Updated
ENI via Episcopal Life reported earlier on Bishop supports jail for homosexuals, opposes death.
An Anglican church leader in Uganda has rejected proposals that homosexuals should face the death penalty for sexual assault in some cases, but says that prison terms should remain as a deterrent.
“We want to state categorically that homosexuality is unacceptable,” Anglican Bishop Stanley Ntagali of Masindi-Kitara diocese told Ecumenical News International in an interview…
And here is an earlier report from last August, Anglican leaders support president’s speech on homosexuality.
Today Bishop Pierre Whalon asks What would Bishop Hannington say?
Thousands of Ugandan Christians have died as witnesses (martyrs, in Greek) to the Good News of Jesus Christ, Lord of all and Savior of humanity. Today we remember dozens of Anglican martyrs, beginning with a missionary Bishop, James Hannington…
Today, that country is considering a law that would make homosexuality a serious crime, even in some cases a capital crime. What would the Martyrs of Uganda say? It is unimaginable that they who paid the ultimate price for their faith would demand that gay people be executed. Quite the contrary!
The Anglican Church of Uganda should strenuously oppose this bill, in conformity with the clear, repeated teachings of the Lambeth Conferences (1978, 1988, 1998 — see also the 1998 report — hard to find, scroll down — and 2008, see section H) that homosexuals are beloved of God and should be allowed to be members of the Church. At least one Ugandan bishop has spoken out against the proposed imposition of the death penalty so far…
Foreign Policy has published Uganda’s Outrageous New Sex Law by Michael Wilkerson.
…Why homosexuality has become such an explosive issue in Uganda has to do, in part, with the complex set of social issues wrapped up in it. These include the erosion of the nuclear family, the influx of global culture, and an epidemic of a HIV/AIDS, whose treatment forces individuals and families to break every social taboo. Most importantly, Ugandans are extremely religious, with more than 94 percent saying religion was important in their lives in a 2008 survey by Afrobarometer. And from the country’s varied branches of Christianity to its sizable Muslim community, no one preaches tolerance of gay rights…
PRA has a press release, Political Research Associates Calls on Rick Warren to Denounce Proposed Antigay Law in Uganda.
U.S. Rightwing Evangelicals Stoke Antigay Hatred in Africa
In March 2008, U.S. evangelical leader Rick Warren told Ugandans that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right. One year later, U.S. conservative evangelical and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively (a resident of Massachusetts) addressed the Family Life Network and Ugandan members of Parliament in March 2009, saying legalizing homosexuality is akin to legalizing “the molestation of children or having sex with animals.”
That March meeting launched a campaign that has led directly to today, when the Ugandan legislature is debating an anti-gay bill that would lead to life imprisonment for gay sex, and death for those having same sex relations if they are HIV positive or having sex with someone under 18. Heterosexuals would have no such restrictions. This law, which would also criminalize any human rights organizing for LGBT rights, could be passed any day.
Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia who just completed a report for Political Research Associates on the influence of U.S. evangelicals on African gay politics calls on Rick Warren to denounce the antigay legislation proposed in Uganda and challenge his friends like Archbishop Henry Orombi and Pastor Martin Sempa who are leading the charge…
Fr Dougal has written http://dougalthink.blogspot.com/2009/10/uganda-and-martyrdom.html And in this, the most Christian country in Africa, the Church is devastatingly silent. It appals me that the Church of Uganda, so swift to call for compliance with the Lambeth 98 Resolution on certain matters like moratoria, is so quick to ignore the bit of Lambeth 1:10 that condemned violence against LGBT people. And just why has the Anglican Patriarch of Canterbury so stunningly silent on this? It would be an ideal chance to remind African Anglicans that 1:10 has more than one bit. Believing something is immoral and preaching against it is one… Read more »
I am glad to see Bishop Whalon speaking out against the vicious Ugandan laws. But he is of course a bishop for the despised Episcopal Church (USA), with which the Church of England no longer wishes to be in communion. On the other hand, the Church of England apparently has no problem with such laws. Even if it is not actively seeking to institute them in England itself, it certainly condones them through its silence. There have been and will not be any thunderous denunciations of Uganda’s laws from +Durham. No one on Fulcrum has even noticed the issue. The… Read more »
Canterbury forfeited all moral authority for me when he traded in what is right for what is expedient with the Jeffrey John episode. He concluded long ago that preserving the institutional integrity of Anglicanism was worth the sacrifice (literally) of LGBT Christians. I am not surprised by his silence. I am appalled by the silence of other bishops and Christian leaders. Their silence implies consent. I am also not surprised at the complicity of American right wing evangelicals in this, some of whom appear to be recoiling in horror at the Frankenstein’s monster they have created in Uganda. Yet another… Read more »
Well, perhaps we are watching the Great Sin of Anglicanism take shape. The one everyone else will remind us of, for centuries to come. Like the burning of heretics under Rome, like the Spanish Inquisition, like the witch trials, this will be thrown in our faces for centuries to come: “This is what Anglicanism really stands for!”
“yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.”
“Well, perhaps we are watching the Great Sin of Anglicanism take shape.” You may well be right. Under the guise of providing better care for HIV/AIDS patients, the Ugandan government is to begin a registration of gay people. So, we haev the dehumanization of gay people, the declarations that gay people are an evil influence from without, the move to make homosexuality punishable by long prison terms and even death, now an attempt to register gay people. I don’t think it’s at all alarmist to point out that all these things have happened at least three times in this century… Read more »
Canterbury has also been utterly silent about the recent violent attacks in UK, one upon an older civil servant, and one upon a young police trainee. We continue to have our own USA sort, too, as in the recent attacks in Queens. Our beloved Archbishop Who Fiddled to get J John removed as bishop will also Stand By Silent. Nod approvals all around, you evangelical Anglicans? Alas. Lord have mercy. RWs abstract, high-toned, mild words about queer folks and tolerance and human rights ring nearly all hollow. He wants his own skirts to be thought clean of stains; but he… Read more »
So Anglican Bishop Stanley Ntagali thinks that, should I necessarily find myself in Uganda, I should only be *locked up*, not killed?
Forgive me if I’m feeling less than grateful…
Lord have mercy!
When humanists and secularists are pro-gay and the leading voices against are all Christian – it should make you reconsider the values of those sets of ideas
“We want to state categorically that homosexuality is unacceptable,” Anglican Bishop Stanley Ntagali of Masindi-Kitara diocese told Ecumenical News International in an interview.” What clearer evidence could there be that this prelate in Uganda has not taken on board the fact that Churches of the Anglican Communion, through statements made at Lambeth, have urged that the policy towards the LGBT community ashould be one of acceptance and non-agression towards them from the Christian Churches. Bishop Ntagali and his Primate, Archbishop Orombi, need to be reminded of the stated policy of the Communion, which demands a culture of respect towards those… Read more »
“When humanists and secularists are pro-gay and the leading voices against are all Christian – it should make you reconsider the values of those sets of ideas”
Thing of it is Merseymike, I can’t stand to be without the music-
Changing Attitude and Inclusive Church have written to the Archbishops of Canterbury, York and Uganda and the bishops of Bristol, Sodor and Man and Winchester, the three English dioceses linked to Uganda, urging the Primate of Uganda to speak out against the proposed legislation and all of them to argue for the protection of lesbian and gay people in Uganda and respond faithfully the commitments made by the Lambeth Conference. Last Friday we emailed the leadership teams of Fulcrum, Reform, Anglican Mainstream and the Church Society asking them if they would join Changing Attitude and Inclusive Church in signing an… Read more »
Changing Attitude might want to send the letter to Affirming Catholicism too, or no?
Thanks to CA and related for trying to do something in public. Don’t get too disappointed if reaching out only gets you repeated voice mails that go unanswered, and loud silence in too many global Anglican sectors. Is this Uganda AntiHuman Rights stuff the sort of thing that can get Uganda brought up for charges, per the New Anglican Covenant? Meanwhile, I’m thinking more about the jail versus death penalty sanctions. Given African jails, I think a simple death penalty might actually be kinder in some small degree. You can only be killed once; whereas multiple years in Ugandan jail… Read more »
Since they’ve chosen to inject themselves into our affairs, one might also ask the Curia to make a public condemnation, the Catholic Church in Uganda to do the same.
In 2009, even before Stanley Ntagali became an archbishop, he was reported as taking the position that ‘I think the death penalty is not acceptable’ while ‘I think taking someone to jail for a period of time would be sufficient’ (http://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/article/uganda-bishop-supports-jail-homosexuals-opposes-death).