CHICAGO CONSULTATION HOPES ARCHBISHOP’S STATEMENT SIGNALS NEW COURSE ON LGBT ISSUES
Asks other Anglican primates to condemn violence
CHICAGO, IL, January 28, 2011—The Chicago Consultation issued this statement today from its co-convener, the Rev. Lowell Grisham:
“The Chicago Consultation applauds the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams for his statements condemning the murder of Ugandan LGBT activist David Kato. We hope the archbishop’s statement signals a willingness to speak out against the persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people more directly and forcefully than he has in the past.
“It is essential that the other primates of the Anglican Communion join Dr. Williams and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church, in condemning the cultivation of hatred and violence against LGBT people. The primates who boycotted the current meeting in Dublin over theological differences with gay-friendly churches have a particular responsibility to affirm the dignity of every human being, and the right of LGBT people to live without fear of violence, degradation or criminal prosecution. We would welcome similar clarity from the Anglican Church in North America, which maintains close relationships with these primates.
“Heartened as we were by the archbishop’s statement, we believe that he is speaking aspirationally when he claims that the worldwide Anglican Communion has condemned violence against LGBT people. Occasional references to the dignity of gays and lesbians in voluminous communiqués cannot mask the fact that a number of Anglican provinces have been active or complicit in encouraging state-sponsored persecution of gays and lesbians, including the notorious anti-gay legislation still under consideration by the Ugandan parliament.
“Dr. Williams’ advocacy would be more credible were his handling of LGBT issues within the Anglican Communion more evenhanded. He has made it clear that the Episcopal Church may face consequences for consecrating gay and lesbian bishops. Yet primates such as Archbishop Henry Orombi in Kato’s own country of Uganda support laws that would imprison same-sex couples for simple acts of physical affection, but risk no such reprisals. The tortured ecclesiological rationale offered for this double standard makes little sense outside the cocoon of Communion bureaucracy, and it compromises the archbishop’s ability to be the forceful and effective advocate for human rights that this statement indicates he wants to be.”
The Chicago Consultation, a group of Episcopal and Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people, supports the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. To learn more about the Chicago Consultation, visit www.chicagoconsultation.org.
David Kato was an Anglican and the Anglican Church of Uganda couldn’t even send a priest to the funeral of a man so brutally murdered in the prime of his life? Don’t give me that. I’m a loyal Anglican, and I have no desire to split the Church, certainly over my sake, especially when I don’t know what side of the divide my bit will fall on (Ireland ain’t all liberal, believe you me). But I can’t just keep silent any more. I could. I’m safe religiously in my own parish and legally in my own country. It’s not about… Read more »
Good for them! Speak out and tell it as it is!
“David Kato was an Anglican and the Anglican Church of Uganda couldn’t even send a priest to the funeral of a man so brutally murdered in the prime of his life?” Gerry Lynch Well, Gerry, it seems that they did, and I guess now both you and I wish they hadn’t. For shame, Fr Thomas Musoke. Whatever your views, it is pastorally disgraceful to use a funeral in this way. Like many others who live a long way from Uganda, I have never heard of David Kato before. Now I have, and may his memory be treasured. I expect and… Read more »
Let’s hope the gathered Primates at Dublin are taking heed of the situation of the Anglican Church in Uganda – that cannot even attend the obsequies of one of it’s own children.
God have mercy on Uganda and on our Church!
It is so sad to hear that an Anglican priest had to be forced to shut up and be removed from the funeral service of David Kato because he was preaching a homophobic tirade. Fortunately David’s friends were able to continue the service and his burial. David was battered to death with a hammer. May he rest in peace.
This is very sad indeed and no one can ever approve murder. However you must remember that the founding Catholic and Anglican missionaries in Uganda were brutally murdered for resisting the homosexual advances of a tribal leader.
The Catholic martyrs are canonised saints of the Catholic Church with a feast day.
Ugandans can not understand why western Christians are now approving homosexuality. Its a question of sensitivity… so pray for the persecutors and the persecuted.
This statement makes some important points.
I think the minister at the funeral was a reader, not a priest. I would hope the Church of Uganda would apologise for his appalling lack of pastoral sensitivity, but am not hopeful.
“However you must remember that the founding Catholic and Anglican missionaries in Uganda were brutally murdered for resisting the homosexual advances of a tribal leader.”
And you must remember that St Francis Xavier was an Inquisitor who pleaded for the Inquisition to be established in India. Eventually gays were burnt at the stake in Goa and Manila, along with heretics.
Hopefully, Japanese Catholics today can differentiate between such evil and the good aspects of the Gospel, and Ugandan Christians can also develope a mature and differentiated understanding of their history.
“Ugandans can not understand why western Christians are now approving homosexuality.” The use of sex for the purpose of maintaining power over another is always wrong. Use of rape of women in Bosnia, for instance, was not about sex but about abusive sex being used to control and destroy. Abuse has nothing to do with orientation. It is an equal opportunity offender. Western Christians are not approving the abusive use of sex, as was perpetrated by that tribal leader, who may or may not have been actually orientated toward the same sex. There is a huge difference between that and… Read more »
All the Ugandan Martyrs are commemorated on 3 June in the CofE calendar.
Savi seems to be correct. On Facebook Bishop Christopher Senyonjo posted a link to an article that identified the person who tried to turn the funeral into an anti-gay rally was the lay reader that the Ugandan Church sent to take the service.
@ RIW: ‘However you must remember that the founding Catholic and Anglican missionaries in Uganda were brutally murdered for resisting the homosexual advances of a tribal leader’ Not sure the Buganda would care to hear their Kabaka described as a ‘tribal leader’….the Kabaka was the king over most of what is now Uganda. Also the Kabaka in question was a sexual predator, which no-one would condone now. He would have been just as wrong, and his victims just as much martyrs, had he preyed on young women instead of young men. Or are people applying the Genesis/Judges double standard, that… Read more »
“However you must remember that the founding Catholic and Anglican missionaries in Uganda were brutally murdered for resisting the homosexual advances of a tribal leader.”
It seems to me that the situation is now reversed. Who’s the predator and who’s the prey now? And Holy Mother Rome is in no position to be preaching about “homosexual advances” these days, or about much else.
RIW ‘The Catholic martyrs are canonised saints of the Catholic Church with a feast day.’
I have a feeling that Paul VI made a reference to the Anglican martyrs in his sermon canonising Charles Lwanga and his companions – think it’s in the ‘office of readings’ – “Et mentione digni sunt alii etiam, qui, anglicana instituta religiosa profitentes, pro Christi nomine morte affecti sunt.” (“And the others are worthy of mention also, who, professing the Anglican religious customs, were afflicted with death for the name of Christ.”)
A few more thoughts on “However you must remember that the founding Catholic and Anglican missionaries in Uganda were brutally murdered for resisting the homosexual advances of a tribal leader.” 1. That means that the oft-repeated claim that there were no homosexuals in Africa before the evil West introduced the practice is a lie. 2. If the issue was homosexuality per se, doesn’t that imply that if the martyrs had been page girls instead of page boys, the king would have been within his rights to demand sex? 3. In Ugandan discourse, King Mwanga is as often depicted as a… Read more »
Just think of St Agatha, St Lucy and all the other female martyrs who refused marriage or the advances of men! Yet somehow we in the church have managed not to reject heterosexuality entirely.
“Other Anglican primates asked to condemn violence.” Ah, the silence…
I hope the Anglicans were saved too….by the way I do hope the West puts pressure on the Ugandan Government to come to its senses on this.
The Catholic Church would never condone the murder of this young man.
RIW said: “However you must remember that the founding Catholic and Anglican missionaries in Uganda were brutally murdered for resisting the homosexual advances of a tribal leader.” Apparently RIW is privy to some deeper history than I can discover regarding King Mwanga’s vile acts. Might predatory sex have been one of the weapon’s in the King’s arsenal? Probably. But power and control, not refusal of sex, seem to be the generally recognized motivation. Its not clear to me if RIW can’t see how unrelated sexual orientation is to the use of sex as a weapon, or if he believes the… Read more »
“This is very sad indeed and no one can ever approve murder. However you must remember that the founding Catholic and Anglican missionaries in Uganda were brutally murdered for resisting the homosexual advances of a tribal leader.”
Calling the demands of a powerful leader for sex (under threat of death) “homosexual advances” is like calling the looting of a museum an “art acquisition.” It may be technically correct, while being a lie of omission. “Homosexual advances of a tribal leader” makes it sound as if Mwanga simply offered them a back-rub or asked to buy them a drink.
“Just think of St Agatha, St Lucy and all the other female martyrs who refused marriage or the advances of men! Yet somehow we in the church have managed not to reject heterosexuality entirely.”
Excellent.
I second this.
Robert Ian Williams on Saturday, 29 January 2011 at 4:34pm GMT, While I’m glad you have found peace and joy and universal fraternity/sorority in the Roman Catholic Church, thanks all the same, but I’m happy being a Jew who also attends a TEC church from time to time. The “young man” you speak of has a name: David Kato. Regardless of why David Kato was murdered, he was brutally murdered while harming no one. We are talking about a reader for the Church of Uganda not being able to speak politely about David Kato, instead condemning him and all gay… Read more »
A reader –
http://www.sdgln.com/commentary/2011/01/28/commentary-david-katos-funeral-illustrates-schism-anglican-church
For persuading RIW, Savi/Doug, it might be well to add 20th c. martyr, St Maria Goretti (who resisted her “heterosexual” rapist, and forgave him on her deathbed—dying from the attack—a few days later).
All holy martyrs of sexual/sexuality violence, PRAY for us!
“The Catholic Church would never condone the murder of this young man.”
Well, maybe “never” if, by that, you mean “now.” If we were talking about almost any time in the pre-modern European past, though, the Catholic Church would have handed him over to the secular arm to be burned with its full and enthusiastic approval.
Dear Archbishop Rowan: What Chicago said … ditto. Thanks lots, (signed) an invisible follower of Jesus of Nazareth.
Uganda was evangelised in the 1880s. We told the Ugandan people ( amongst other things) that homosexual practice was sin…and now you want them to change. I think that is unreasonable and the old missionary cultural arrogance adapted to the 21st century. Scott accuses me of softening the sin of murder by placing this in the historical context. I can’t see that ( I unequivocally condemn this death )..after all Scott is softening what mainstream Christianity regards as a serious sin…tiny denominations like the Quakers or TEC..which are essentially middle class clubs are not representative of mainstream Christianity or Anglicanism.… Read more »
Thank you, Laurence for putting me right.
So Mr (not Fr) Thomas Musoke should be ashamed.
Thank you +Christopher.
Thank you Kasha
Edward Prebble
The Kabaka was King of Buganda – which was a great deal smaller a kingdom than present day Uganda – and was rivalled in the pre-colonial period by the western kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara. The other 19C kingdoms that had some independant status both came out of Bunyoro-Kitara; Busoga to the east of Buganda in the 16th C, and Toro, in the southwest, in the 19th C. But Buganda was the largest and most powerful of the four.
I think what really matters here is that David Kato, against his will, walked the Via Dolorosa to the very end, while so many of his fellow Christians eagerly signed up for the role of Caiaphas.
“Uganda was evangelised in the 1880s. We told the Ugandan people ( amongst other things) that homosexual practice was sin…and now you want them to change. I think that is unreasonable and the old missionary cultural arrogance adapted to the 21st century.” We also told them that black people were naturally subordinate to white people; that western European culture was naturally superior to their own; that the destruction of their environment was a good thing. Should we go on telling them those things, too, RIW–in the name of consistency after 130 years? “…after all Scott is softening what mainstream Christianity… Read more »
“St Maria Goretti”
She makes me really, really nervous, in that one of the moral lessons her story seems to present is that women should resist rape to the death. The forgiving her attacker part may be admirable and heroic, but the rest of the story is problematic.
On the other hand, I am told by another person in my parish that at least some young girls being pressured by their boyfriends to have sex have been attracted to St Maria Goretti as a patron.
Peterpi I was encouraged to read you as a Jew attend TEC. I sometimes go to shul !
Good to know and cheering .
Pat ONeill: ‘We also told them that black people were naturally subordinate to white people; that western European culture was naturally superior to their own; that the destruction of their environment was a good thing. Should we go on telling them those things, too, RIW–in the name of consistency after 130 years?’ Isn’t that RIW’s point? That you don’t need to ‘go on telling us’ anything. Drop the colonial missionary zeal. We know Christ and are intelligent and spiritual equals. ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling’ (Philippians 2:12). We Africans may even be able to impart a… Read more »
David, Well, I had understood RIW to believe that the West had treated you like children before and that it should not now confuse your little minds by telling you something else. It’s a way of closing the conversation before it begins. Whereas I see Pat as engaging you as a true equal and expecting you to deal with his arguments on their merit. Because, surely, the debate is worth having and talk of colonialism only distracts from it and dismisses the other out of hand without having to engage with what they say. I have many liberal African friends,… Read more »
David:
My point is that all the things I noted are now known to be scientifically untrue…just as the “unnaturalness” of same-sex relationships is now held to be untrue by most researchers. If we no longer insist on all the rest, why insist on this?
As to “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”–well, we have. We in the west have made our choice; kindly allow us to live by it without telling us that, by doing so, we are forcing you to do the same. We are not.
@David Shepherd – “We Africans…”
Maybe you’ve posted this earlier, but where exactly are you from, and where do you live now?
“We Africans may even be able to impart a little theological insight to the world, as that well-known North African, Saint Augustine did.”
You know, I don’t think that most Episcopalians would dispute that, given the popularity of Archbishop Desmond Tutu in our Church. Or Bishop Christopher Senyonjo. It’s not theological insight that has attracted our attention in the current unpleasantness in Uganda (or Nigeria, for that matter), but something else.
Pat,
Yes, you’ve made your choice in the West. I never equated simply living by it to dictating policy abroad.
Perhaps, you were only extrapolating RIW’s train of thought, but the phrase ‘go on telling them those things also’ clearly perpetuates our former roles and goes further than simply living by your choice.
So if, as Erika says, the debate is the same one as we are having in Europe, I hope we can see more discussion among equals without the thought of delivering another Western dictat to the Third World.
@Bill Dilworth:
Is this a discussion of racial credentials? Please clarify your reason for asking.
I can’t speak for Bill Dilworth, but for me, it’s a valid question because I’ve learned to never trust anything a conservative “christian” tells me at face value. It’s been a hard-learned lesson from which I bear the scars.
David
“Is this a discussion of racial credentials? Please clarify your reason for asking”
I don’t know Bill’s reasons for asking but mine would be quite simple: Do you live in England, where you may shortly have to come to terms with women Bishops, or do you live in a country where this is a mere theoretical problem.
“Is this a discussion of racial credentials? Please clarify your reason for asking.”
Huh? How the hell do I know what “racial credentials” pertain to you? And do you really have to have a reason before you introduce yourself? I ask because here you are self-identifying as an “African,” which is really about as meaningful as my describing myself as a “resident of the Americas,” given the vast size and cultural diversity of both continents.
David, sorry, I got my threads muddled. It doesn’t matter where you live when we talk of Christians deploring violence and murder, I hope we’re unanimous in this. But it does matter when discussing church politics, attitudes to homosexuality etc., because we all argue from within the churches we find ourselves and our primary concern are the problems our own church experiences. And the day to day actual difficulties associated with the homosexuality question are different in Uganda than they are, for example in South Africa. In England, I will accept nothing less than full equality for gay people, supported… Read more »
Bill: I asked politely for you to explain your reason for asking. I have contributed to several threads without receiving a request for a fuller introduction of this sort. Of all the contributors with whom I have engaged in these posts, only Erika briefly mentioned coming from Germany (admittedly, not a vast continent) as a passing reference to a question I asked. Hardly an introduction, but I didn’t ask or press for further detail about her origins. I would neither assume that she applied a distinctively German perspective (if there is such a thing) to her arguments, nor that it… Read more »
“I have contributed to several threads without receiving a request for a fuller introduction of this sort.” I can assure you, David, that if you had asked most any of the regular contributors for information about themselves we probably would not have been as chary with the information as you are (or asked for your reasons, or assumed that the issue at hand was race). Here, let me start: I’m a 51 year old gay male Episcopalian from Texas (originally) who lives in Rhode Island with my partner of 20 years. I’m a member of an Anglo-Catholic parish, and am… Read more »
I am a 43 year old white gay male, unpartnered and uninterested in being so, in Southwest Georgia – that hotbed of liberality. I’m also one of the gay, white, Episcopalian elite, being without a car, in a run-down house I can barely afford, in a job bringing in just above minimum wage. I am what, in local parlance, qualifies as “poor white trash.”
Excuse me – precision is important:
Being *PAID* just over minimum wage; *bringing home* under minimum wage, thanks to the wonderful U. S. laws protecting the interests of Student Lenders over the individual.
Hi Bill, I was referring to my descent, heritage and racial origin (as your U.S. census classes my origin). Some people of Middle East descent might say, ‘We Arabs…’ I was born in England to Afro-Caribbean parents. I emigrated to Barbados at age 12 and lived there before returning here 20 years ago. I was baptised as an infant in the CofE. However, my joyful drowning occurred while attending an RC retreat in Trinidad: submerged in the life-transforming depths of God’s relentless love in Christ. I returned to the CofE several months ago. This forum has provided a welcome alternative… Read more »
Thank you for you answer, David. I had completely misunderstood what you said.