Statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury regarding comments by the Primate of Nigeria
05/03/2021
The Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of All Nigeria, the Most Reverend Henry C Ndukuba, issued a statement on Friday 26 February 2021 which referred to “the deadly ‘virus’ of homosexuality”. The statement goes on to use phrases like, “[homosexuality] is likened to a Yeast that should be urgently and radically expunged and excised lest it affects the whole dough”. It also states that “secular governments are adopting aggressive campaign for global homosexual culture.” (sic)
I completely disagree with and condemn this language. It is unacceptable. It dehumanises those human beings of whom the statement speaks.
I have written privately to His Grace The Archbishop to make clear that this language is incompatible with the agreed teaching of the Anglican Communion (expressed most clearly, albeit in unsuitable language for today, in paragraphs c and d of resolution I.10 of the Lambeth Conference 1998). This resolution both restated a traditional view of Christian marriage and was clear in its condemnation of homophobic actions or words. It affirmed that “all baptised, believing and faithful persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are full members of the Body of Christ.”
The Anglican Communion continues to seek to walk together amidst much difference and through many struggles. I urge all Christians to join me in continuing prayer for the people and churches of Nigeria as they face economic hardship, terrorist attacks, religious-based violence and insecurity.
The mission of the church is the same in every culture and country: to demonstrate, through its actions and words, that God’s offer of unconditional love to every human being through Jesus Christ calls us to holiness and hope.
+Justin Cantuar:
“Full members”–except, of course, there are some things they cannot do, like get married.
This seems to me to be a good response with an unequivocal condemnation of the language used by the Archbishop. But it’s taken an extreme statement to produce such a response. Better late than never I suppose. In the circumstances it’s probably best if the ABC’s letter to the Archbishop remains private. Megaphones don’t usually help. But it’s also good that he has reminded the Archbishop that Lambeth 1.10 is more than just a condemnation of same sex activity and that the second part carries equal weight, something that the homophobes have consistently ignored. But what is also interesting is… Read more »
Wow. I didn’t expect that, but well done Justin.
Come on, Cantuar. There is no “agreed teaching of the Anglican Communion.” That’s nonsense. Nigeria can ignore you, just as The Episcopal Church can. As for timing, this fig-leaf statement is likely being issued now because the Archbishop will keynote a meeting of CEEP, an Episcopal Church group, later today. And as others have suggested, if Justin Welby really wants to do more than talk the talk of “God’s love to every human being,” then why doesn’t the Archbishop support same-sex marriage in the Church of England? Instead he withholds that sacrament. He is violating his duties to his own… Read more »
For years now, there have been many loud voices on Thinking Anglicans asking why successive Archbishops of Canterbury have scolded TEC for ignoring I.10 but haven’t said anything to African Anglicans about their violations of the second part of the resolution. Now, finally, an Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken out. Do I wish he’d gone further? Of course I do. But today I’m going to choose to celebrate a little movement in the right direction.
I agree Tim. Not just this letter, but the “Dear Gay Anglicans” letter which started this whole saga, in which a group of Christians inside ACNA chose to reach out compassionately to the gay Anglicans in their midst. Again not a perfect letter, but it is important to note and celebrate a little movement in the right direction.
I agree Tim.
In Nigeria, and throughout GAFCON, this will seem momentous.
Certainly it seems momentous in the comments section on the Archbishops Facebook page. Hundreds of Nigerians are calling him an apostate and telling him to mind his own business and stop treating Nigeria as a British colony.
Tim, I think your comment might have been fair in, say, 2005. I don’t think it makes any sense, 23 years after Lambeth 1998, to call for even-handed application of that appalling resolution, which almost everyone has ignored for so long. There is no “agreed teaching” in the Anglican Communion on this or any other issue. There is no such thing as an Anglican magisterium. For Cantuar to suggest otherwise is self-serving, post-imperial fantasy. And I hope that those who (virtually) attend the CEEP gathering will recognise this statement for what it is—an Archbishop of Canterbury asserting authority that he… Read more »
I think, Jeremy, that you are missing something. The traditionalists within GAFCON thought there were no limits how far they could push ABC and the Anglican Communion. They have just discovered that there are limits and, if they cross them, that they will be publicly rebuked. Evangelicals within the Church of England like CEEC are going to take note too because they will now fear that if they aren’t careful they too could overplay their hand and suffer public rebuke. That’s a massive change. You and I might want much more but it would be wrong, I think,… Read more »
But Kate, to appreciate the statement, as it is phrased, is to presuppose that there is some globally agreed-upon “Anglican teaching” and that Canterbury has some role in enforcing it. Neither is true. Obviously I disagree with the Nigerian theology of marriage, but I find myself in some agreement with their ecclesiological estimation of the Archbishop and this statement. As for the statement’s impact within the Church if England, all well and good. But it comes 20 years too late—and for those 20 years it seems that homophobia has been allowed to run rampant in the Church of England because… Read more »
In the present context it is perhaps worth noting the answer that Archbishop Justin gave on 29 March 2014 to this question by a young person during the Eucharist service at St Edmundsbury Cathedral to mark the centenary of the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich: “I’m sure you know, from today it will be legal for gay couples to marry. What do you think about gay marriage in the Church? And do you think the Church needs to change with the times?” Archbishop Justin: “I’m so glad you asked that. (Laughter and applause)…. I am genuinely glad you asked that because I… Read more »
But saying NO to gay marriage is cruel and inhuman, and geopolitical considerations cannot get around that.
Archbishop Justin’s answer continued… “Now, I’m not defending that in any sense at all; quite the reverse. But what it brought home to me as we stood by the grave, and it was an incredibly traumatic moment because I was with all the relatives, what it brought home to me was the complexity of the issue. ‘Cos gay people in this country have suffered a great deal and still do today. The biggest single cause of depression in teenagers, among gay teenagers, is homophobic bullying. It’s a huge, huge issue, the way we treat each other. So, you look at the suffering in one place,… Read more »
Part three of Archbishop Justin’s answer to a question on 29 March 2014: “Secondly, it’s complicated because throughout history the Scriptures teach and the Church has understood that sexual activity should be within marriage, and marriage is between a man and a woman. And to change our understanding of that is not something we can do quickly and casually. It has to be done with profound thought and not just because, as there is, there’s a very clear majority in this country in favour of gay marriage. Parliament has spoken very clearly and we accept that, and that’s right and proper. And I’m not… Read more »
David Lamming, I do recall Welby’s implication that pro-LGBTQ policies should be avoided because they cause deaths at the hands of terrorists. I was outraged by that reasoning at the time, and I still am. (Note the weaker form of it that Welby offers in this recent statement.) But the real flaw is this part: “How do we do things here that are right in a global context, not just for us? We don’t just speak for ourselves. We’re a family, and we’re a global family.” I don’t know what kind of family Welby is referring to, but when it… Read more »
I’m sorry, but boiled down, that answer says, “Because people of other faiths hate homosexuals, we will continue to mistreat homosexuals, so that those people of other faiths don’t take it out on us.” Whatever happened to martyrdom in a righteous cause?
Thank you, Archbishop Justin.
Anyone caring to read the hundreds of Nigerian responses on Archbishop Justin’s Facebook page will get a very discouraging view of the way LGBTQ people are viewed there.
I wonder if the ABC realises just how extreme the position of the ACNA document that began this furore is? I have have just read a piece in defence of the ACNA statement by an Edgar Noble ( apparently a legal and cultural commentator) on the website of the Washington based think tank the Institute for Religion and Democracy and a podcast by the ACNA priest and 2 others on the site standfirmindfaith.com which gives a withering critique from a conservative viewpoint of Andrew Goddard’s Fulcrum piece. These people reject the very idea that there can be such a thing… Read more »
“biblical anthropology”
As this at all like “biblical cosmology,” in which the Sun revolves around the Earth?
Relative to the surface of the Earth, which, let’s face it, is how we usually measure motion, of course the Sun revolves around the Earth.
But, of course, we know that is not the way of things, anymore than it is the way of things that God created the universe in six literal days just over 6,000 years ago.
Why not similarly accept that the notion of same-sex attraction and activity is not a sin, that it was only seen to be so by an ancient culture that got that as wrong as it got cosmology?
Rod: Exactly. As the Clarence Darrow character says in “Inherit the Wind” regarding Darwin and evolution: “For this view, this insight, this knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis.”
It is not birth control that the Catholic Church is opposed to but artificial methods of contraception. Natural Family Planning on the other hand teaches respect for the female biological cycle, self-restraint, and mutual self-giving, surely all the things that a Christian should be striving for.
First, if the RCC truly believed that fertilization must always be a possibility after sexual intercourse, then intercourse should be permitted ONLY in the unsafe period and banned in the safe period. As I and others have pointed out, they are stuck on Aristotle. Second, as for the notion that a Christian should be striving for, inter alia, self-restraint and mutual self-giving, then good luck with that. The church as a means of emasculation: a great evangelistic motto.
Fertilization is perfectly possible in the ‘safe period’. It is just less likely.
There’s an old joke in the US: What do you call a woman who relies on “natural family planning?”
Pregnant.
Sad that you see this as something negative. Natural family planning is a beautiful witness of restraint and self-giving in marriage.
Yes – they are basically accusing Justin of being an apostate and wanting to impose colonial rule on the Anglican Church of Nigeria. They are reminding him that the Church of Nigeria is an independent body and he can’t tell them what to do. Ironic, given that this all started with the Primate of Nigeria telling Anglicans in North America what to do.
Not that it much matters, but ACNA has Nigerian entities in its midst. By its own self-definition, it resists the ‘national church’ idea now in full bore. So, there is a disagreement over the LGBT terrain, but equally over Communion itself. We are straining at ‘what does it mean for an ABC to presume to speak for the Communion as a whole’ and at the same time ‘national churches are beyond my polity.’ Hard to see how this can resolve itself. These inconsistencies are now, as they say, baked in.
You might want to investigate IRD. I believe they were organized to counter the political influence of the mainline churches in the US. They did that by promoting the splits in the Episcopal and Methodist churches. They insured we were too busy with internal squabbles to advocate for left wing causes. Well funded by right wing forces.
Yes. IRD is funded by the Ahmanson family, and has in turn supported and bankrolled conservatives within TEC, PCUSA, UMC and other denominations.
I think this statement can be paraphrased as, ‘it’s ok to be homophobic, just not as homophobic as that’. I wonder why ++Justin thinks denial of marriage, withdrawal of clergy licence, denial of lay ministry, conversion therapy and enforced celibacy for LGB people to name but a few of the abuses against non-heterosexuals that are alive and well in his Province- are not the ‘homophobic actions’ Lambeth apparently condemns. Of course it is good for him to speak out; better to match his words with actions in his own back yard. Mild or severe, institutional or overt; homophobia is homophobia… Read more »
Hard to see much future for an AC as previously obtained. The ‘central role’ of ABC is no longer obvious, if ever it was. The instrumentality idea is past sell-by date. More advanced unravelling simply obscured by a global epidemic.
On topics that matter to me, I am happy to speak up. Topics actually having to do with the AC or theology — not politics, Christ Church Oxford, policies on closing churches in the CofE, recent abuse scandals, insider diocesan affairs, etc. I’ll leave that to others.
As I see it, the Anglican Communion was (very frequently) faith following the flag. Geoffrey Fisher did much to ‘organise’ it into provinces in large tracts of Africa in the 1950s in large measure because he was creating ecclesiastical structures which followed the gradual move towards political self-government; this was followed by a post-colonial moment, even into the 1980s, where bishops were often English imports (as had been commonly the case in Australasia, for example, as late as the 1960s and 1970s). The phenomenon of Anglicanism as a form of post-imperial ‘soft power’ warrants further study, and it would be… Read more »
“Is this issue not only about a gulf in understanding and sympathy between the UK and Nigeria, as about the presumption and vanity of Lambeth? If the Anglican Church in Nigeria spins away from its English counterpart, it will matter scarcely a whit either to the English (for whom Anglicanism is, in any event, a minority pursuit) or to Anglican Nigerians. Yet it will matter very much indeed for the amour propre of Lambeth and its case for being treated with respect in Rome and by other substantial Christian confessions. It is manifestly absurd for consecutive archbishops and their press… Read more »
Christopher, if you see the ABC as an Instrument of Communion as problematic and given the Anglican Communion, a communion of independent Provinces is now in impaired communion how would you want the Communion constructed or see it evolve? Something along the lines of the Lutheran World Federation perhaps? Do we call it a day? After all when I’m abroad I don’t necessarily seek out an Anglican Church and you currently worship in your local French Catholic parish. In what way do we need it? Didn’t the 1948 Lambeth Conference see the Anglican Communion “disappearing” into a coming ecumenical Church?… Read more »
Thank you for your question. I have laboured to sketch out a proposal in Convergences: Canon and Catholicity (2020). It entails the RCC making ecumenical experiments based upon agreements re: certain historical convergences identified at the time of Vatican II. France would be one place to do this, e.g., where there is effectively only one Church. But that would probably entail a more obvious collapse such as we are beginning to witness. My teaching experience at Centre Sevres in Paris was rich and encouraging. Chemin Neuf and Taize exist in France for a reason. You pose important questions. I think… Read more »
Mr Butler, I’d be interested in your own musings on this question. We are all pretty much looking at a changing landscape.
I genuinely don’t know how things will develop.As you say a changing landscape. How Lambeth 22 goes might give some indication. It will surely be the last in the form of the last 3 or 4. The ABC’s retirement and his successor will mark another change.The ACC has financial problems. I just wonder where (if anywhere) any creative thinking is going on.
That makes sense. The Global South (not Gafcon only) will also react differently to things. And as Froghole has noted, the old colonial loyalties are diminishing (where that is a reality in the AC at large) and what will happen when HMQ is gone, also figures in (both in the CofE and in the AC by bank-shot). The numerical decline in attendance in the CofE, once perhaps not so clear, is increasingly a factor as the news spreads. I will check the link you provide. Thanks.
Listened to the video. Does underscore what we are talking about. I wrote my own critical evaluation of the Virginia Report shortly after it came out, published in 1998.There is a certain dreamy quality to much of this inner-Anglican document making. Yes, ACC has financial problems which will only get worse. ABC is sitting in a church with 1% of the population of England. Primates are divided, probably invincibly. Lambeth conference had already become a photo-op, and now it is over for a while. I would have welcomed a deeper evaluation of ARCIC. The point that when Anglicanism is internally… Read more »
I should have added also how GAFCON shapes and develops.
I recommend a talk given by Dr Andrew Pierce of the Irish School of Ecumenics on YouTube
put in Communion and Context : Dr Andrew Pierce Irish School of Ecumenics 18 Jan 2021 on anglicanism’s divisions and consequent ecumenical deficit. A rigorous analysis. about 25 mins.
Does HMQ have any bearing on attempts to hold together the AC? It is said that she is passionate about the Commonwealth. That remnant of Empire is creaking: after she dies, how long before Canada, Australia, NZ, and more, slough off colonial ties for good and all? The ecclesiastical remnant of Empire that this thread considers is in a more parlous state – surely the last twitchings of a dying corpse. Does respect for HM act as a gobbet of ecclesiastical glue? Whatever loyalty to her the ecclesiastical remnants of Empire may have is unlikely to be replicated for her… Read more »
My short answer is, No. The Monarch’s role at present has been so revamped from the days of Henry 8th as to amount to a different polity entirely.
Bonds of Affection?
Prof. Monkhouse – many thanks for this (and many thanks also to Prof. Seitz for his remarks). In 1957 Lord Altrincham (later John Grigg) argued that there was a sea change in Commonwealth affairs, and that the crown risked becoming irrelevant to most of the Commonwealth if it remained immobile in the UK. He argued specifically that the monarch should establish permanent residences in each of her realms and should live as a peripatetic. He was challenged to a duel by an Italian commendatore for his pains (Grigg, who was a delightful man, reminisced about this story with me in… Read more »
Indebted as always for your detailed account of significant facts. Remarkable for that. Lenten blessings.
What has not yet been discussed on T.A., is the profound affect this whole business may have on the people in North America (and other places- such as New Zealand – where a rival Anglican Churche has been raised up on the issues involved) who thought they were doing ‘the right thing’ by leaving their local Anglican Church in order to protest against its perceived ‘moral terpitude’ in openly accepting the LGBTQI community. When I think that the Head of GAFCON (Archbishop Foley Beach, who is also Primate of ACNA) was here in Christchurch, N.Z., only a few months ago.… Read more »
I very much appreciated Archbishop Welby’s comments, and it is very welcome.
At the same time I personally know Nigerian Anglicans in this country who are very tolerant of LGBT people, and freely say but it wouldn’t be easy to be publicly tolerant in many parts of Nigeria. Context, and historical context of post colonial Nigeria is an important factor in this. I am uneasy of attitudes which group ‘Nigerians’ together and condemn ‘them’ for a lack of liberality.
Aside from the obvious repugnance of what the Archbishop of Nigeria has been saying, I think we should wonder why the Archbishop of Canterbury made his statement in response. I can think of four possible reasons. 1. As I wrote above, yesterday Welby spoke to CEEP, an annual Episcopal Church gathering. I don’t think the virtual presentation was interactive, but I do suspect that the Archbishop knew that he had to say something, lest CEEP participants write him off entirely. And I do mean both senses of “write off”: CEEP began as the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes. And although… Read more »
The 3d and 4th possibilities are more forward-looking. 3. Only Lambeth Palace knows the full list of who plans to attend Lambeth 2022 and who does not. But the statement to the Archbishop of Nigeria suggests that the Lambeth planners are counting up the RSVPs, or the preliminary indications in whatever form, and have come to the conclusion that they justify a leftward move. Either the conservatives are almost universally boycotting, in which case Canterbury has a bit more freedom to maneuver; or the liberals are not accepting with universal alacrity either, which would suggest that the fence might be… Read more »
Starmer used to be a human rights lawyer. The last few years have indicated that this interest has been suborned to political advantage, a position Archbishop Justin will recognise.
I’ve criticised the Archbishop many times on TA but it is to his credit that he has issued such an unambiguous rebuke to the Archbishop of Nigeria. As a liberal gay man I wish he’d been more forthright on previous occasions with the GAFCON crowd, but I applaud him on this occasion. I hope that if there are further egregious breaches of Christian charity he will feel supported in calling those out too.
From an English perspective, my own impression (others will correct me if I am wrong!) is that the Church of England only really “discovered” the Anglican Communion, when traditionalists in the Church of England feared that they were losing the debate on homosexuality, and thought that an appeal to “the Anglican Communion” would help shore up their case (or at least, shore up their numbers). I don’t recall similar importance given to the Anglican Communion by the Church of England on the issue of marriage after divorce, for example, or even the ordination of women (perhaps I am mistaken?). But… Read more »
I think Bob Runcie took the idea of the Anglican Communion seriously and travelled widely. I think he was a remarkable Archbishop in very many ways and still find his writings inspirational. The Crockford preface was very severe and I know hurt him deeply. But he had a wisdom that was rare. And a knack for getting to the heart of the matter. He represented a generous catholic Anglican approach with grace and charm.
Yours is a telling observation. While recent Communion-wide deliberations were speaking of ‘enhanced’ this or that for the ABC, consistent with his obvious role as ‘gatherer’ to Lambeth, a lot of that was simply ignored or unrecognized within his own CofE. Or so you reflexively indicate. This fact on the ground took me a while to digest. It was consistent with +RDW’s thinking and ecclesiology, but he too was likely an outlier. I suspect those days are over. What would a Primates Meeting mean or look like? One wonders the same about a ‘Lambeth Conference.’
There is no “generous welcome” for gay folk that demands lifelong celibacy from them.
I entirely agree with you, Jo. “Generous welcome” is their language, not mine (as I should have made clearer in my comment). I was referring here to people like Andrew Goddard, whose post on Fulcrum (https://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk) shows the difficulties this exchange has created for those who hold views like his.
Very interesting in all of this (to me, anyway) is the fact that the conservative dissenting ‘Anglican’ voices in the world who want to decry the modern understanding of gender and sexuality that is now so very different from that of the Middle Ages of the Church (and is being promoted by the Church of England as a most necessary theological adjustment to our pastoral treatment of LGBT+ people both inside the Church and outside of its domain) – and have, on this account distanced themselves from their Anglican roots in the A.C.C. of Lambeth/Canterbury – are insisting that they… Read more »
Trust First Things to give a platform to Hate Hall (Nashotah House Theological Seminary): https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/03/gay-anglicans-in-the-acna
As Jo says, as long as gay and lesbian people are expected to remain celibate for the rest of their lives, there is still a fundamental problem. Furthermore, it would be good if the husbands and wives of gay and lesbian bishops could be invited to the Lambeth Conference and treated as decent human beings. Lambasting the Nigerian Primate is the easy bit. I’m glad Justin did it. It’s an important message. But condemning homophobia should not be used as sugar-coating for his own church policy, which imposes cruel doctrine on a divided Church of England and is sorely homophobic… Read more »
This would a good thing, Susannah – for the ABC to now invite the spouses of S/S-partnered bishops (in company with other bishops’ spouses) to Canterbury for the next Lambeth Conference. This would be more than just a ‘shot across the bows’ of the GAFCON/ACNA/FOCA crowd – a demonstration ot the Church of England’s solidarity with its LGBT+ membership. After all, GAFCON has virtually already ‘left the room’ that is occupied by the rest of us in the Anglican Communion. This new mark of our Church’s dermination to outlaw racism, sexism and homophobia within its fellowship would be a powerful… Read more »
An article on the BBC news website this week, about the treatment of LGBT people in Ghana, and the negative influence of the Church, makes harrowing reading, and points to just what a malign influence the Church can have. The interesting feature is the observation that anti-gay teaching in churches has become more hostile in recent years, compared to the past. In this dreadful context, what message does the exclusion of gay/lesbian bishops’ spouses from Lambeth send to these Churches? Sending a letter of complaint is the easy bit. Colluding with the discrimination frankly subverts the content of the message,… Read more »
By the way, how do you place a line’s break between paragraphs on this site? If you could tell me, I think it would help make an overall message easier to take in, instead of encountering a wall of text with no breaks. It can probably already be done, but I just haven’t seen how.
Just testing to see if I can create paragraph breaks if I do so with html
<p>
If so, there will be a gap between this and the preceding sentence. </p>
<p>
If not, I guess you’ll see the html in this message. </p>
<p>
I just think messages are easier to read if there are line gaps between paragraphs! </p>