The bit that Ms Butt refers to was an example of yellow journalism at its seediest:

Asked at the news conference, "I did not hear you condemn the use of torture or rape."

Mr Smith, when did you stop beating your wife?

A little journalistic integrity would be appreciated. (e.g., Ms Butt, ABp Akinola did NOT accuse Rowan Williams of apostasy as you wrote. In fact, he stated explicitly, that RW was a brother and not an apostate. He did state that RW's leadership decisions are abetting the apostates.)

Rape and torture occurs in these places. It is not hidden, it is open, it is--for all intents and purposes--official policy. And the questioner is correct: No one has heard these primates speak out against this.

Robroy, you think it is not a fair question to ask of a Christian leader?

"They said they could not influence government policy on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) legislation, nor could they condone homosexual behaviour because their churches would be shut down. " Riazat Butt

Oddly enough I had thought that the Archbishop of Nigeria had done just that - lobbied the government in favor of such laws. Am I incorrect?

Well, robroy, here is the transcript as provided by Stand Firm. Those not completely in denial can see that:

1. +Akinola himself supports Nigerian legislation that jails gay people.
2. When confronted with a concrete example of torture and rape he said nothing in condemnation of it, as any person with an ounce of humanity would. He merely reiterates that Nigeria has the right to punish homosexuals.
3. +Orombi claims no knowledge of torture of homosexuals in Uganda. This is laughable. Someone teach him to Google.
4. It took +Jensen to finally condemn it ON THEIR BEHALF. Why did he feel the need to do so, other than his discomfiture that they weren't going to? And it appears they didn't even nod their agreement.

I would dearly love to see ANY statement from +Akinola or +Orombi which condemns all violence against homosexuals. Care to find one robroy? I mean, if this is a nasty slur on the good bishops, surely they'd be keen to lay it to bed. No?

Transcript:

"Lesbian/Gay Christian Movement: Don’t you feel the gospel is compromised by bishops who support jailing gay people in their countries?

Akinola: I am not aware of any.

Lesbian/Gay: One woman who has claimed or applied for asylum, she was jailed and raped repeatedly and marched for 2 miles but she may be sent back to a village in Uganda. Your laws say it is against the law and that means that they can be punished. Do you support that?

Akinola: Every society has its own laws. In your society these things are permissible. In ours many things, this one included, are not permissible. We do not have any word for homosexual behavior in our country. To that extent, those who are responsible for these laws want to keep other cultural influences out of the cultures of Africa.

...

NYT: I did not hear you condemn the use of torture or rape.

Orombi: I would not believe that a thing is done like that in the public knowledge. Some of those things, we do not know about that.

Jensen: Any violence against any person is wrong. I understand that is Orombi’s position as well and Akinola’s. I am right in speaking for all of us here. Any such violence within the prisons or in public or private against gay people or anyone else is condemned by us."

I met Riazat when she came to Rome to cover the Archbishop of York's visit last January. I was duly impressed by her then and she hasn't disappointed.

robroy, the transcript speaks for itself. The answers were evasive and the question was apt.

You would be more convincing if (like Jensen) you sometimes recognised the indefensible and did not always seek to defend it.

Shooting the messenger has a long tradition but it is not an honourable one.

Read: The Times Ruth Gledhill Rebel bishop accuses Dr Rowan Williams over ‘apostasy’ and on her blog, Archbishop Akinola on error and apostasy under More on Gafcon below, Robroy.

"Mr Smith, when did you stop beating your wife?"

So the story of the Ugandan woman was made up? Or is to be ignored because she doesn't fit your prejudice?

So the law that would have jailed supporters of homosexuals for up to 5 years which Akinola supported should not be mentioned in polite society because it puts him in a bad light?

I really don't understand you. Your position would be much strengthened if you admitted that rape, torture and jailing of gay people is wrong.

Why is it so hard for you to just oppose homosexuals on theological grounds without needing to use a whole quarry full of rocks to stone them with?
Jesus said something about not treating your neighbours like yourself. What makes you think that your refusal to condemn violence gives your views any credibility among Christians? Is your hatred really so deep that it obliterates all else?

Genuine conservatives shudder at the thought of accepting these people as their leaders.

The fact they support discriminatory laws says it all. Essentially, they are so homophobic that they fail to even see the depth of their prejudice

Here's some more "yellow journalism" for Robroy.

Believers follow Akinola and company at their own peril - much more dangerous than, say, listening to a sermon by VGR the New Hampshire bishop.

Why?

Because the linchpin of traditional straight privileges to do or threaten violence is the traditional glue that holds the whole antigay thang together in one piece.

Doing and threatening violence is key, as with any organized social or religious theory of dominance and submission. Having many times been targeted by white supremacy theories, one would have foolishly supposed that African church leaders would have been able to make the connections. Alas, not for now.

Homosexuality and queer folks are categories of essentially weird and uncanny definition in premodern thinking (at least since Kinsey, if not since Heinrich Hossli and Karl Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld?) so that violence seems like the only effective strategy in light of the extremely deep dangers that not being straight is preached to involve.

I agree with Merseymike, this whole business is getting preached in a distinctly premodern, folklorish manner. Complete with the premodern sense of great social distance from the weird and dangerous people against whom the violence is institutionalized and directed.

Guess Akinola did not do much social studies while he was at VTS? Or it all went in one ear and out the other? Akinola cannot even for a brief moment really imagine himself, profoundly embodied, in a gay man's or a lesbian woman's shoes, African citizen or not.

"They added one could not break the taboos of African society without suffering the consequences."

So the excuse for refusing to condemn torture is that the church is meant to accommodate local culture, even at the expense of the gospel? I thought that was what they were accusing the west of doing.

robroy "Mr. Smith, have you stopped beating your wife?"

No robroy, asking someone to condemn acts of violence against people is not a "damned if you do, and damned if you don't" question. All they have to do is to say what Archbishop Jensen said. But then they have to live that response in their home countries as well, or else they are shaping the faith to be subservient to local culture.

Oh heck! My link didn't work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FannyAnn_Eddy

Apologies to Simon.

"So the excuse for refusing to condemn torture is that the church is meant to accommodate local culture, even at the expense of the gospel? I thought that was what they were accusing the west of doing."

Yes, it is - and this is what they have always been doing: accommodating the culture, specifically.

It's just finally being recognized for what it is.

I swear, I can't tell whether Peter Akinola is evil, or merely stupid.

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that he really has never heard of violence against homosexuals. (Not a credible assumption, I grant, but let's play along.)

How hard would it have been to say:

"I have never heard of such violence against homosexuals, but obviously I could not condone it."

Not hard at all, really.

Instead, he and Orombi dance around the issue - to the point that even a homophobe like Jensen of Sydney is too embarrassed to let it go on.

Well, one could assume that Akinola and Orombi cannot conceive of the possibility that homosexuals would be victims of violence - and that they are too stupid to put together a simple statement like the one offered above.

But I find it more credible that they are neither ignorant nor stupid - and that they actually support state sanctioned torture and murder of homosexuals. Their bizarre rhetorical dance merely reflects the knowledge that the rest of the world would be appalled by their evil, anti-Christian hatemongering.

'Robroy' brings shame on decent people -let alone those claiming to follow the gospels of Jesus.

The African bishops seem not to realize how they come across in UK, and that's a cultural thing. (Especially the Nigerian bishop on radio 4 5pm and 6pm News today). The more they rail against Rowan and us queers, the worse they sound to (most) people in the UK.

What on earth were CMS doing in Africa for all those years ?

It's absolutely true that Akinola and Orombi don't seem to be aware how they come over to most UK people, Christian or not. Or else they only talk to UK Christians who agree with them.

But in the same way UK Christians are also likely to be unaware of how they come over in the majority of Nigerian or Ugandan cultures. The strength of feeling against past and present Western imperialism cannot be ignored as blithely as some appear to do.

I think it's legitimate for Malcolm+ to postulate that they either hadn't heard, or were disposed not to believe, of violence against gay people, including the specific example quoted, and that their own cultural milieu dictated the, to our ears, evasive answers they gave.

And, as if it were necessary, Yes, I totally condemn all violence against people because of their sexuality and wish Akinola and Orombui could have done so in their own persons when given the opportunity.

The real silence in the Holy City of Jerusalem is the GAFCON silence on the teaching of our Blessed Lord on marriage annd divorce. Because they can't agree it has been neatly brushed away and only Genesis referred to in both the hand book and Akinola's sermon.

Furthermore jensen is keeping silence,. he sees the ordiantion of women priests as heretical, but he will not upset the Kenyan, Ugandan and Rwandan primates!

Devious Silence is not just linked to homophobia.

"I think it's legitimate for Malcolm+ to postulate that they either hadn't heard, or were disposed not to believe, of violence against gay people, including the specific example quoted, and that their own cultural milieu dictated the, to our ears, evasive answers they gave."

I'm sorry, Pete, Archbishop Akinola knows very well that Davis Mac-Iyalla was thrown out of his church and his job because he admitted to being gay. He knows that Davis was held in a police cell without food and very little water for 3 days. He knows that Davis was beaten. And he knows that Davis now lives in exile in another African country because of repeated and very real death threats.

And he also knows that he himself is one of the major forces behind a law that, if introduced, will criminalise supporters of homosexuals and threaten them with up to 5 years in jail. "Supporters" being defined as people who are seen in public with a known homosexual.

This attempt at explaining away Christian blindness to un-Christian violence really really doesn't work.

Robert Ian is spot on.

Much more needs to be made of the glaring holes in this unholy alliance.

"They added one could not break the taboos of African society without suffering the consequences."

So much for their claims that Christians are called to be countercultural, then.

"Why is it so hard for you to just oppose homosexuals on theological grounds without needing to use a whole quarry full of rocks to stone them with?"

Fascinating, isn't it, Erika? And no matter how many times you point out how this kind of thing shows that their real motivation isn't concern for the Gospel, the more you point out how the unexamined assumptions and hatreds are so clear in these kinds of statements, the response is to defend the saying of these things as somehow faithfulness to the Gospel. I'm not sure if the need to feel persecuted is so great that the only aspect of this that they can see is that they are being prevented from speaking, and thus are oppressed, that they truly do not see what this says about them or that this is such a betrayal of the most basic principles of the Gospel, or if they honestly believe that such tactics are appropriate forms of Evangelism. What is also interesting is that some believe they are being sincere and honest in saying things like "I don't approve of such language" or such like, as though the effect of this kind of talk on gay people in Nigeria can be expunged by that. But then again we all get in high dudgeon over such things as though what WE say is actually of any significance as well. There is, of course, also the possibility that the people who speak like this are just trolls trying to get everyone worked up for a laugh. Sometimes I think that's what robroy is doing.

I don't know why some souls are now preaching they are against violence to any individuals. They didn't have a problem going to the pulpit on 16 January 2005 to spout off about Judgement Day and how many souls who had died in the tsunami were going to hell.

In all the frothing at the mouth for their new heaven expunged of all the "ungodly" who are consigned to hell and death, such selfish souls have forgotten that this earth was not made to be empty but to be inhabited (see Isaiah 45:18).

Of course, they can tout off that Jesus is the complete and perfect fulfilment of the scriptures and that Jesus is going to give them their perfect heaven no longer occupied by the unclean (e.g. GLBT or feisty women).

God will give them what they prayed for.

Their Jesus won't mind being shunted off with them as obviously the "perfect and complete" fulfillment of scriptures no longer has a need for this planet, it's occupants, the Shekina (aka Cheva), or the feminine. So there's no need to worry about Hosea 2, Isaiah 49 or 54, Micah 4 or 5. No need to worry about the dark cloud of divine presence at Mt Sinai, Solomon's temple consecration, or Jesus' transfiguration.

Jesus is now completely fulfilled unto himself and no longer needs anything from anyone else and is quite capable of destroying this planet and all its occupants leaving behind the "perfect" heaven containing only Jesus' approved beings...

Question - why are any of you still reading this? Could it be that Isaiah 45:18 still applies? If so, what other covenants might still apply? Perhaps Isaiah 56:3?