So the Nigerians are requesting "As a matter of utmost urgency, call a special session of the Primates Meeting.." and "Postpone current plans for the Lambeth Conference..."

This strategy was played earlier this year when the meeting to confirm who would be one of Nigeria’s Christian leaders was brought forward to dates where the main Catholic contender was at an international conference in Rome. Moving the dates or calling special meetings demonstrates a lack of faith in God or patience; it reeks of political machinations driven by fear, ambition and/or selfishness.

They could try relying on the gifts of Spirit, which include faith and patience, but then many subscribe to a non-trinitarian model where Jesus is all of God. Where the Father and Spirit no longer have separate consciousnesses or capacity to independently act.

Since they love the bible so much:

Hebrews 6:10-12 "God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure... imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised."

James 5:10-11 "...an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord... we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy."

2 Peter 3:15-16 "...our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him... His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction."

Galations 5:18-26 "...if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: …idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy… But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law... Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other."

Well, now we'll see if the "He'll do whatever we tell him to do" comment will bear actual fruit or not.....If I had to bet on it, I'd bet the ABC will not agree with the requests.

And, then, of course, that will open the gates for the Global South "Lambeth"...which is almost bound to happen anyway.

One has to wonder, did Minns write this one too?

"Recent attempts to mandate unbiblical views in the UK through force of law"

= "Damn those pesky liberal lawmakers in the UK. Equal rights and protection for all. What do they think it is - a democracy?"

Ah, so the UK is now far too dangerous for bigots as they might be challenged.

By then, hopefully the conservative evangelicals will be meeting in Abuja or Sydney, FiF will have finally recognised the appeal of crossing the Tiber, and the CofE might even be worth joining again....

What is clear is that there can never be unity and that the Anglican Communion is finished. lets bury it with some grace and sort out a sensible split.

And, Rowan, as much as your silly obsession with keepoing us all united has led you to make some daft and frankly, damaging decisions, you can still lead the rest of us, leaving the Nazir-Alis, the Anglican 'Mainstreams, and so on to their own devices.

Or you can carry on making yourself someone despised by all sides. This letter should tell you nhow much you are not respected by the conservatives.

A blatant attempt to force through the putsch. Can't see it doing much beyond precipitating the departure of the anti-democratic faction of the "Global South" from the Anglican Communion.

According to this letter the central problem is, what, attacks by protesters and unbiblical law in the UK, the "spate of hostility", so therefore the Archbishop should postpone the Lambeth Conference and rush ahead with the Covenant? What sort of logic of argument is this?

Notice how this obsession about homosexuality continued by the Church of Nigeria is blamed elsewhere, via these references to protesters.

This letter is disingenuous: furthermore it contains a form of moral blackmail.

The "request" to postpone the Lambeth Conference is nothing less than a direct confrontation from this one Church and its primate Peter Akinola towards the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is forcing Rowan Williams to choose. So he should choose - hold the Conference as intended and maintain the process set out according to the timetabling of the wider Communion, not the either-or of the Church of Nigeria.

It is a trick, of course, to try to justify the parting of the ways by the Church of Nigeria and lay the blame elsewhere. This letter is an exercise in dishonesty, of truth-speak, based itself on that discredited document, A Most Agonizing Road to Lambeth 2008.

It is clear now how this Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) and its primate is over-reaching itself in trying to impose itself on others: only one point of view, blaming protesters when this is its own agenda, imposing a Primates Meeting it thinks it can manipulate, postponing a discussive larger Lambeth Conference that is too big for it to manipulate, and imposing a speeded-up Covenant via a one option ratification.

No. The future concerns too many people for it to be railroaded by some form of episcopal centralism. Rowan has to say no, and let the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) do the deciding of its future from the hole it has dug itself into.

++Peter Jasper Akinola may be counting numbers--a majority of primatial supporters at the Primates' Meeting NOW. If the 2008 Lambeth Conference is postponed, he and his cohorts will have time to ordain hundreds of pretender bishops for the U.S., Canada and for any other province supporting TEC and the Anglican Church in Canada, which may sway the numbers in Big Pete's favor if, and when, the Lambeth Conference eventually does meet.

A win-win strategy, no doubt.

Presumably, Martin Mynns has done a better job of scrubbing the editorial history in Microsoft Word this time. And the IRD band played on...

Fuller views of mine and a cartoon of a certain Nigerian are here:

http://pluralistspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/09/hes-surely-not-for-turning-now.html

In short: "Greeting from BizarroWorld!" (where down is Up, and up is Down---and anti-gays, not gays, are under threat of violence)

Lord have mercy!

Wow. I guess this draws the realignment lines in the Anglican sands, if you are a realignment believer.

Wow. The people whose essential traditional gospel witness turns so centrally on their received church life privileges to trash talk and mistreat their own current favorite target groups are now loudly claiming that they are themselves the most demeaned and mistreated target group.

As Alice says in that novel, curioser and curioser. And very, very, very, very interesting.

So let me see. I guess we are supposed to conclude that Nigerian straight Anglicans cannot marry the person who is the big love of their life because somebody once protested Lord Carey's privileges to say very bad things about queer folks, and right in a church, too. And straight Anglicans fear that if they do attend a Lambeth before the communion is sufficiently realigned by the new covenant, they will be further exposed to the views of other frankly non-conservative people, now increasingly trending to cast rather glaring lights upon the large bad faith that traditionalistic believers increasingly tend to demonstrate, especially towards queer folks and of course towards any non-conservative believers who bother to speak up.

Whew. How quickly the worldwide Anglican boat is supposed to be turning backwards with all deliberate institutional speed from comprehensiveness, critical inquiry, social science and the other related sciences, and so forth.

Clearly we are now named as both the special sinners so darkly tagged by so many of our negative and fearful beliefs in sexuality, which are ever more deeply rooted in our fears and disgusts about human embodiment? - and simultaneously accused of being the main persecutors whose minority objections are somehow spoiling fundamental church life human rights for the realignment Anglicans.

Was there ever a clearer demonstration of just how it is? The basic human rights of Anglican conservative realignment campaign believers are now predicated on their rights to step on queer folks' toes, whenever and however they read their scriptures, no matter what else?

If folks like Ahmanson and Scaife and others were not already funding this retro-Anglican campaign, we should probably have to invent them to fill out the back plot.

Stay tuned. Either Canterbury shuts up for good and gets with this lot, or we shall see unexpected teatime fire from the fuzzy Anglican refusal to have the institutional boats turned retro. For a growing variety of good reasons.

Among the many insights to be drawn from this document, one that strikes me is that support for staying away from Lambeth is wavering in the Church of Nigeria. Note also the lack of mention of The Path to Lambeth.

A very level headed proposal from a group often vilified by the American church as schismatics or worse.

traditional sexuality?

Anglicanism condemned contraception before 1930.

Condemend and still does in some provinces re-marriage after divorce.

What a meaningless statement?

Protesters did not shift the focus of Lambeth 1998 to sexuality - the focus on homosexuality was initiated by the Statement on Human Sexuality issued by the Anglican Churches of the South meeting in Kuala Lumpur in February 1997. The meeting was led by the Most Reverend Joseph A. Adetiloye, Archbishop of Nigeria. The "Kuala Lumpur Statement", as it came to be known, was then endorsed by the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America.

A Nigerian initiated the focus on sexuality at Lambeth 1998 and with their conservative friends from America, it was Nigeria that forced it onto the agenda, forced resolution 1.10 to be drafted, forced a debate at the final plenary session.

I was among those from Changing Attitude who distributed leaflets advertising an open hearing to listen to the experience of lesbian and gay people. We didn’t distract bishops nor shift the focus.

The most abusive event to happen at Lambeth ‘98 was the attempt by Bishop Emmanuel Chukwuma of Nigeria to exorcise Richard Kirker’s "demons of homosexuality.” Richard and other LGCM members had been holding their banner in a quiet and dignified manner that day - no abuse, no intimidation, just an appropriate presence.

Some of the Nigerian bishops and their secessionist allies in America say they don't want to come to Lambeth because they are worried about security. They think we are going to attack them. What they don't want, of course (some of them) is to sit quietly and have a conversation with us and relate to us as human beings and brother and sister Christians.

This letter is another tactical move from the Church of Nigeria and her allies in the USA. It is a letter written from a position of weakness. They are not getting their own way. Clearly the majority of bishops at the meeting this week want to come to Lambeth and Minns and Akinola couldn‘t persuade them otherwise.

They want an immediate Primate's meeting and ++Rowan to postpone Lambeth and get everyone stitched up with a binding Covenant. That won't happen either. So the next step, taken after the TEC House of Bishop's meeting, will be further threats to raise the pressure, and when that fails, another strategic move to buy time, and eventually they will turn up at Lambeth.

My last post came from Colin, Director of Changing Attitude, trying to be rational, calm and accurate.

I actually feel incredibly angry this morning and very disturbed after reading this open letter to ++Rowan.

How dare Primates and bishops rewrite history?
How dare they lie about the last Lambeth Conference?
How dare they make false accusations?
How dare they blame LGBT people?
How dare they accuse us of being abusive when they are abusing us all the time?

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Anglicans reading this letter will rightly feel angry, abused and wounded by the false accusations made in it.

I would like to know whether Bishop Martyn Minns, Canon Chris Sugden and all other conservative leaders who claim to be upholding orthodoxy and truth dare to confirm that this is an accurate statement about how homosexuality came to dominate Lambeth 1998.

It might be a level headed proposal, but that does not make it a moral proposal.

Someone can make a level headed decision to become an assassin because they are good with weapons, able to hide their intent, do not give of cues (e.g. the smell of fear), like the money and don't care about the lifestyle. Someone can be really good at being an assassin. That doesn't mean I have to like them nor endorse what they propose to do.

We all know why they are doing this and what they want, we don't have to agree nor cooperate. If they are going to succeed, well and good, but it be something that is imposed upon us, not something that we consented to and certainly not what we desired.

Unless Williams caves in Colin - and I cannot think that he will or see how he can - they will not be at Lambeth. They would loose too much face, and they're clearly way past accepting any settlement that is not wholly on their terms. Between this new manifesto and the ongoing spate of rogue ordinations, they're far too far out on the limb.

Interesting, incidentally, that two of the newly-announced CANA bishops are - finally - African. I suspect that CANA's greatest area of potential growth might be in the African-American community. Will be curious to see.

Colin

I can empathise with your anger, especially in when in the Telegraph article comments: "The Archbishop goes on to suggest that society has become "obsessional" about paedophiles. That is a risky thing to say, but it is also true: ill-judged suspicions are making society overprotective of children."

I find it completely bewildering that what two mutually consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms is sufficient to justify breaking a communion apart, or at least shearing off large chunks. Yet apparently what an adult does to a child, who lacks the ability to comprehend what is happening nor the wherewithall to protect themselves, who is often violated with premeditated connivance to hide it from family and friends is somehow "too obsessional".

I'm sorry but some souls seem to have gotten confused about what defines innocence and what God is most protective about. Maybe that is why they didn't mind using orphans as hostages in a political leverage attempt last year? Maybe that is why they don't mind if women have bruises or are scarred from non-physical abuse? Including being insulted from the pulpit for an event that may or may not have occurred and did not concern any of the women sitting in the pew, anyway. (After all, we all know there was no such thing as a real Eve and that God would not incarnate her, so anything and everything can go as far as slandering Eve or any other woman).

This is more than a denigration of GLBTs, it is an attempt to create a stranglehold that means denigration and abuse of children, GLBTs, women and non-Christians can continue with impunity when it is done by the "pure" Christian males and their sychophants.

There is so much to comment upon in this Nigerian letter that I can't even imagine how or where to start.

So I will simply concur with Colin Coward's comment upstream that "The most abusive event to happen at Lambeth ‘98 was the attempt by Bishop Emmanuel Chukwuma of Nigeria to exorcise Richard Kirker’s 'demons of homosexuality.'" Louie Crew has an audio recording of that event at http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/exorciz2.wav. Some folks stood or sat peacefully with placards. One bishop spiritually assaulted one of them. Who's doing violence to whom?

Dr. Crew also provides a treasure trove of documents relating to the sexuality debates at Lambeth '98: http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/lambeth98/.

Lisa, the audio recording link doesn't work.

Is it 2007, or 1984?

The revisionism of this piece is so extreme it allows me to use a technical theological term to describe it. It is a series of lies upon lies.

I just wish the "conservatives" would stop lying.

I think the Nigerian bishops are quite right. They wouldn't want to be distracted by being confronted by placard-waving gay people, who might want them to listen to their experiences, now would they? How could they possibly exorcise them in peace? What a bore that would be.
And anyone present for that genocidal occasion at general synod a couple of years ago when Peter Tatchell invaded the stage and harangued the archbishops, who sat rooted to their seats with indifference until he left the stage, would not wish a repeat of that unseemly behaviour on anyone. It was QUITE terrifying: why the man had the effrontery to speak out loud! Goodness me, they'll be calling for democracy next.
No, far safer for them all to stay in Nigeria where murder, kidnapping, inter-communal violence, rape, the odd child sacrifice, not to mention rampant official corruption, are all, as we know, happily things of the past.
I am sure they'd all be much happier to save the Anglican Communion money by steering clear of a gathering of dreadful people, some of them with different opinions, held in such a sink of iniquity as Canterbury. It would be a truly noble sacrifice, but someone might just have to do it.
After all, wasn't an archbishop murdered there once? Best not to risk it chaps! And thank you for the gesture (bet you'll be there really though!)

How dare Primates and bishops rewrite history?
How dare they lie about the last Lambeth Conference?
How dare they make false accusations?
How dare they blame LGBT people?
How dare they accuse us of being abusive when they are abusing us all the time?

It is an Orwellian statement.

You know, you could be right, that they have marched those troops so that they really have to do what they have threatened and have the "revolution" according to Chris Sugden - and yet march the troops down again and turn up at Lambeth. It would be such a huge loss of face.

A concern with Rowan Williams in the Daily Telegraph interview where he says (very briefly reported) it is not an obsession with sex but a £reordering" of the importance of the Bible. I hope he isn't being naive, that somehow there is an agenda here that is general and for including. This is plain and simple nasty, obsessional and power based. This he should recognise.

Thanks for the alert, Josh. The period at the end of that sentence got included in the hyperlink. Go here -- http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/exorciz2.wav -- for the audio recording of the attempted exorcism. It's pretty creepy to hear Kirker repeatedly asking, "Please take your hands off me," as this bishop tries to do magic hocus-pocus on him.

Are bullies often cowards at heart? Nevertheless they are most assuredly dangerous --especially when they run in packs such as these do. Perhaps this is a dramatic face saving way to justify their new alternative to Lambeth?

"In truth anyone who does not embrace revisionist views is a potential target."

Well, this pretty much fills my hypocrisy reservoir for the week. Again, these people have more nerve than a toothache! One is a "target" if one is forced to look at the open exercise of freedom of speech, but one is being chastened and encouraged to accept Jesus if one is cast in jail for being gay. Right.

So the audio records "Kirker repeatedly asking, "Please take your hands off me,""

Sounds like duress to me, so who was imposing force upon whom and who requires bodyguards? Who has had to wear bullet proof vests to their consecrations? I know Gene R did but I have not heard of any others, nor any this year. I'm sure we would have been told if it had been required...

Oh, Nigerian Bishops, I feel the pain! Oy vey, it can be a killer!

I have to chuckle about the comments on protesters.

At a recent diocesan committee meeting conversation turned to "the issue". Two of the committee members present were lay delegates to General Synod. Both described with disgust the daily gauntlet of protesters from Essentials that they had to run, and how they got paper cuts from the flyers and propaganda they were thrusting at delegates.

As for the effect, the one who was on the fence before synod is now firmly on the progressive side.

Perhaps a more liberal bishop should have come along and said, if you don't stop laying your hands on him I shall lay my hands on you. There could even have been a chain of hands-laying.

Pluralist

But wouldn't that have been assault and invading their private sacred space?

After all, we all "know" that GLBTs don't have any boundaries and are like donkeys and cats in heat... Or are equivalent to females where, despite all Solomon's searching, not a decent one could be found...

Heterosexual males can do whatever they want to whomever they want whenever they want. GLBTs or women are merely whores or "in heat" if they initiate or accept overtures.

"the daily gauntlet of protesters from Essentials that they had to run"

Oh, but Jim, they weren't protesters, they were courageously standing for the Gospel against the pagans who would conform it to the world! Only aforesaid pagans can be protesters and annoying. And only they can do dishonest things. The efforst of Essentials to organize in this diocese aren't dishonest either, despite all the behind the scenes machinations. Such unChristian behaviour is necessary now in defence of the Gospel, doncha know. It's all a bit much.

I was just imagining a chain of bishops all exorcising their various demons. It's a cartoon like thing. It is indeed a form of assault - it wouldn't detain the police for too long but it is arrogance. Though if a bishop sprayed holy water on someone not consenting that would certainly be an offence of assault.