Dear Reverend Colin Coward,

Although we have never met, I read your blog regularly. I would like to suggest that you change your last name...Coward you are NOT!

Thanks for all that you do to keep a steady hand and a well-focused eye on TRUTH!

A FAN in Latin America who thinks you to be Colin the Brave!

Leonardo Ricardo

Thanks Leonardo. I'm glad I'm here in Jamaica, firstly because I'm a faithful Christian and a faithful Anglican and I witness to those who don't believe being lesbian or gay and Christian can go together. As you and I know, there are tens of thousands of LGBT Christians who witness to a most profound and godly faith.

I am also glad I have been here to witness how frighteningly angry and almost out of control a Nigerian bishop becomes when someone takes a photograph of him. Stanley Isaacs, the top of whose head is just visible in the photo, says I am welcome to interview him to put the record straight - they were discussing nothing, plotting nothing.

In that case, why was the Bishop so angry and abusive and threatening. If they weren't discussing anything contentious, his behaviour becomes even more unaccounatble and frightening. Nigerian bishops should carry a health warning.

I think Colin got too close to the man behind the curtain holding all the money.

Stay safe Colin, and keep up the good work.

"If they weren't discussing anything contentious, his behaviour becomes even more unaccounatble and frightening."

That's the crux of what is so disturbing about this.

I live in a community that includes Old Order Mennonites, who dress plain and drive buggies. They are not happy to be photographed, because they see it as a vanity, I think. However, they do not attack people who are crass enough to take their pictures - they leave.

The violence of the bishop's reaction is really strange. Surely he's been seen with these same people many times.

Why would it matter that the photographer was gay?

This just sounds like an emotional reatcion that is not grounded in reason.

Thanks for your witness and your courage.

Is the "satanic" ploy merely an attempt to demonize gay people (pun intended) in order to discount our views, or do the Nigerians et al. really believe we are minions of the Dark One? Or can they even tell at this point which it is?

I am a Vatican II Catholic who has great respect for the good work that is being done to educate those ignorant and hate-filled bishops and archbishops in the Anglican Communion about the plight of lesbian and gay Christians, which unfortunately is also a front burner issue in my own dysfunctional Roman Communion and just about every Christian denomination save a few. Surely your Archbishop of Canterbury must be aware of the right wing plotters in his ACC in light of their abuse of the truth and their pathetic efforts to steal church properties and treasure that is being held in trust for present and future generations. Why doesn't the Archbishop of Canterbury take a clear stand for what is just and ethical based on Christ's teaching alone? Why is he so afraid to do the right thing? I just don't get it? Enlighten me. Peace to all of you courageous Anglicans, you are to be commended for your brave and Christ like behavior in this deplorable moment in the life of your Church.

"My experience this morning shows me that Nigerian bishops are perfectly capable of threatening and intimidating people – and if they will do that to me in the context of an ACC meeting, how much more feely will they attack and abuse those they disagree with at home in Nigeria." - Colin Coward @ Changing Attitude -

Colin's experience outside of the meeting rooms at AC14 should prompt the mainline members of the Anglican Communion to challenge this bullying tactic of the bishop concerned, and of certain of the African Churches in particular, distancing themselves from this sort of behaviour within the context of one of the 'Instruments of Unity' in the Church.

For any Christian - let alone a Bishop in the Church - to call the LGBT community 'satanic' is to behave more like a believer in witchcraft, than a believer in the freedom of the Gospel. One might hope that those who embrace such a negative theology would think hard before offering themselves for leadership in the 21st century Christian Church. For, if this is the quality of theological engagement that is offered by the New Puritans, I'm not sure I would want to be a part of them anyway. Perhaps real Anglicanism requires a very different basis of consideration of who is 'in' and who is 'out' of the fellowship. All I can say now is "Thank God" that section 4 of the Covenant document did not get ratified - to allow
old-fashioned 'devil-dodgers' into the Communion via the back- door.

I guess that more than a little heat has been generated at ACC14 by those conservatives who were determined to outlaw LGBT people from the
fellowship of the Communion, and whose agenda has been somewhat thwarted by the work of the Holy Spirit in the meetings - as clearly evidenced in the outcomes. There is a lot of anger there.

Perhaps Akinola, Orombi, Jensen and members of the ACI and ACNA will, after all, be persuaded that their interests are best served by the promulgation of their own brand of evangelical puritanism - which is rather different from the Anglican culture and the evangelism of Samuel Marsden, whom we remembered at Mass today (12/5).

"Dr Williams was a “very weak leader,” Bishop Ikechi Nwosu of Nigeria observed. “Of course we pray for him, but couldn’t he be courageous for once?” - George Conger, Mainstream web-site -

Rowan just can't win, can he, with those opposed to whatever he does - on one side or another? No doubt those very same bishops who see him as 'weak' when he allows something which doesn't please them, will again laud his leadership if he actually does that which helps their cause. I guess that really makes him what one might call a 'disinterested party' - disinterested, that is, in pushing his own barrow. A good President!

One wonders, with Bishop Nazir-Ali doing some of his renowned theological gymnastics in the background, whether, having been overlooked for leadership of the authentic Anglican Communion (which went to Archbishop Rowan), he might now be looking to some sort of primatial position with the conservative element in the Communion who are breathing threats of a breakaway alternative.

Let's hope that Rowan and the ACC do not give in to the bullying tactics of the so-called *Anglican Communion Institute* and its fellow-travellers; in their bid to subvert the existing leadership roles from the present Instruments, in claiming the Ridley Covenant, in toto, for their own nefarious purposes. (David Virtue must be doing a double flip at the moment. Perhaps he will go back to his Baptist roots?)

Colin,
as you know the only way to deal with bullies is to stand up to them.
Chin up, breathe deeply, and refuse to allow this or any other bully to intimidate you.
I would like to think that it is only a coincidence that it was a Nigerian and a Bishop concerned, but like you am unable to do so. (:-)
Keep up the good work.

Oh my!

Nightmares, evilspirts walking, lurking, manisfesting themselves amongst the self-named ¨more correct¨ religiouslike men at prayer!

Blatant harming, plotting, uncivil waring, corrupting, raping, thieving, bribing and BOLD lies being told and retold by well paid ¨lopsided¨ experts that spurt angry fate. Hate generating ¨pros¨ who tell whatever it is that will gently, yet intentionally, jackup the hysteria, grandstand for wrong, but, still, will attempt to steal the purging show.

Processing purposefully, strutting stuff, engendering fear, spewing purist cultural solutions, whispering and shouting vile notions against other Christians and difference. Others who move away from you as fast as they can or stand firmly paralized with fear, because the end MUST BE near and there is no place else to share the hate...swoosh, stew/brew clouds of superstition drive emotional instability gleefully, rock and roll, soil, all in the name of a God who needs no defense...yell, Hell, off with their heads, quick burnings, little deaths, one by one, one more time, grab a stake and pound it through, round em up the seeking hearts the silent victims of selfsearching...another brother or sister who listens too hard to hear TRUE and gets in the way of fear and YOU.

Plug your ears, freeze your mind, harden your heart, detach your soul...send money, cover yourselves, run, exclude, enthrone and pontificate and make fear ALIVE make hate a place to survive and celebrate...a place to stand...stand alone on tainted pile of rejected legal papers, appeals, the trust of innocents on your heads and hands but nobody knows who the killer of ¨faith once delivered¨ was/is...you´ve scurried away, received your reward already and nobody is at home, nobody is left to cast another first stone.

It´s nearly over, sound the alarm, it´s the all-clear.

What is the possible plotting going on?

Oh goodness sake, if any plotting goes on it probably is the same old realignment stuff - (A) how to continue to provoke confusion and polarization and choas via mainly presuppositional means (enacted via Ends Justify Means ethics?), and then (B) exploit the ensuing mess of hot button polarizations and warring spin to at least a passing realignment campaign advantage? That is what realignment campaigns have done so far, what they seem to be always doing now, and probably much of what we can likely anticipate from them in the future.

Resistance is useful. So is resistance plus seeing through it all.

It is true that one should where possible ask permission before taking someone's photo. There are some tribes that believe that something of their soul is taken with it - just to illustrate that taking a photo is not a neutral act.

"It is true that one should where possible ask permission before taking someone's photo. There are some tribes that believe that something of their soul is taken with it - just to illustrate that taking a photo is not a neutral act."
- Christopher Shell -

Conversely, there are some African Bishops who are not averse to having their photographs taken -provided they are seen with the 'right' people. This was just an incident where the bishop may have been with the 'right' people, but was being photographed by the 'wrong' person; the Head of 'Changing attitude' who, when he asked the bishop whether he was angry because he (Colin Coward) was gay, said 'YES!' So there was an un-subtle background circumstance here, not just a cultural blip. "Smile please!" might not have been appropriate at that particular moment.

Hi Fr Ron-

Exactly, and 2 wrongs don't make a right. If I had any doubts about the motives of someone who was in an unsolicited way taking my photo I would speak to that person, and surely you would too.