church should apologize to the world for peddling a Scripture that is ignorant of and incorrect on the human nature and thus cannot be held as a standard for conduct.
• The moral confusion thus occasioned by the Church’s sanction for homosexuality opens the door officially to many other immoralities hitherto lurking at the Church’s doors (and cupboards) in a state of fear and shame. Now they too can come out and stand to be recognized, and the Church will have no moral integrity to say no. * The society will stop (and has stopped in most places) looking up to the Church for moral guidance, resulting in a further relegation of the Church to social irrelevance.
• At the center of [the] “sacred canopy” [of marriage and family] is the understanding that God has, in creation, entrenched certain modes of behavior and relationships as beneficial to humans and thus acceptable to Him. This implies that behaviors and relationships contrary to these accepted ones must be condemned as disobedience to God. To opine that, unknown to humans, God had hitherto created some people to be homosexuals and lesbians (i.e., sexual orientations) is tantamount to creating God in our own image and introducing a cancerous element into the fabric of the African understanding of marriage and family.
• Homosexuality and lesbianism, like divorce, breed a society of single parents which gives rise to a generation of bastards. And in the context of much poverty and lack of education, this further produces an ill-bred generation of hooligans, portending much terror to the peace and stability of the society.
• Homosexuality and lesbianism thrives on many sexual aberrations and improvisations typical of human selfishness and greed in the name of pleasure and self-actualization.
• In a society where many women are finding it difficult to have husbands of their own due to the depletion of men by many factors, homosexuality will exacerbate the existing social disequilibrium, leading to much social unrest.

Granted, the American society as a super-power is in the forefront of human adventure. However, in this case of human sexuality, it is nothing but adventure in ungodliness. For people like Gene Robinson, who was married for years with children, to wake up one morning and discover that they are homosexuals is nothing but adventurous promiscuity and unfaithfulness. The Church condones that at her own peril. If this is not yet clear to many today, it will surely be tomorrow.