The greater the impending violence the more important a public and private example of Ghandian or MLK Jr. type of non-violence is. Ditto for the modeling of non-violence in word and deed throughout the worldwide communion, up to and including the much-targeted LGBTQ Folks.

The Kingdom simply will break in, no matter what the wars and the rumors of wars. It is high time for Anglicans to speak out forcefully in favor of building bridges between Islam and Anglican Christianity and other communities of faith; and between straight and gay folks of whatever allegiances.

Some believers on the conservative end would no doubt privately describe Islam in as demonic terms as they might describe LGBTQ people. We have to keep praying that this stuff will stop; and we have to make a clear witness against it.

One wishes to offer Archbishop Akinola the benefit of a doubt; but he needs to speak clearly about non-violently reaching out to people he obviously dislikes, whether Islamic believers or Queer Believers. Funny how he simply cannot yet see the parallels of challenge to non-violence in these two controversial arenas of Nigerian and church life.

If we cannot speak out against violence, why not?

One paragraph in the article quotes Akinola as saying "They're simply bitter, they're simply angry. They're simply fed up with it. And they say to themselves that maybe if we fight back, the [Muslims] will know they don't have the right to take life at will. So it isn't that their Christian religion is telling them to go out and fight. You forget, in the West, the Crusades were a response to 400 years of Islamic aggression in Europe. Don't forget that. Don't you ever forget that. They didn't just happen for the fun of it."

There are a few issues that this article brings to the forefront. Firstly, the cycle of "an eye for an eye" can escalate into a vicious cycle of violence that can last generations or even centuries; with the next round of violence justified on the basis of the previous round. Secondly, the question of angry people on the streets partaking in casual or organised ethnic violence is not limited to Nigeria (look at Paris and Sydney last year).

Thirdly, if there is ever to be any hope of building communities where the elderly and children can safely play on the streets, then there needs to be an agreed consensus that peace, tolerance and hospitality are important and fundamental to building such societies. This calls on community leaders (from the macro to the micro levels) to be committed to fostering healthy relationships.

It can not be imposed from above and will fail if the talk is not walked at the local level. That is a strategy of white washing for the media's sake, whilst abdicating how to to teach our parishioners how to live as peace makers. For example, it is not possible to practice hospitality when local church leaders advocate against dialogue with people of other faiths (which happened in a sermon I attended last Sunday).

Finally, I wish God would bestow wisdom on the hot heads from anyside of such violent conflicts. One of my recent ponderings, is that do these people ever think what would happen when they have conquered all their enemies? For example, if the Jews were eliminated as a nation (God forbid) would that solve the problems of overpopulation and scarce resources? If the whole world was Christian, would that solve the drive for domination, or would it degenerate into one sect then seeking to overwhelm the other denominations? At some point, there has to come a realisation that the issue is not being able to cope with boundaries and accepting sufficiency. Having faith that God has provided enough and that there is no need to steal from nor destroy "the other" to garnish more for oneself e.g Ezekiel 34:18-19.

Not wanting to deny the suffering of the people in Nigeria (or Iraq or Palestine or anywhere else for that matter), but it is easy to assume that violence does not occur in "advanced" countries. Further, there have been studies that some forms of violence impact equally across demographics. For example WHO's study on domestic violence last year http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr62/en/index.html This article notes "Partner violence appears to have a SIMILAR IMPACT on women’s health and well-being regardless of where she lives, the prevalence of violence in her setting, or her cultural or economic background."

Maybe some souls would like to look at some of the overcoming domestic violence strategies as a resource pool for how to overcome religious and other forms of other forms of abuse. Here's a couple of starter articles:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/violence/who_campaign.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4468396.stm

I continue to be puzzled by the characterizations of Archbishop Akinola as "one of the most powerful figures in the Anglican Communion."

[Warning: Realpolitik ahead]

He is the Anglican Archbishop of a very populous and, tragically, very poor African country which is a former British colony and in which Britain retains considerable influence. Nigeria's Delta region contains massive oil reserves which are of great importance to European nations and the United States; but the country is in danger of spiralling downward into a civil war of nominally religious motivation.

Archbishop Akinola's position makes him likely to be cultivated by political figures, particularly in Britain, who for very good strategic reasons do not wish to see Nigeria descend into civil war -- assuming that the Archbishop can and does help to keep the peace in Nigeria. He must continue to be more of an asset than a liability, in other words, if he wants to retain his present position of favor with Western nations.

It appears, from the recent speech of Lord Lea of Crondall (which immediately precedes the Bishop of Coventry's speech, linked in an earlier article on this site), that HM Government has an additional policy goal in Nigeria: to ensure that the United States does not begin to exercise undue or inappropriate influence in the Delta region.

Pursuant to that goal, Archbishop Akinola must be kept firmly in the British camp and prevented from straying to the Americans. Some of the Americans, however, appear to be making him the tempting offer of becoming Head of his own Communion.

So Archbishop Akinola is in the enviable role of one who has two suitors, British and American, and can play each of them off against the other.

This, however, does not translate into actual worldly power for Archbishop Akinola, and I assume that it is worldly power of which we have been speaking all along when we speak of him as powerful within the Anglican Communion. The Archbishop has power relative to his success in preserving the peace in Nigeria and assisting HM Government in its aims for that region. He may also have some power gained through playing off the Americans against the British. But he has no actual power of his own.

What I am describing as Archbishop Akinola's situation is standard issue African post-colonialism. That, as fifty years of post-colonial history has shown us, has never translated into actual power for the formerly colonized.

At the end of the day, Archbishop Akinola's Province may indeed be populous, but as Lord Lea made clear, its populousness is one of its problems. Nigeria is desperately poor and desperately overpopulated. The economy, despite its potential oil wealth, has been eviscerated by crime and corruption. The current President of Nigeria has barely begun to address these problems, despite campaign promises to do so. Now a religious civil war is looming. These things do not bring power in their train.

It would be very difficult to dislodge Peter Akinola from his present position as Primate and Archbishop of All Nigeria, but I can imagine scenarios in which he is replaced in those positions within the Anglican Communion. I hope that he can, as well. It might prevent him from further rash statements and actions.

Dear drdanfee and Cheryl, personally I am very sympathetic with the terrible situation that Christians in majority Muslim states like northern Nigeria often find themselves in. Disapproval is often not just "moral" - as the cases of Andrew White's church in Baghdad and Abdul Rahman's experience in Kabul show! See articles here:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3933-2134933,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/25/international/asia/25convert.html?ex=1300942800&en=2238ebb5494ad181&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

So, if you really believe what you are saying, why don't you go to northern Nigeria to help the rioters to learn to "building bridge" and "cope with boundaries and accepting sufficiency" - like Norman Kember who did risk all, and had to be rescued by Special Forces after 117 days of captivity and the execution of one of his colleagues ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4854494.stm

Or are you only armchair ethicists ?

Maybe I should go, and take all those who advocate tolerance to GLBTs with me. That would solve all your problems in one transaction. And I wish I was only an armchair ethicist, the battles of abuse are not confined to Nigeria nor the African continent.

Dear Cheryl, If you think that the outcome would be that bad, why are you suggesting that Abp Akinola and Christians in Nigeria should do it ?

Dave

Because I am asking them to do in Nigeria what I am doing where I live and what I am asking others to do where they live. I am not asking them to do anything more than I would ask of myself, and I can promise you that I have not suffered any less than them. A child torn out of their bed at night to be assaulted or forced to witness the repeated rape of their mother is equally as traumatic in Nigeria as it is in Australia or Argentina or China for that matter.

When God called on me to publicly move I asked him where I should start. His reply was that I might as well start where I was because the problems are universal issues across all nations.

The journey of healing has to start somewhere, and Spirit will move where souls respond to God's call. Some souls will respond earlier and more sincerely than others, others will come as they see the fruits of God's healing in the earlier adopters. Some will eventually come once they can no longer justify clinging to their fear and hate.

It's a hyperbole that links into my first posting on this thread but I like this Algemeiner article http://www.algemeiner.com/generic.asp?ID=1526 Specifically because it acknowledges that freedom requires boundaries, and that unchecked greed is not freedom.

One of my ponderings the last few days is that we say that we do not worship false idols e.g. Baal. But the question I ask is how many of us have unknowingly embraced the paradigms of the Roman empire e.g. citizens versus "non-people", expansion at all costs, money and power as proof of worth? In that sense, do we aspire to have the greedy dominance of the Pharoah, white ant and deny God as the Erav Rev, or to snipe and destroy as the Amalek?

I wonder if any of those whose recent vitriol and invective on TA towards Akinola (over his alleged incitement to violence) are inclined to comment in the light of this clarification from him?

Dear Cheryl, the US context is very different from northern Nigeria. Disapproval of lgbtq people is *mostly* limited to moral disapproval and lack of affirmation of that part of their behaviour. Unlike Christians in northern Nigeria they do not generally have their homes burned, get hunted down, attacked and killed etc.. although there are some deplorable cases of physical attacks.

Moral disapproval and non-affirmation are not equivalent to "oppression" - otherwise I would be feeling pretty oppressed in secular europe - where my faith is laughed at, my moral principles condemned, suspicion of conservatives is rife, employers can raise eyebrows etc etc.

"employers can raise eyebrows"
Dave, could you explain this one please. The UK now has specific employment protection wrt Religion or Belief, see for example this handy summary:
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/page-4629-smhp=595

"I wonder if any of those whose recent vitriol and invective on TA towards Akinola (over his alleged incitement to violence) are inclined to comment in the light of this clarification from him?"

Something must have filtered through.

Simon, you might remember that a proposed European commissioner was recently black balled in public by MEPs because of his conservative Catholic beliefs on homosexuality - even though he said that this was his moral opinion rather than a legal one.

And once when a manager found out that I was "religious" his response was "well ok as long as you aren't one of those conservatives"...

But I don't live in the UK.

Thank you Simon, I look forward to seeing Dave's response. Also, Dave should be aware that I sit in one of ultra-pure churches. I hear their prayer points to hinder the immoral developments in places such as the USA and their prayers to overturn such changes at the first possible opportunity. To put up as an argument the leniency of the US laws as a counterpoint to the problems in Nigeria is simply laughable. If we are going to resort to that kind of sloppy analysis then it could be said that Nigeria is more law abiding than the US based on this recent prison rates report http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm

Dear Cheryl, I wasn't comparing the laws in the US to those in Nigeria - I was comparing the *experience* of lgbtq people in the US (who often claim "oppression") with the experience of many Christians in northern Nigeria (who are suffering actual oppression - mob attacks, personal property and church burnings, and a lot of murders!)

You said that "I am not asking them to do anything more than I would ask of myself" - but their context is different in the extreme.

Dave

The problems of mob attacks, personal property and burning of premises is not unique to Nigeria. One of the illusions that Katrina exposed was that affluent societies also have disenfranchised people who are "beneath" basic dignity. There are souls in affluent countries that can also not walk the streets safely, wonder if it is possible to escape being violated that day, or pray that they will literally survive the weekend.

Church leaders are contemptible when they train their flocks to be indifferent to others' suffering, timid lambs to be taken to the slaughter, apathetic and without vision, or incite them to violence and hatred of "the other".

Akinola is quotes as saying that we should never ever forget that the crusades followed 400 years of Muslim attacks. Anyone with any ounce of common sense would realise that one of the battles for peace on the African continent arises from the imperialists' contempt and mistreatment of the Arab peoples for decades. What some of people brand as "terrorists" are seen by others as "freedom fighters". If things have escalated to this level, it is partly our religious leaders' faults as they were indifferent to their suffering and loss of dignity, exhorted them to adopt the culture (including the disrespect of women and children), tried to convince them that there was not alternative vision, or attacked them because we thought they couldn't fight back.

Another reason that many Christians are held in contempt is we appear to only care when our own suffer, we pray that Christians won't be attacked. We are not seen to care if Christians practice systemic discrimination or dump mutagenic chemicals or radiation on "the other". Yet ironically, we do it even to ourselves in the name of "profit" e.g. corporations who evidence that their products are unsafe.

God works at both the macro and the micro, and patterns occur as fractals. If we do not create refuges within "affluent" societies, then we have no hope of creating refuges in more troubled societies. If we ignore the poverty and suffering of "the other" then we too will eventually experience the same poverty and suffering.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is no better than murderous Cain when he defied God with "am I my brother's keeper?" (See Genesis 4). And if we genuinely love the God of the bible, then we will remember His promise to Abraham that Ishmael would also form a great nation. If we trust Jesus' vision of blessed are the meek and peacemakers, we will be helping our Muslim cousins to be worthy descendants of Ishmael, sharing the best of our faith with them and showing hospitality to allow them to share the beautiful things they have discovered in their journey. This too is biblical e.g. Micah 4:4-5, Zechariah 3:10, Isaiah 36:16-17,

Dear Cheryl

I think I agree with everything you have written, as far as it goes!

Dear Dave & Similar Other Readers,
I am somewhat puzzled and offended by your comments. You seem to implicitly say that because global cultures vary widely as contexts, the Christian witness against violence cannot still be made, clearly and without qualification. Your apparent guideline reads as a bit hidden, but may be something like: If Christians suffer sufficiently forceful violence from others, then counter-violence by Christians may be justifed as the main effectively forceful answer under those dire circumstances.

This sounds, then, to me, like a Just War Theory sort of formulation.

I do acknowledge that some believers subscribe precisely to Just War Theory, and similar. I am not one of them.

My own long and ongoing personal life journeys away from violence began long before the current dilemmas that Christian believers may face, in the heavily Muslim states of Nigeria, or in Iraq, or anywhere else.

I had to discern, as accurately and as deeply as possible, what I actually believed to be the best response to personal violence that I happened to sustain as a young queer fellow. My attackers loudly recited loopy but equivalent versions of Leviticus and other Bible passages, while they taught the faggot a lesson in a USA Bible Belt small town. It has been and continues to be quite a lifelong pilgrimage, out of and away from violence. I would not in any way wish to get attacked again; though I can bear witness that God has used the attack for much good, so far as I can tell.

USA is hardly violence-free for LGBTQ folks, by the way. Readers may wish to see the recent Amnesty International report, linked at: (1)http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510252006.; and/or (2)other LGBTQ violence reports from elsewhere around the world. Antigay violence in Ecuador, Zimbabwe, Honduras, or Uganda or Ukraine seems surprisingly similar to antigay violence in USA, despite the varied cultural contexts.

Rather than assert a framework in which we address violence in its many cultural contexts, without attempting to discern any possible common roots or commonalities of human form or motivation - or even while we cannily ignoring how religous commitments may even support violence in some places - I would prefer to use some other effective frameworks which might promise to empower me in discerning what is wrong with any form of violence, and what commonalities if any might fuel and justify violence, anywhere.

For me, following Jesus just happens to be part of that alternative lexicon, encouraging me to rightly discern all violence as possibly or probably not likely to be very much of God.

To go way back to my assaults, I took the first steps by discerning that no sort of equal physical or social punishment against my attackers was ever really going to set things right. I could not restore wholeness and righteousness by hunting them down and counter-attacking them, as if. I could not get right by having somebody else - not even the state or the church - hunt them down and attack them. No counter-violent scenario I could ever construct for the four or five years afterwards seemed sufficient or effective in doing real good in response to the violence. Hurting them did not seem to be reliably capable of really making them into good, decent, queer-tolerating believers. Hurting them did not seem a reliable pathway to restoration of me, even in the tiniest degree. Every violent sanction seemed at bottom to be replete with the most peculiar powerlessness, and could only drive home more painfully the failure of that violence to do good to any of us. Only later did I realize that God burning them forever in hell would not actually be restorative or just. Nor would I be blessed to stand in heaven and see them burn in hell for all eternity. It all is a nonsense conundrum, the more I looked into it for very real and very personal reasons.

So I began to inquire more deeply into the claims that told me that violence did good, God's good, if only certain circumstances, reasons, or sanctioned actor conditions could be met. The deeper and wider I looked, the less real sense any of it made.

Finally, I realized that God's way of setting things right might involve something other than counter-violence. I seriously inquired into the ways that violence had profoundly connected me with the boys and men who attacked me for being different - even though I obviously was not what we would nowadays call, Out & Thriving, at twelve or fourteen years.

The more I pursued the connectedness that violence always seems to acknowledge, the more clearly I though I saw ways through to glimmers of good.

For one thing, I could examine the many strands of explanation and justification for the violence - and guess what? Global violence explains and justifies itself in quite surprisingly similar ways, even though the occasions and cultural contexts vary extensively around our planet. The psychology of violence tends to be more coherent that we might suspect on the surfaces of things. Once you begin to understand the psychology of one prejudice, one form of injustice, one explanation and justification for discrimination, you have unwittingly started to begin understanding other prejudices, discrinimations, or injustices. There seem to be some common group relations denominators, too, for occasions of violence which otherwise seem quite involved with separate, distinct issues or dilemmas.

Just so did much research shift in the latter half of the 20th century - from trying to study just how gays or lesbians or transgender folks were filthy, dangerous or incompetent - to understanding why prejudices and injustices against LGBTQ people were so often psychological and social replays of just the sorts of violence we had already seen, directed at Jews, or Africans, or the Irish, or women. Now a huge body of theory and research exists to help us understand why people develop prejudices, how people act on those beliefs or perceptions, and how people change for the better or for the worse, if they do change. One remarkable framework is that stated by Rene Girard. The considerable work on the Authoritarian Personality that was done at Stanford University by Adorno, Sandford and others was a big contribution in its era. Allport's work on prejudices, and W.E.B. DuBois' commentary on Racism moved things along. This area of empirical psychology is large and still growing. Readers may see Karen Franklins recent study via the APA site, at: http://www.apa.org/ppo/issues/pfranklin.html.

Eventually of course, as I think you and I have already posted in some conversation, I found that I had to question the deep feel for violence as good built into the traditional penal atonement theory, as well as the other penal frameworks that religious people use when they are trying to discern good.

What I was discovering was that, simply, so far as I can really tell, violence never does good, no matter what. If I shoot someone who is trying to cut my throat with a knife, I have not done a good deed. I am as answerable for my violence of self-defense, as my knife-wielding assailant.

I have become increasingly committed to various contextual forms of non-violence as my pilgrimage continues. I have dealt extensive in my professional life with victims of violence in its many continuing forms, both child targets and adult targets. I have also dealt with perpetrators of violence, in many different forms on many different levels, who were actively involved in changing for the better.

Instead of emasculating my involvements with human repentance, non-violence deepened the good realities of repentance. Instead of trivializing Jesus and God, my pilgrimage away from penal approaches, including penal atonement, only made God's new covenant with us in Jesus shine more brightly to me. How wonderful to believe and understand that I am related to God without one passing moment of expiatory or atoning violence.

I am not in Iraq or Nigeria at the moment for all sorts of real reasons. I doubt very much that Archbishop Akinola would take kindly to me offering to teach the Nigerian Anglicans about non-violence and civil rights, especially since I would not do so under false pretenses about my being queer. If he wishes, he can have any number of other communities available to him from all around our planet, who are similarly committed to Christian non-violence as I have come to be. The worldwide Quakers, just to name one group, have decades of experience in social justice and Ghandian forms of nonviolent resistance. Many believers in the USA Akinola so often bad mouths have wonderful experience in the USA civil rights movements for blacks and other ethnic or cultural minority groups, for women, or for gays and lesbians, or for transgender people. When gospel roots and origins and energies ally to modern ideas of basic human rights, I do not think that the believers are selling out to the secular humanists, and that we are falling into a very dark hell-hole in which no truth or good are possible. Rather, I discern that a profoundly powerful and important witness is being made on both counts, that of the gospel and that of basic human rights. Gospel roots and origins and energies leaven the whole loaf.

Thank goodness. Thank God.

"why don't you go to northern Nigeria"

Because, Dave, presumably Akinola & Co. would accuse me, a Yank, of "imposing yourself, just like you did in Iraq"?

I'll go to Nigeria when *Nigerians* ask me to---not just on a dare by a non-Nigerian like yourself.

[Oh, and when someone pays my way: the "Myth of the Universally Wealthy American" being just that, a myth!]

I think the larger point, is that we are to manifest the "Fruits of the Spirit" WHEREVER we are "planted". There isn't a *single* place in which to do Christian ministry: it's possible *everywhere* (not to mention mandated, by Our Lord).

Dear drdanfee, you might be astonished to learn that I find some things that you post and believe very offensive too. That is, I think, in the nature of debate! My criticism of what you and Cheryl wrote is that you are chiding people in Nigeria for not doing what you yourself are not prepared to do!

And yes, I do believe in reasonable self defence. If you believe in some higher value I would, again, suggest that you demonstrate that you *really* believe it... in a place where you are in real danger - such as northern Nigeria!

Dear JCF, welcome back! There is a difference between a country invading another one for it's own national interests - and allowing it to descend into a state of chaos -, and an individual going somewhere to be a "peace worker" (which is I think what Cheryl and drdanfee's somewhat heroic outing would be called)..