The Primate of Nigeria has told the Nigerian Tribune why “Nigerian bishops are insisting” on the postponement of next year’s Lambeth Conference. Curiously enough though, the headline uses the word may and the article also says
“According to Akinola, Nigerian bishops had not “fully decided” on whether they would attend.”
Why we may boycott Lambeth Conference – Akinola
From the official Nigerian provincial website: ‘WE MUST FORGET ABOUT BRITAIN’ NIGERIAN BISHOP TELLS ANGLICANS
And last month This Day gave strong editorial support to Nigeria: Akinola’s Anti-Gay Campaign.
“We have told them that failure to invite any of our bishops is failure to invite all of us because that one bishop did not make himself a bishop,” Right back at ya, there, Pete, old man! “secondary schools and 21 primary schools built by the diocese insisted every child buy a catechism, a Bible and a hymnbook – “I don’t care what Western people say about that!” “ Well, what does this group of Westerners say about that? Who is this defiant tone directed against? “Islam was gaining ground because it “enforced order and put things right.” “ A… Read more »
Although this is from the Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion the article is from http://www.anglican-mainstream.net. They wouldn’t be hand in glove would they? And although it says We Must Forget About Britain it also says “they have turned the gospel upside down and that it is Britain that needs our help”.
Can we stick to the intention of the headline?
I predict the ABC will invite +Minns and all the GS will turn up to Lambeth to vote for a Covenant which represents what most of us in the AC believe (i.e. not necessarily what 0.29% of Americans think)
“Even then, that such a gay priest could indeed become a Bishop, a spiritual head of the church is revolting….” “…Neither the ordination of gay priests nor the promotion of same-sex marriage will ensure the continuation of the human race. If the gay culture, for instance, were to become a global order, what will become of procreation factor in the replenishment of human race. How will humanity renew itself with such anti-procreation stance?…” At least they admit they haven’t participated in the listening process! But why should anyone else take theology based on such obvious lack of knowledge and gut… Read more »
“But why should anyone else take theology based on such obvious lack of knowledge and gut reactions seriously?” I think because the theology is being useed to back up something that already exists: the idea that gay people are sick subhumans who prey on children and corrupt everything with their presence. As you say, he proves he has not listened. He is totally unaware how this makes him look, perhaps because his culture does not look on power with the jaundiced eye that we do. We accept without even thinking about it that we must consider the statements of an… Read more »
Ford says “Seriously, though, these, to me, show a massive cultural difference, a different understanding of societal order, how that order comes about, and the Church’s role in that process.”
Ford, you see cultural differences but the question is who is out of step with the Anglican Communion’s interpretation of scripture – ++Akinola or TEC HOB?
We will soon have responses from ALL the Primates and Provinces of the AC and you may find that most cannot back the unilateral acts of TECUSA in condoning what the AC bishops have consistently agreed is “incompatible with scripture”
“what will become of procreation factor in the replenishment of human race”
Yes, I’m really worried that there aren’t enough people on the planet and that adequate repopulation is a huge unaddressed problem.
Oh, especially in Africa.
(do I really need a sarcasm tag here?)
And, of course, the issue about the non-invitation of Bishop Minns will only be amplified by further upcoming ordinations in the United States for CANA. One can only expect they they will not be invited to Lambeth. AMiA bishops of Rwanda have not been invited to Lambeth. The new bishops for Ugandan and Kenyan congregations in North America haven’t been invited. If that’s the issue, how can any of them come? I’m actually surprised that Nigeria still waffles around the “issue” of the CANA Bishop(s). Uganda has shown more clarity and more resolve when saying that, following the CAPA document… Read more »
Just as Richard Dawkins can be accused of arguing against a a closed-minded, backward-looking faith in Jesus that believers do not necessarily pledge or follow any more – if any believer ever pledged some of the things Dawkins includes in his summaries of the religion he criticizes; …. So Akinola can be accused of setting up all the old stereotypes about queer folks. Akinola seems to presume, like some campus police did in the 1970’s when we did a workshop for them out of the gay students group, that if we let anybody be openly gay, everybody suddenly will be… Read more »
“But why should anyone else take theology based on such obvious lack of knowledge and gut reactions seriously?”
Why should anyone take seriously “theology” which talks a lot about rights but has convinced so few in the AC that what Lambeth 1.10 says is “incompatible with scripture” is actually compatible with scripture, holy, acceptable to God?
NP, We know, as far as you are concerned, might makes right. It doesn’t matter to you that someone doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to gay people, it doesn’t even really matter whether or not he can mine the Bible for a few verses that seem to prove his point, it’s really about everybody falling obediently into line. Most conservatives believe we make up 2-3% of the population. Even if they believed we make up 10% of the population, don’t you think it reveals an incredible ignorance, expressed pridefully, I might add, to assert that if… Read more »
“If the gay culture, for instance, were to become a global order, what will become of procreation factor in the replenishment of human race. How will humanity renew itself with such anti-procreation stance?” Yes, Erika, it reflects an obvious lack of knowledge. It presumes that we who are gay would like to become the majority culture, which is not even possible. And it presumes that to be gay is to be anti-procreation.” In fact, even if we were as selfish as some folk believe we are, we would still want to offer the heterosexual world all the support we can… Read more »
“Even basic courtesies are lacking among the bishops.”
Beam & mote time yet again – talk about blinding hypocrisy!
Not to invite one of our Bishops is not too invite all of us…
surely Archbishop Akinola’a argument must be good for the Episcopal Church and +Gene Robinson must be invited too?
Wait! Let us try to have a longer memory. Akinola has drawn this line in the sand before. He has already declared, and declared repeatedly, that he will not attend Lambeth 2008 if the EC bishops are invited, as they already have been. Now he is backing down, qualifying, temporizing, wringing his hands. And I thought that Akinola was the rock, the gold standard of consistency, of faithfulness to his reading of the Gospel. His house (of cards) is clearly built on shifting sands, on disappearing deadlines, of bluster and false bravado. Good that now we are getting a clear… Read more »
“I don’t think either way is better, is blind trust any better or worse than blind mistrust?”
That would rather depend on the consequences of the two. Ask Davis?
Thus saith Peter Jasper Akinola, Lord Bishop, Primate and Metropolitan of Nigeria: “Even basic courtesies are lacking among the bishops. “What kind of communion do you have when you have bishops from all over the world coming together and you cannot even have fellowship or share the Lord’s Supper?” Who has been so discourteous as to invade the jurisdictions of U.S. bishops against the stated policy of The Windsor Report and against the advice of His Holiness, ++Rowan Cantuar? Peter Jasper Akinola. Who has led the Donatist bishops’ group to refuse to receive Holy Communion from the Instrument of Unity… Read more »
The article from The Day endorsing the Akinolist coup surprises me, not for its content, but for the poor quality of the writing. I haven’t read such illiterate tripe since the death of Enver Hoxsha, the late Albanian dictator.
There you go again, Ford….personalising it so you can criticise Akinola or “the right” or whoever – it really does not matter as long as you do not have to talk about your “clobber verses” I have never said I think ++Akinolais “holy”….but I do think scripture is holy and from God so I will never accept people promoting as holy actions which the Anglican church (in common with most churches and consistent with 2000 years of tradtion) says are “incompatible with scripture”. You can criticise whoever you like, Ford…..but the only TECUSA gets VGR accepted in the AC is… Read more »
You can get away with illiterate tripe when you work to make sure your masses are illiterate. After all, we all know nations that think it is appropriate to devote up to half their budgets on the machines of war and intimidation; even if that means ceasing funding health, education or infrastructure for their own citizens. Such souls just love tyranny because they can pretend they are doing this in God’s name and that all repression and vilification is therefore “justified”. In long term tribal or village tensions, there sometimes needs to come a recognition that their are camps of… Read more »
The article from Laos, Nigeria, supposedly quoting Peter Jasper Akinola, actually ups the ante. Supposedly, Peter Jasper Akinola aspires to a gay-free Christian Church world-wide. To quote the paper: “Thanks to Akinola’s spirited opposition, the American Church authorities in the Anglican Communion have recently realised the import of this practice such that they have re-modified their position. The Episcopal Church now says it will no longer admit gay-men/women into the priesthood order. That means that the Episcopal authorities are less bothered if members of the laity are gay men or women. In other words, being gay is good enough for… Read more »
One cannot accurately weigh – as NP so often would have us do, in quite a wild rush – the data and the reasons that have been leading so many believers to change their minds about queer folks – from nothing but inside the received negative ethical and theological frameworks for (mis)-understanding queer folks. One considers the disconfirming data, firstly, by being open-minded enough to step into all the hypothesis tested data which have been published outside the traditional revelation frames. Then one answers the call to account for why scripture tells us the sexual orientation topography of human nature… Read more »
George Herbert, actually, John Henry. But the point is well made.
Erika, I’ve had time to do the thinking I should have done before my last post! I was trying to say that Africans, I suspect, have a much different relationship to authority than we do, and seem to have more respect for the authority of traditional authority figures simply BECAUSE they are in a position of authority. Our society has developed in exactly the opposite way over the last 50 or so years, and we are more likely to MISTRUST someone simply because he is an authority figure. I don’t think one attitude produces any more overall good than the… Read more »
NP,
You may not have noticed but even the Nigerian Anglicans are only a small, small fraction of the world’s Christians. So if the number of people who believe a theological position is so key to its veracity, then I suggest you do what the so many conservative Anglicans have done in the past and seek a place in the enormous communion of the Roman Catholic Church.
jnwall — I think of it more as ++Peter Akinola erasing the line in the sand. Re: population — FWIW, Jared Diamond says that the current population of the planet is three times what is sustainable at a decent standard of living (&, BTW, the average woman in Nigeria & Uganda has seven children). Re: +Gene Robinson attending — my understanding is that he provided the ABC with a loophole some time back by offering to attend in a diminished capacity if that was for the good of the WWAC & ++Rowan took him up on it (& left the… Read more »
” …predict the ABC will invite +Minns and all the GS will turn up to Lambeth to vote for a Covenant which represents what most of us in the AC believe (i.e. not necessarily what 0.29% of Americans think”
I’m sure he meant “29%”. If not, I fear I shall have to take all the figures NP likes to cite with a grain of salt.
I wish they would forget about Britain and let us get on with doing things properly in our progressive and civilised country. If they wish to provide as premodern alternative to Islamic fundamentalism, they are welcome – its not as if you can tell the difference.
Oh, but Malcolm – don’t you realise how well educated the Nigerian premoderns are? They all went to British universities and never, but never have to get their puppet masters from Anglican Mainstream and Sydney to produce written work for them!
@ John Henry Yes, I agree – but, as you should well know, the poem to which you refer is not by John Donne, but his contemporary George Herbert. Moreover, its correct title is “Love Bade Me Welcome,” not “Love Bid Me Welcome” (which, so far as I can tell, is the title of a romantic novel by one Joanna Brandon). Grave moments of crisis in the life of the communion are no excuse for momentary lapses in referencing the metaphysical poets. I expect this kind of slackness on Titus 1:9, but not here! Please bear in mind that I… Read more »
Sorry, MR. Thank you so much for pointing out my error. I stand corrected. As age creeps up on me, my memory is not as good as it used to be. Yes, “Love Bade Me Welcome” is a poem by George Herbert, an Anglican Priest/Caroline Divine.
I am not always in agreement with the Most Revd Dr Peter Akinola. But I do agree with him in arguing for the postponement or outright cancellation of the Lambeth conference. Archbishop Akinola says that, “There is so much distrust and disrespect. Even basic courtesies are lacking among the bishops. What kind of communion do you have when you have bishops from all over the world coming together and you cannot even have fellowship or share the Lord’s Supper?” Never mind, I suppose, that Akinola has been one of those most usually absent from Communion with his fellow bishops. Commenting… Read more »
NP and all the other theological terrorists… You all scream about Lambeth 1.10 being the gold standard of teaching in the Anglican Communion. I wonder, do you even KNOW what Lambeth 1.11 is? I’ll give you a hint: It’s infinitely more important to Christians and the world then Lambeth 1.10, and is about big things that go BOOM and kill a lot of people… How silly this Rebellion is going to look in the long run. Where is the outrage about Iraq? Iran? Dufar? Do you honestly think God would bless this ridiculous effort to turn back time and persecute… Read more »
Brian….. TECUSA gets 0.9m people on a Sunday.
The US has a population of 301m
0.9/301m=0.29%
You can round it up to 0.3% of the US population go to TECUSA if it makes you feel TECUSA is more representative.
Quite tragic how TECUSA is said to have an attractive message for (post)modern Americans….but hardly anybody turns up??
John – Akinola represents a lot more than 0.299% of Nigerians….and on Lambeth 1.10 he is in agreement with he vast majority of Anglicans (pls see TWR, Dromantine etc etc)
“Meanwhile, what bishops and others must find are ways to be in fellowship regardless of views on homosexuality “
And at its best, Lambeth can be a perfect meeting place for this process to start.
Pete – your post is a bit hysterical but you might want to think on the possibility that people may not want to condone what Lambeth 1.10 says is “incompatible with scripture” and may also be against war and for helping the poor
Blimey NP, I thought your maths would be better than that. Assuming (with increasing difficulty) that inside your postings is a genuine debate trying to get out of a carapace of ad hominem repetitions, I infer that the views you ascribe to 0.29% of Americans are liberal attitudes to homosexuality (although you don’t say so – you only say that these views are held by 0.29% and that you don’t agree with them). The Pew Global Attitudes Survey 2007 found that, in the US, 49% thought that homosexuality should be accepted and 41% thought that it should be rejected. Other… Read more »
“TECUSA is said to have an attractive message for (post)modern Americans” By whom? And NP, it’s isn’t whether or not +Akinola’s holy. Here is a man who has shown himself profoundly ignorant about an entire group of people who he loudly condemns and wants to drive from the Church. Understanding us needn’t change his mind about our sinfulness, but he doesn’t bother to learn anything about us at all and just spouts propaganda and bigotry at every turn. He thinks he is doing God service by jailing us. He has been slandering the Americans for so long, toiling to make… Read more »
NP writes: “0.9/301m=0.29% You can round it up to 0.3% of the US population go to TECUSA if it makes you feel TECUSA is more representative.” You are no statistician, NP. Not all Americans are religiously affiliated, and of those who are, only about 76% are Christians. TEC should be figured as a percentage of religiously affiliated Christians. But — who cares? American religion is a very big ocean in which we all swim. More interesting than your fetish for numbers, is the way in which our culture is so quickly coming to share the TEC’s acceptance of gay and… Read more »
The ‘by their billboards you shall know them’ point is important, as I am sure that there is a large overlap between levels of nominalism and levels of secession to secularism. If Islam doesn’t take Christianity seriously because of the kind of society it apparently produces, then nor should it, albeit the muslims in question may not have made the critical distinction between committed and nominalist Christianity, the former of which produces far better fruits. Central to all of this is the crucial distinction between varieties of Christianity which naturally have an expectation of personal transformation and those which don’t.
badman, I think NP is saying that TEC only makes up)0.29% of the American population. I’m not sure why he takes that as some sort of decline or loss, as if TEC was once “by God and Law established” in America like it is in England and has therefore fallen from some great height when it was everybody’s Church. The fact that so many went to American to get away from the idea of an established Church and to worship in their own way means that for Americans, this religious plurality is a good thing is lost on him. What… Read more »
“If Islam doesn’t take Christianity seriously because of the kind of society it apparently produces” my ending to that sentence would be “…why should we care?” Islam sits in judgement on our society, finds it wanting, and blames Christianity for that. So? We all like to talk about being counter cultural. Well, traditional Muslim culture is also one to which we should be counter, no? Or are you saying that Islam actually gets to dictate to Christianity what the Gospel is? This is the second time in as many days that a conservative Evangelical has held up Islam as the… Read more »
Ford – the point of telling people that TECUSA represents only 0.29% of Americans is to try and help them to see that maybe it is not culture etc which makes ++Akionla et al object to what TECUSA does. TECUSA represents hardly any Americans and a small percentage of US Christians (however Peter tries to cut the nos)….so, I do not want those in the AC opposing TECUSA’s innovations to be written off as having cultural objections……the point is that TECUSA hardly represents American or American Christian culture…..it is not mainstream but has disproportionate representation for radical agendas in its… Read more »
“TECUSA hardly represents American or American Christian culture” They have never claimed to. In fact, they are quite clearly an alternative to America’s “Christian culture”. You are scoffing at their failure to achieve something they are not even trying to achieve! If anything, they are trying to be an alternative to the toxic, dangerous, warmongering, death obsessed, anti-intellectual, anti-science Christain mainstream in that country. I am quite proud, actually, that I belong to a Church, one of whose members places itself against the hatefilled rantings of Pat Robertson, John Haggee, and Jerry Falwell, to name but three. Do you really… Read more »
NP: it is TEC’s “disproportionate representation for radical agendas” that you object to, then? Doesn’t that remind you at all of what Jesus was like, then? Was he a religious conservative intending to maintain the status quo? I wish you would stop all this triumphalist smirking that English evangelicalism is carrying all before it: it is not. There are plenty of evangelical churches in England doing very badly, numbers wise. I am pleased not to be the vicar of one of them (though I know several who are), because smug numbers queens like you would certainly regard me as being… Read more »
I didn’t even have to look at the byline, to figure out who wrote this: “I predict the ABC will invite +Minns and all the GS will turn up to Lambeth to vote for a Covenant which represents what most of us in the AC believe (i.e. not necessarily what 0.29% of Americans think)” Sorry, NP, but it isn’t the US Anglicans versus the rest of Anglicanism, as you like to pretend. It is, instead, most of Australia, Brazil, Canada, most of England, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, United States, Wales, plus undoubtedly others who will have to… Read more »
Interestingly enough, the “Authority or Scripture” is not a Biblical concept, NP, but a Heathen one, peculiar to some branches of Indo-Greek Philosophy.
You’ll find it in various Alexandrian Hellenisms, you’ll find it in Hinduism, you’ll find it in Egyptian Islam.
You don’t find it in Christianity until 16th century Renaissance when it is found in certain secs not to be named (forming New Neo Platonist readings).
But of course, you’ll find it in 20th century USA. Enough said.
NP’s claim that they are “against war” should be absolutely grotesque to all with a modicum of reflection after 1 + 2 Bush administrations and and equal number of wars, mercenaries, illegal combatants (“contractors”), the resurgence of torture & c.
How come it isn’t?
Mark says “NP: it is TEC’s “disproportionate representation for radical agendas” that you object to, then? Doesn’t that remind you at all of what Jesus was like, then?”
Not at all, Mark, because he never excused sin…. you know what he said on the law, sin and holiness, I am sure….he never once excused sin on the basis of grace or anything else….he died to forgive sin but says to sinners like us, “go and sin no more”.
‘This Day’ is correct to highlight: (1) liberal America’s lack of self-awareness and also international cultural awareness; her virtual solipsism; (2) the wrongness of having one standard for clergy and one for laity – as though ‘clergy’ and ‘laity’ were foundational Christian concepts in the first place. But they are also wrong to spell Bp Robinson’s name ‘Jean’. Isn’t it enough that he is called Vicky? It is enough to drive someone to be gay.