Updated again Thursday morning
First, this article by Savi Hensman is more general, but nevertheless relevant to the Uganda issue.
Second, these articles by Colin Coward are specific:
The Guardian interview by Stephen Moss is at Archbishop John Sentamu: ‘Mammon has been given a pasting’.
Meanwhile…
The United Reformed Church (URC) has become the first major Christian denomination in the UK to issue a statement condemning Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
See URC breaks silence of UK churches over Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill.
And, from the USA, news via Episcopal Café of The Family’s role in the Ugandan anti-gay bill.
Warren Throckmorton also reports on this, see Author links sponsors of Anti-Homosexuality Bill to The Family.
The transcript of the radio programme to which these articles refer can be found here.
Updates
Bishop Joseph Abura of Karamoja Diocese, Province of the Anglican Church of Uganda, has written an article for Spero News. Read For some Anglicans, Vices are now Virtues.
Colin Coward notes here that this diocese is linked with the Deanery of Alton, in the Diocese of Winchester. As Colin says, the bishop’s views deserve to be read in full.
And as Episcopal Café notes here, ACNA Bishop John Guernsey serves under Abura.
See also More on American ties to Uganda.
Gay people in Uganda are being made the victims of violence and abuse. The two Archbishops of the Church of England have the opportunity to make their voices heard about this, and to condemn it. They are both very quick to enter the public realm on other matters. Those who have the opportunity to do something to prevent abuse and who do not take it are participators in the abuse. We see it with bullying in the playground and in the workplace. We see it in regard to domestic violence and in the beating up of gay people in the… Read more »
Go to the American Web Site “Episcopal Cafe” for a chilling article, based on an interview with the author of the book “The Family.” The Family is a secretive “Christian” organization of conservatives – members of govt, senators, congressmen, and others – who believe God has chosen them to act upon their very peculiar reading of Jesus. He’s not about love, according to them, but power. A member of this group is the Ugandan who proposed the legislation in question. If the story about this is not The Lead, in the upper lefthand quadrent of the web site, click on… Read more »
It scares me that Bishop Abura wants to reorient those who have been ‘disoriented’ by being gay, when the legislation he is advocating wants to kill them. What sort of reorientation is that? This is the ultimate consequence of ex-gay ministry programs. Also, why is it that Katharine Jefferts Schori is derided by fundamentalists for suggesting that the twentieth-century promotion of individualist salvation is wrong, when other bishops are praised for statements such as: ‘After the honor was bestowed upon them, the West and the North degenerated into individualism.’ We have so much in common, yet stand so far apart.… Read more »
Go to Father Jake ¨Stops the World¨ and read more and hear more…there is a recent National Public Radio interview of great interest…speaking of the ¨selling out¨ of Anglican virtue, it appears that Ugandas leadership does it best (and the ABC and York remain silent observers) and has for a very long time…the very idea that Bishop Joseph Abura of Karamoja Diocese, Province of the Anglican Church of Uganda, sells this kind of damaged and hatefilled religious DEMONIZING to his ¨flock¨ is downright disgusting…way beyond instigating deadly outcomes for Anglicans/others in Uganda the Bishop is bordering on plain lunacy and… Read more »
Thanks for putting up the information about The Family. They make the IRD looklike boy scouts. If these American zealots can train their own people in Uganda, then I think TEC and the ABC are surely justified in speakinig out against these horrors.
Did you really expect any more from either of these individuals?. Sentamu us a shallow, insincere spinmeister and far too ambitious to be trusted. And of course he won’t criticise his precious banana republics! He may need their support….
As for Wiliams, he was prepared to sacrifice a so-called friend for an organisation which makes him untrustworthy, cowardly and unprincipled.
“The bishop says it is appalling to read of global opposition to the Anti-homosexuality Bill and the agitation being stirred against legislation that would allow Priests and Ministers to be imprisoned for up to three years if they failed to report any homosexual activity of which they become aware.’ – C.A. website – This statement by an African bishop betrays the deep fundamentalism that informs his theology (and the theology of many of his colleagues, in his own and other dioceses, who really believe that homosexuals are God’s matign judgement on the Church and the World. This primitive outlook –… Read more »
I’m as Anglo-Catholic as they come, but I’m hard pressed tonight to tell you why I shouldn’t be URC. Gospel is as gospel does.
In about a week the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles will gather in its annual convention to elect two suffragan bishops for the diocese. Among the six well qualified candidates are a partnered lesbian and a gay male priest married to his husband during the few months when it was legal for same sex couples to marry in California. Imagine, if you will, what must be going through the minds of serious delegates and electors (I am one) as we approach this election, and as we view from here the events unfolding in Uganda and the Anglican Communion. Who would… Read more »
karen macqueen+. When Judas died the apostles got together the candidates, then they trusted in the providence of God and cast lots. I suggest you do the same. I mean this, not as a flippant comment but as a serious one. Every time there’s a vacancy, let’s put up a gay candidate, a woman, partnered, celibate, married, as long as they, like Matthias, have accompanied the others, that is, they are in good standing in the Church. That’s all that’s needed. God knows their hearts, let God decide.
Excellent post, Karen. However, I have much more respect for Archbishop Orombi and the Pope, who seem to me to be honest and consistent and to mean what they say (however much I may disagree with it), than for the ABC, who has betrayed his friends and his principles.
Savi Hensman’s writing and then her dialog with commentators is very encouraging to me. So clear thinking and yet generous to others (even the difficult !).
Episcopal Life mentioned that an extraordinary meeting of the Executive Council was called by the seldom-used method of petition to consider a statement on Uganda:
http://www.episcopalcafe.com/lead/episcopal_church/executive_council_reinventing.html#more
Mark Harris has a commentary linked to this page, which may be of interest to those who are concerned about the problems of the Church adopting a “corporate” (in the contemporary sense) model of running things.
“Archbishop of Canterbury…who had the temerity to open his sermon at the General Convention of TEC in 2009 with a very clear reference as to how he would like us to vote on resolutuons before us – but who is now eerily silent about the actions of the Church of Uganda? For me, this person’s excuses for public silence take from him the moral authority that I would wish he had.”
Hear, hear!
Karen,
God be with you and your fellow delegates at your convention. Allow the Holy Spirit to rule and guide you, and be not afraid of those who have damaged our beloved Communion by sitting on the fence, and in the Rowan case changing sides. God be with you, and lead us forward in truth and hope. Remember the Lutheran church, and their new Bishops. God called them, as he called Jeffrey John.
Love and God Bless in Christ.
Fr John