But what provision then against the danger that some (in fact, many) will be unable to see beyond their own limited culture and will treat it as some kind of norm? This proposal would decrease the sum of education and international awareness.

Indeed it should be ! Bravo Tom Butler.

'...This could be the start
this could be the start of something big ! ....'

(is this from the Beach Boys ?)

Tom Butler asks, "Or is it our calling to be a Commonwealth of Anglican provinces, uncompromised by the beliefs and behaviour of other provinces, trusting that they know what is best for the Church and world in their particular culture with their particular history and tradition..."

Not really - that would be a recipe for continuing contradiction in the communion, institutionalising hypocrisy and a retaining a lack of credibility in the eyes of both religious (eg RC) and non-religious people who are hardly flocking to the liberal churches in the UK and US.....despite their "inclusive" message.

Someone once said that a house divided against itself cannot stand.....

Thank God for +Tom Butler!

Since March 10 the argument has been made - that the current approach of the Archbishop of Canterbury has already failed (a few loose ends to clear up) and the Bishop of Southwark was on the radio himself arguing for a spiritual commonwealth, otherwise known as a loose federation.

Precisely.

Now we know that there is one bishop in the Church of England who understands, and even respects, the cultural underpinnings of TEC.

Is he alone in the Church of England?

I have to say ... I've been hearing a bit of nationalism amongst some of the statements of the American bishops, and I don't like it. It's useful for rallying the troops. And of course, the Primates are smart people and should have guessed what an American response to their demands for foreign oversight for some Dioceses would be (ie, something like the Boston Tea Party).

However, we are Christians and Anglicans as well as Americans, Brits, Nigerians, etc. Nigeria's archbishop is confusing conservative Nigerian values towards homosexuality (which by the way were probably made more conservative by colonialism) with Christian ones. Episcopal leaders must not do the same.

This is important, or could be, because it is the first time any English bishop has hinted at the rather obvious fact that the General Synod would -- if addressed as the American bishops have been by a foreigner -- tell him to stuffed. The proposed covenant is one of those sets of rules which we can all be very keen on others following; but it is worth remembering that it descends from the efforts to stop women priests in the Seventies and Eighties. We wouldn't have them to this day if the matter had depended on a majority vote of the Communion. I can't see the Synod acquiescing in such an arrangement. Rowan, on the other hand, I think would have to. It's the logic of his position.

Why just an excerpt from the bishop's address? What else did he say and where can we find the full text?

I have no idea where the rest of this address can be found on the web. My attempts to locate it have been fruitless.

Tom Butler's suggestion amounts to a step backward in what the Communion has understood itself to be. Since the post Second world war period, Anglicans have attempted to understand themselves as a communion rather than a federation of autonomous provinces. This was driven by the formation of Anglican structures such as the ACC, and by dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church. Much of the impetus for this gradual coming together came from the Episcopal Church of the USA. Andrew Brown is wrong in saying that the covenant comes from attempts to stop women priests. In fact, the rapid development of Anglican ecclesiology comes from attempts to hold the communion together amidst the conflict over women priests.

Anyway, if we were a commonwealth would we be less or more likely to say that we have no need of each other at times of controversy? I think the latter for obvious reasons.

"I've been hearing a bit of nationalism amongst some of the statements of the American bishops, and I don't like it."

Could you cite examples? All I've seen is our bishops saying that we can't respond to the Tanzaia demands without violating our own rules, our own polity, but perhaps I've missed something.

How would the C of E respond if, when Canterbury is vacant again, TEC and Canada and New Zealand demanded that the next ABC be popularly elected by lay people, priests, and bishops from a slate proposed by those provinces?

Oh, and do this to our deadline, while we start appointing overseers [we pick 3, you pick 2] to make sure you toe the line.

"would we be less or more likely to say that we have no need of each other at times of controversy?"
Which of course, is exactly what's happening now anyway, so what's your point?

Yet again in our posted conversations we are informed by Mr. Shell and NP that they alone - because they are conservative realignment folks? - have a unique trans-cultural, trans-historical view or understanding of what simply we all must do, think, be, live, believe, and worship. Even the most astute among us may find it difficult not to choose their preferred brands of believer conformity when faced with their vexed alternative of devolving into nothing but subjectivity and chaos.

But TB's remarks are still profoundly to the historical Anglican point. These very frameworks for stating our presupposed dilemma ignore TB by conservatively defining what he must mean and what his intellectual options must basically be. All, typically, in favor of communion realignment.

I read TB as reminding us all that the genius of Anglicanism as it evolved was its big tent space for differing believer views and practices - balancing tons of local discernment space with the boundaries of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral.

These are the thing defined away by the realignment frameworks: subtle but real boundaries of relationship, ongoing conversations, study and research and publishing, common worship, and above all, Tikkun.

Would we not continue to be far more traditionally Anglican if the Global South could continue to point out the possible sins of the rest of us, and have their own sins scrutinized to the point of high scholarship and significant controversy; only to have us lay all aside as we return to common prayer and common Tikkun for a season while our controversies remain open and unsettled?

Weary of prayer with non-conservative believers, and exhausted from Tikkun, many conservatives are now itching for an Anglican fight. Helped along by lots of rightwing USA money. This is indeed hurting us all, much more than a gay bishop has so far hurt us, and maybe more than a gay bishop at Lambeth could ever hurt us. Let us be clear: Splitting is not the only possible careful archetypal Anglican reply to having a diocese elect a gay bishop.

This third Anglican path of unsettled openness and pilgrimage over a very long run of time is defined away by implicit assumptions in conservative realignment comments about how broken our communion is. How curious to see the repeated evaporation of just these Anglican wetlands under the hot noondays of the conservative realignment sunshine. Talk about global warming and climate change?

Christopher Shell asks, "But what provision then against the danger that some (in fact, many) will be unable to see beyond their own limited culture and will treat it as some kind of norm?"

Yet the commonwealth/federation understanding is driven precisely by the concern by the majority of Anglicans in the USA, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Scotland, Wales, etc that churches operating in conservative/traditional milieux in Africa, Asia, etc are "unable to see beyond their own limited culture" and are "treat[ing] it as some kind of norm." (A "norm," btw, espoused by only a minority within the churches of the USA, Canada, etc.)

However, the Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Scots, Welsh, etc are not seeking to impose their own "limited culture" as norm upon Nigeria, Uganda, South East Asia, etc; rather, it is the *latter* who seek to force all Anglican churches around the globe to conform to the mores of *their* societies' own "limited cultures."

Weiwen -- Your point about nationalism/Christianity is well taken. Nonetheless, Anglicanism had its very founding in the recognition that The Church in each place should be locally adapted and reflect the culture and society of that place. This is in no way to deny the transformative power of the Gospel, nor the need for *all* societies and cultures ultimately to adapt themselves to the Gospel message and usher in the Kingdom. However, when respect for local inculturation, adaptation, expression, and autonomy gets reduced to liturgical colors, hymns sung, and such, it *does* deny the Anglican heritage, the English reformers' genius in framing a Christian expression suitable to "this realm of England" -- and then, centuries later, subsequently allowing other realms, related to some degree, to do the same.

Enough with the sort of handwringing, appeasing post-colonial guilt that produces the likes of +++Neville Williams! Colonialism is no more just, and no more healthy, when it is projected from Abuja or Kampala or Singapore than when it is projected from London -- or Canterbury, or New York.

The rest of Tom's address to the Diocesan Synod (of which I am member) was on other matters not related to the Communion. That's why its an excerpt.

Bishop Butler is right, except that I don't think the Primates have misunderstood the nature of the AC - they have deliberately set out to create a new form of Communion with themselves in charge (a world-wide Church, in fact, that would be recognised as such by Rome). The irony is that the Primates Meeting as an institution is profoundly un-Anglican; it must be abolished if the Communion is to survive.

At the end of the day, this whole business is about trying to retain a patriarchal view of Creation (and therefore of the Church) in which women and homosexuals are inferior beings. Instead, the Archpoodle of Canterbury and other Primates have turned the whole thing into a debate about structures and discipline.

Recently I was doing some study and research on the Massachusetts Bay Colony – the early colonial Puritan footprint in America. I found a culture there which was highly authoritarian, strongly patriarchal, broadly misogynistic, xenophobic, intolerant of diversity, law-driven, slavery-practising, and fostering a belief in witchcraft and demons.

I realized that it took America almost 300 years of social and cultural development to reach the place we are in today, and that almost none of present day cultural norms would have been in the least bit acceptable to that earlier colonial culture.

Then I further realized that my conclusions about the Massachusetts colony at least partially describe some other present-day cultures in various places across the world.

No wonder there is a gap! The Episcopal Church cannot reasonably be expected simply to discard 300 years of social and cultural change and the concomitant development of ecclesiastical polity and pretend that it has not happened.

I have heard no proposals – or even suggestions – that the policies and practices which the Episcopal Church has developed must be adhered to by any other Province of the Communion. TEC is NOT saying, "You must be like us!" but is also saying, "And you do not have the right to demand that we be like you."

That seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable stance: we must respond to our culture and others must respond to their cultures – and inevitably that will mean differing polities, policies, and practices – just as it means different languages and varying liturgies and architecture and the like. Why does that suddenly seem so intolerable a proposition?

I, for one, am deeply grateful to Bishop Butler for recognizing this clearly and publicly as a long-time Anglican means of co-existence.

Christopher Shell said: "But what provision then against the danger that some (in fact, many) will be unable to see beyond their own limited culture and will treat it as some kind of norm?"

Indeed, that could be a problem.

But let's be clear - that is a knife that cuts two ways.

Those foreign prelates atempting to put the American Church into receivership claim that it is the Americans and the Canadians subordinating the Gospel to their own societal norms. But one can argue with equal validity that, for example, the Nigerians are doing the same.

And in the American case, no one is being threatened with prison for disagreeing.

Good sensible statements from +Tom Butler, of the kind that we have come to expect from him. But then of course - he *is* the Bishop of Southwark. It's what he does.

The important issue is if the AC is undergoing a change from it's historical federational nature who has the power to decide and direct that change. The primates group seem rather determined to cease such power. It looks like they are not going to be able to do that without substantial opposition. I think it is likely that the outcome of this process will be the existence of more than one international body with a historical Anglican heritage. Personally, I don't find that to be a particularly troubling prospect.

Bishop Butler is so on point. Another aspect of the life and history of TEC that Anglicans in provinces founded with bishops sent from Britain may not be fully aware of is that the sort of English Calvinist Evangelicalism we all know so well now, has been largely NOT a part of the American Episcopal experience. Indeed, in the USA evangelicals were free to leave the CofE and set up on their own (often established) churches (the Congregational Church of Massachuestts was disestablished in 1837) without being 'unEnglish'. Breaking away from the Episcopal Church was a very American thing. With the exception of Governor Jefferson's disestablishment which did disposess the Church of England of its properties in Virginia, these departures actually strengthened the Episcopal Church whose either rather high or very latitudinarian theology was an alternative to the prevailing theology of the former Pilgrims, Puritans or other 'dissenters'. The Calvinist evangeilical stance so well known in England and other provinces is not a very significant part of TEC's experience, particularly in our post revolutionary period. In the past 25 -30 years it has been imported by clergy from other provinces coming to American cures for various reasons, and is not a widely welcomed development, as the actual numbers indicate. Often, as in the case of the Falls Church or Truro, many of the 'members' are not Epsicopalians. This is a reality of TEC's culture and history that needs to be remembered by those who look to us to respond to demands made on us that are foreign to the history and culture of our province.

Churches with very different polities can come to agreements, each in their own way, if they have sufficient ideological agreement. And the Anglican Churches do not on key matters, with some in one direction and others in the other. These disagreements are ever more widespread covering more issues. The Archbishop of Canterbury clearly dropped all his personal views for the purpose of his office except one - unity - and has tried to develop instruments of order to pull Churches together. But all the emphasis is the other way, and it won't work. Or, if it is made to work, there will be several versions of Covenants and the like for the different tendencies.

Back in the 1980s I interviewed three ministers of religion - two Anglicans and a Methodist, a conversionist, a traditionalist Anglo-Catholic and a liberal Methodist. They disagreed on just about everything topic by topic.

Now either these people will be in a loose federation or they will be in ideologically coherent Churches. What there won't be, and where this Archbishop has made his crucial mistake, is in one. The Anglican culture is less significant than the liberal, traditionalists, conversionist. Anglicanism is only a style and method, and a combination of old arguments when new ones are raging.

Otherwise the ultimate argument for unity should be to do with rejoining Orthodoxy - and they are hardly unified themselves.

NP queried the validity of Tom Butler's comment "...is it our calling to be a Commonwealth of Anglican provinces, uncompromised by the beliefs and behaviour of other provinces, trusting that they know what is best for the Church and world in their particular culture with their particular history and tradition..."

Actually, that is one of the main reasons I chose to align myself with the Anglicans when I first started going to church. I loved the mish-mashy casserole of different perspectives and priorities, and greatly respected the female assistant minister in my local parish. I found this to be biblically consistent with Isaiah 54 and Isaiah 33:10-24

This discussion highlights that we are dealing with some core paradigms and world views. As Terence commented: "...this whole business is about trying to retain a patriarchal view of Creation (and therefore of the Church) in which women and homosexuals are inferior beings."

Indeed. In fact I have been contemplating for the last week or so that these people have culturally more in common with the jihadists than they do with pluralist advocates. They both hate women and think they should be silent, they both advocate pure teaching and refuse to acknowledge unsuitable locally trained clergy, they will both fly in suitable clergy to ensure that their remote kin do not become corrupted by impure societies, they both advocate and participate in cultural censorship and repression, they both interfere with access to education and what is taught, they both aspire to bring in the new world order, they both aspire to see the destruction of their enemies and they both gloat that they are speeding the day of God's wrath coming down on the impure infidels. I rebute all such cruel and exclusionist theologies with Isaiah 5 and Zechariah 11:1 to 12:8

Further, there is a misguided notion that Adam was meant to rule over Eve in perpetuity. This form of theology does not acknowledge that Adam's ruling over Eve was a curse that was meant to be healed. The relationship was meant to be tranformed from that of master to that of husband. (Hosea 2:16 and Isaiah 54)

These souls actively fight that reconciliation and healing happening.

Nor should it mean that Eve had to become perfect or that Adam should not desire Eve. God saw that it was not good for man to be alone, so God created a woman suitable for him. If God was going to create a conjoined relationship for perpetuity, would God be cruel and give Adam someone that he would not be attracted to? Would God not make her interesting and challenging to keep him stimulated? Would God not design her to challenge Adam's own paradigms and to bring out characteristics he might not otherwise explore e.g. the need to nurture and protect, to take into account limitations and imperfections, to forgive and tolerate. Adam might have been "perfect" unto himself, but the characteristics required to be a good husband would also help him be good steward looking after Creation.

It is no coincidence that those who cling to misogynistic theologies often have an irreverence for life, nature and the vulnerable.

Thank you to Bishop Butler for his contribution to this ongoing debate. Persoanlly I feel the model of a 'spiritual commonwealth' to be a very good one. The more judicial approach being suggested cannot in reality succeed.

These are interesting days and the creative space for debate on issues is enlarged and enhanced by people like Bishop Bulter.

I keep hearing all these pronouncements about the health of the Episcopal Church, that it is shrinking and dying and that people are staying away in droves.
I have yet to see this. Our notoriously liberal little parish inducted 15 new members on Easter Vigil, the most we've had in 9 years. I hear of other similar parishes around the country baptising/ confirming/ receiving as many as 35 to 40 new members that same night.
In my 25 years as an Episcopalian, most of the parishes that I've belonged to or visited were healthy and full of hopeful enterprising people, always attracting visitors, and frequently drawing in converts.
What is more, the overwhelming majority of members of the Episcopal Church are converts from other churches (our parish is increasingly attracting outcasts and refugees from fundamentalist and evangelical churches, though Rome's supply remains steady). Most of those parishes that I knew did a good job of retaining members. The one denomination that is having a crisis of retention of members, especially among the young, is the Southern Baptist Church; the ConsEv model of success.

I do not see that decline and fall of the Episcopal Church so much talked about anywhere out here on the ground. If anything, I see a thriving and enterprising church determined to proceed with its mission despite threats to its integrity from within and abroad.

I see now that this is the Bishop of Southwark speaking, and Southwark is very far from the US. Apologies.

My point stands, though. I wouldn't characterize it as egregious, but I should still ask my Episcopal brethren to remember we are Christians as well as Americans.

Cynthia, no one specific example I can pick out right now. I just worry that our Global South brethren will interpret little phrases here and there as nationalism, which won't endear us to them.

no drdanfee, not my view alone - see the requests of the Primates and the ABC, see Lambeth 1.10.....remember TEC's revisionist views are shared by only a small minority of Anglicans.

Counterlight - you may need to look more broadly than your own experience eg TEC's statistics on national membership trends

I like Tom Butler's idea of a Commonwealth of Anglican Provinces. This would allow each province to develop in line with its own customs.

Former bishop of Durham David Jenkins called for the scrapping of the Anglican Communion over its attitude towards gays a few years ago.

He has a point. So much time and resources have been wasted over pointless communiques and the setting up of oppressive bureacracies.

It's good to talk and to listen, but a covenant designed to suffocate anything which liberates people, imposed by a patriarchal curia must be resisted at all costs.

Ford Elms quoted me and then said:

""would we be less or more likely to say that we have no need of each other at times of controversy?"
"Which of course, is exactly what's happening now anyway, so what's your point?"

My point is simple. We haven't yet said we have no need of each other. There's still a possibility that out of this mess the Anglican Communion will stand. This is precisely because the Communion is more than a commonwealth. We wouldn't have bothered trying to stay in communion if we were a loose federation. We would already have entirely lost an interchangeable ministry and all lines of communication between many of the provinces.

"We haven't yet said we have no need of each other."

No indeed, those actual words haven't been spoken. But the scheming to replace TEC with some sort of Fundamentalist compliant body was exposed a couple of years ago. The designs of those who hide their lust for power behind the Word of God are pretty clear. Actions speak louder than words, Andrew, there is a loud conservative group, I hope a minority despite their public exposure, whose actions speak very loudly indeed. +Akinola certainly seems to think he has no need of us. There are those who would argue that the actions of some Liberals in TEC say exactly the same thing, and I would agree. There certainly is an attitude that they can do what they want without considering the repercussions in other societies. I don't think that, even now, they understand the way people in places like Nigeria really feel, and whatever else I might think of my Lord of Abuja, he's made these things pretty clear.

“With the exception of Governor [Thomas] Jefferson's disestablishment which did disposess the Church of England of its properties in Virginia, these departures actually strengthened the Episcopal Church whose either rather high or very latitudinarian theology was an alternative to the prevailing theology of the former Pilgrims, Puritans or other 'dissenters'. The Calvinist evangeilical stance so well known in England and other provinces is not a very significant part of TEC's experience, particularly in our post revolutionary period.”—Burl Stoutmack

Right on, Burl! This is something that I’ve been trying to explain to folks on this site for a year and a half. Whether High Church Catholic, like Bishop Samuel Seabury, or Low Church Latitudinarian, like Bishop William White, we American Anglicans have always defined ourselves against the Calvinism of the American Puritans. Even in colonial times, the further North one traveled toward New England Puritanism, the more numerous the High Church Anglican parishes became, as Episcopalians challenged the Calvinists on their home turf. Here in New York, we have always been High Church since the founding of Trinity Church Wall Street in 1697. In Pennsylvania (and Virginia) Low Church Latitudinarianism was the rule (except for Royal Charter parishes).

This all sounds very interesting and even plausible but the concern is not simply inter-Provincial, ie whether individual provinces should have the latitude to pursue "what is best for the Church and the world in their particular culture..." but also intra-Provincial, ie what happens to those dioceses and parishes who find themselves out of step with, and at the mercy of, the majority view of their particular province? It seems to me that much of the current bitterness and rancour arises as a result of the latter.

_We would already have entirely lost an interchangeable ministry and all lines of communication between many of the provinces._

No we wouldn't. There would be agreed lines of communication between different provinces, and interchangable ministry between them. But there is not agreement between some of these, and nor should there be when there is a basic ethical clash between them.

There is nothing endemic about Nigeria's current societal norms. 100 years back they would have been very different. Their current norms have not a little to do with their embrace of Christianity in millions upon millions, with the transformation that brings.

NP,

Statistics or not, I see a much healthier religious life in the current Episcopal Church than I ever saw in the Methodist Church of my Texas childhood. Sure, the churches were packed in 1965, because people felt obliged to attend whether they believed (my grandmothers), or not (my parents).
I see smaller congregations today filled with people happy to be there, instead of large congregations full of people killing time until Sunday dinner.

I don't care if the whole continent of Eurasia agrees with me or not.

I don't care if the Episcopal Church is down to me and one priest.

Anyone whose faith depends on poll numbers showing how many agree needs to seriously examine that faith.

"My point is simple. We haven't yet said we have no need of each other. There's still a possibility that out of this mess the Anglican Communion will stand."

Andrew,
The discussion here, and especially on T19 and Stand Firm, suggests otherwise. There are a good number -- on both sides -- who are eagerly awaiting and applauding the disintegration of the Communion. Primates are avoiding communion with one another and actively trying to build alternative structures in the US to replace TEC.
Yes, there is hope that the Communion will hold together. But so many have said "I have no need of you", that it's not looking good.

It's interesting about Episcopalianism defining itself against New England (etc.) Puritianism.

That Puritanism was a moving target. In what sense, for example, was W. E. Channing, and inheritor of that stream, still a Puritan (after Calvinism and Arminianism)?

Well there was a battle. People like Emerson and Thoreau were excluded by the new Unitarians who wanted good relations with other Christians. The Unitarians also split. When back together, and what was left of Transcendentalism fully back within, the Unitarians later with Univeralists became a very liberal denomination.

It would be interesting to chart parallel movements in the Episcopalian Church. One obvious area is in the democratic element both share (that has qualified episcopacy) although the UUA is purely congregationalist.

Kings Chapel, Boston, is something of an odd-bod, being ex-Anglican and ex-Puritan, and has a sense of being a working Unitarian museum and still semi-Anglican. It is part of the UUA, unlike the semi-detached The American Unitarian Conference.

Although the present Diocese of Massachusetts is generally Low Church Latitudinarian today, 300 years ago it was considered more High Church, and the church architecture of the period reflects this.

Newport, RI architect Peter Harrison based his designs for the altar and reredos in King’s Chapel in Boston (and the Ark of the Covenant in Touro Synagogue in Newport, 1759) on plate 108, of Batty and Thomas Langley, The City and Country Builder’s and Workman’s Treasury of Designs, one of the most popular architectural pattern books of the period. (The Unitarians have retained two candlesticks on the altar, but have removed the Laudian altar carpet, leaving the Holy Board bare as a bone.)

Another historic parish in Boston, Christ Church (“Old North”) has been meticulously restored to reflect 1720s period in which it was built. When I was last there, the altar was draped with a full-Laudian altar carpet of red damask with two candlesticks and tapers placed thereon. It stands in a proper chancel, constructed in the form of an apse, and is separated from the nave by a communion rail with embroidered kneeling hassocks. Behind the altar is a charmingly painted altarpiece of Christ at the Last Supper, containing the Holy Grail, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and a Golden Sunburst over the chancel, in the midst of which is disclosed the Ineffable Name. It is flanked by a reredos of four panels inscribed in gold of the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Apostles' Creed

Christ Church has ecclesiastical statuary, quite unusual for the period, which emphasizes its High Church flavor. There are four horn-blowing Baroque cherubs, standing on pedestals, flanking the organ at the west end of the church. Below the organ loft, in north end of the nave, is a four foot tall statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, appareled for a sea voyage, and holding the Book of the Gospels. The statue, perched on a window sill, was removed from the prow of a captured Portuguese vessel during one of the many 18th century conflicts.

"Their current norms have not a little to do with their embrace of Christianity in millions upon millions, with the transformation that brings."

Like the transformation that causes them to claim that there was no homosexuality in Africa before the coming of the Europeans, and that homosexuality is a Western invention designed to oppress the black man? Like the transformation that causes Tunde Popoola to behave the way he does on this website? Yeah, great fruits of the Gospel there!

I am not up on that at all. Where have you read about pre-European African homosexuality?

Christopher,
From various places on the net, mostly. Here are few sites I found Googling 'gay', 'africa' and 'precolonial'. These are of varying quality and politics, one is a bit strident. The Washington Post article is good, if heartbreaking:
http://www.keithboykin.com/author/africa.html
http://www.thewitness.org/agw/macauley121604.html
http://www.geocities.com/ambwww/GAYS-IN-AFRICA.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/23/AR2005102301163.html
I don't consider personal blogs to be reliable, but you will find other key words you can search. Given the positions you have taken here, I'd suggest it behooves you to be "up on" homosexuality in Africa, both pre- and post-colonial. Furthermore, does your question imply that homosexuality in Africa is in fact a post colonial thing? What do you figure would be the mechanics of this? Given that you on the one hand consider the colonialist importation of European Christianity (and there is a native African Christianity, you know, though some Evangelical sites I have visited it don't consider it such) to be a good thing and progressive, this attitude of the colonialist importation of homosexuality is something of a disconnect.

Hey, I was only asking for information, which you have provided in great quantity - thanks.

Mind you, what human failings were *not* present in precolonial Africa? - and other places too for that matter? So: what would all this prove?

It would prove that those who claim homosexuality is a Western import designed to oppress the black man are guilty of misleading people, of distortions of the truth, and are motivated by something other than zeal for the Gospel. It would mean that politics and propaganda are more important for them than truth and honesty. It would prove that they are not interested in truth, but in justifying their own anger at the colonialists who enslaved their ancestors and using misleading propaganda to stir up people in their cause. Regardless of one's politics, falsehood is falsehood, and the use of it casts doubt on the validity of everything else one says.

Agreed. Of course, one would also need to investigate so far as possible whether the *forms* of homosexuality indicate a western influence, and also percentages of homosexuals pre-imperialism.

I'd be prepared to bet my bottom dollar that percentages of homosexuality has not altered much in our entire evolution. Just look at our nearest cousins, our fellow primates for evidence.

Well, if we all behaved like animals (and of course many of us do) then I agree with you, Hugh. But civilisation is essentially about not necessarily following one's most basic instincts, but rather subordinating these to the common good.