A successful, anti-gay African Bishops Conference in Entebbe?

Arguing about the divisions in the Anglican Communion over homosexuality feels futile sometimes.

The bishops who gathered in Entebbe last week think they represent the majority, the true Christians, for whom homosexuality is the most evil abomination imaginable. I do not belong to such a group. If their interpretation of Jesus’ teaching leads them to this conclusion, then why should they not leave and form an exclusive church that is cleansed of the evil they imagine?

The Ugandan Daily Monitor reports comments from three of the Archbishops present last week.

The Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Henry Luke Orombi, said: “Homosexuality is evil, abnormal and unnatural as per the Bible. It is a culturally unacceptable practice. Although there is a lot of pressure, we cannot turn our hands to support it. We are saying homosexuality is not compatible with the word of God. We are saying that this culture of other people is against the traditional belief of marriage held by the Anglican Communion.”

The Archbishop’s views do not represent those of other Provinces, Primates, bishops and churches, nor the mind of the Anglican Communion. No Anglican Communion report describes homosexuality as evil, abnormal and unnatural. But it’s futile to note this, to question why Henry Orombi says such things and gets away with it. He refutes Lambeth 1.10 and the Windsor Report, which call for an ongoing process of listening and discernment and urges Provinces to “reassess, in the light of … study and because of our concern for human rights, its care for and attitude towards persons of homosexual orientation.”

The Archbishop of the Province of Indian Ocean, Ian Ernest, said the teachings of homosexuality are irrelevant to the needs of Africans and are unrepresentative demographically.

If he had said irrelevant to the needs of some Africans, he would have been more accurate. But he didn’t. He ignored the millions of Africans who identify confidently as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. He ignored their families and friends and congregations. He ignored the effect his dishonesty has on the integrity of individual bishops, congregations, Primates (including those Primates who are gay) and on the integrity of the whole Communion.

Archbishop Nicholas Okoh of Nigeria said homosexuality is a result of some people engaged in making their culture to be superior to the biblical teachings. “Homosexuality is not a new phenomenon in the society but the only trouble is that the issues dividing us now are very difficult to handle. They are threatening the unity of the church because they disobey the authority of the scriptures. It is two sided; while some people want to be obedient to their culture to determine the content of the church, others say no and it must be the guidance of the bible,” he said.

It’s something of a breakthrough that Nicholas Okoh accepts that homosexuality is not a new phenomenon in society. But he claims that it is we who are threatening the unity of the church, obeying culture rather than scripture. He forgets that the change in attitudes to the slave trade happened in part because people challenged assumptions about scripture from the perspective of culture.

On Wednesday the Daily Monitor reported that the Prime Minister, Prof. Apolo Nsibambi, commended African bishops for rejecting the practice of homosexuality in the church. “I thank the church in Africa for being exemplary by not accepting homosexuality… they see that it is not acceptable in the society where they serve,” Prof. Nsibambi said. He added: “We should not persecute them but I think it is wrong and we cannot recognise them because it is wrong like ordaining a gay bishop.”

His qualification in the last sentence is significant. The Prime Minister told a recent visitor (who reported the conversation to me) that the Anti-homosexuality Bill is dead and will not be passed into law. Politicians are not following where bishops would like to drive them – towards further vilification and persecution of LGBT people.

The Daily Monitor thinks the anti-homosexuality voices from the bishops are a likely boost to proponents of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. It would seem the monitor is wrong – the bishops are simply propounding their own prejudice.

It’s hard work, maintaining calm opposition to the views held by Africa Primates and bishops, and to be confident that one day, LGBT people in Africa and Asia will achieve the freedom to live with dignity in society with the justice and protection we have come to value in the UK.

I pray to God that enough people will hold to the positives in the Windsor Report, which others in the Communion are determined to deny in an attempt to exterminate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from their consciousness, their Provinces and their culture.

Colin Coward

The full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Christians is the most serious threat to the life of the Communion says Kenneth Kearon

Canon Kenneth Kearon met the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council on Friday and told them that in removing Episcopal Church members from some Anglican Communion ecumenical dialogues “the aim has not been to get at the Episcopal Church, but to find room for others to remain as well as enabling as full a participation as possible for the Episcopal Church within the communion.”

He said the church ought to have known that it would face sanctions when Mary Glasspool was ordained as the church’s second openly gay, partnered bishop. Asked about incursions by other provinces of the Communion he said such ongoing breaches of the moratorium on incursions do not rise to the same level of departure from the faith and order of the Communion as does the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Christians.

There you have it. We LGBT people are the problem that needs to be dealt with. With my brothers and sisters in North America, Africa, South America and Asia, I am the problem. My sexuality is the element that needs to be contained and suppressed by the Communion because I threaten its life.

Dr Rowan Williams, Canon Kenneth Kearon and conservative theologians, commentators and pressure groups are now united in having identified the single problem causing distress to the Communion and have focussed the problem on the Episcopal Church, it’s actions, theology and praxis. It’s an easy solution to pin all the blame on the actions of the Episcopal Church in consecrating two bishops who are in committed relationships with same-sex partners.

I want to broaden the scenario. It’s too easy to narrow the focus of blame. Historically, the failure started following the Lambeth Conference of 1978 when no action was taken on Resolution 10 and was repeated in 1988 when no action followed the passing of Resolution 64. It is the failure of the Communion to engage with the issue of homosexuality that is the precursor of the present problems.

My self-interest in wanting to survive as a gay Christian in a church that is becoming increasingly hostile to my presence holds that the guilt and responsibility for where we are now and the dynamics in relation to the Episcopal Church can be laid elsewhere. Why didn’t the Communion respond in 1987 and 1988? Were the powers-that-be too afraid to deal with homosexuality?

Much, much more critically, why was nothing done in the 7 years following Lambeth 1998 and the passing of Resolution 1.10? No Communion-wide response was started until Kenneth Kearon was in post as Secretary General. Those 7 years were critical and left a vacuum in which conservatives pursued a campaign against gays in the church and TEC elected Gene Robinson.

Blaming the Episcopal Church for breaking the rules now ignores, to my great distress, the abhorrent attitudes and behaviour towards LGBT people manifest in many Anglican Provinces and leaders. It is this that really outrages and incenses me and why I think the Communion is getting the debate so horribly wrong. Attention is focussed on rule-breaking by TEC but fails to hold Provinces, church leaders, bishops and primates to account for the bigotry and intolerance of LGBT people they express in the name of Christianity.

So we continue down the fateful path outlined by the Windsor Report and the Anglican Covenant, driven by conservative forces on the ground of upholding the plain meaning of the Bible, the unchallengeable historic teaching of the church and the unexamined prejudices of Christianity and human societies against LGBT people, sacrificing LGBT lives in the process.

In the shadow of the Anglican obsession with homosexuality are tens of thousands of people, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, who live as I lived in the 60s and 70s, in the closet, in hiding from parents and families, friends and peer groups, work colleagues, congregations and priests, in fear and sometimes with self-loathing. I talk with people across the globe every day who sometimes patiently, sometimes in an agonised outpouring of anguish, describe their lives to me.

And I know, calming myself down, that Continuing Indaba is being progressed, laying the foundations for a process of education through shared experience that will eventually lead to change.

But that does not exempt church leaders now from the charge of being so obsessed with this issue, with tradition and orthodox teaching, with judging and condemning a church which openly ordains partnered gay men and lesbians and blesses loving same-sex relationships, with imposing sanctions, that they lose sight of the sinful behaviour of the church in colluding with violence, oppression and injustice against an innocent, vulnerable minority. We are an easy target for bigots.

I know I am one of the few voices crying in a wilderness but what is happening in the Communion is an outrage. Technically, the Episcopal Church has broken specific rules in contravention of the moratoria. I can see that it’s easy to issue a guilty charge as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary General have done. I can see where this is leading and I’m frightened, not only for the safety of LGBT people but for the future of Christ-like witness in our Communion.

It’s much easier to issue sanctions against TEC than it is against Provinces who have transgressed the moratoria on boundary crossing. It’s not quite so easy to gather the evidence. It’s much easier to blame TEC than to challenge the behaviour of Nicholas Okoh, the Primate of Nigeria, who is waging a fight against homosexuality and called for Nigeria to withdraw from the UN because of its support for homosexuality. Isn’t this a contravention of the Windsor Report? But not of the three moratoria, so not actionable in the way consecrating a lesbian or gay bishop is.

Homosexuality has been made the defining issue by conservatives, not women priests or bishops, not polygamy, divorce or abortion, not abusive behaviour, power or corruption, not the survival of our planet, but the love people of the same sex have for each other, deemed by the majority in our Communion to be deviant and bringing the church into disrepute.

We are not the most serious threat to the life of the Communion, we are not in any way a threat but a gift and blessing.

What the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary General should really be doing

The old, patriarchal paradigm of power, authority and control continues to exert its influence over some leaders of the Anglican Communion as they respond to the presence of LGBT people and the campaign waged by the self-proclaimed majority against our full inclusion.

In his Pentecost letter the Archbishop of Canterbury proposes that members of provinces that are in breach of the three moratoria requested by the Instruments of the Communion should no longer participate in the formal ecumenical dialogues in which the Anglican Communion is engaged. The Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon, has written selectively to the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada and to Greg Venables of the Southern Cone.

The Rt Rev Martyn Minns is among those who might have been expected to be sent a letter but hasn’t. He told the Living Church that the primates, “never agreed that there’s a moral equivalence between what they see as an attempt to change the Anglican Communion’s teaching and a provision for temporary pastoral care.”

Moral inequality is the name of the game for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Secretary General. They have been selective in their exclusions. They demonstrate their inability to respond with Christian love, courage, wisdom and compassion to the campaign being fought by adherents of the old paradigm who want to marginalise at best and dehumanise at worst LGBT people.

What should the Archbishop and Secretary General be doing?
They should witness to the violence perpetrated against LGBT people. The anti-homosexuality Bills in Nigeria and Uganda are actively supported by Christians. Millions of LGBT Africans live in fear, intimidated by extreme rhetoric, vilified and attacked. In England, gay men continue to be murdered in homophobic attacks.

What should they be doing?
They should be opposing Anglican leaders and forces in the Communion which claim to respect LGBT people whilst advocating actions and doctrines which diminish us and reinforce prejudice and hatred against us. They should denounce every homophobic statement made by Anglican Primates, bishops, leaders and teachers, at the risk of being accused of colonialism.

What should they be doing?
They should be seeking to change the mind of the Communion expressed in the clauses of Lambeth 1.10 which fail to grant full respect, dignity and equality to LGBT people, to our loving, faithful relationships and our welcome to every level of ministry in the church.

What should they be doing?
They should be faithful to their own Christian integrity, challenging the use of passages from the Bible to maintain prejudice against LGBT people. The Archbishop and the Secretary General are at heart “revisionists” (the pejorative term used to demean pro-LGBT campaigners). They should revise all church teaching which scapegoats LGBT people and corrupts the gospel which teaches the goodness and glory of humanity as sexual beings created in love by God.

What should they be doing?
They should respect The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada in their commitment to model justice and love for all people who follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. They should come out of their closets and state openly that the Church of England ordains, often knowingly, partnered LGBT people. Many bishops actively encourage clergy to contract a Civil Partnership and by implication, support the blessing of lesbian and gay relationships.

What should they be doing?
They should be supporting the eradication of homophobia and prejudice against LGBT people in the Anglican Communion instead of supporting punitive sanctions and colluding with those who advocate prejudice. If this is to be the effect of the Anglican Covenant, then the Covenant will be a further instrument of prejudice and intolerance and Changing Attitude says NO to the Covenant.

This morning I’m driving to Swanwick to take part in the 2010 USPG conference ‘Witnessing to Christ Today”. The principal speakers are the Most Revd Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and the Most Revd Thabo Makgoba, Archbishop of Cape Town. I expect to hear two people who speak truthfully from their own hearts and proclaim a gospel of justice and love in the name of Jesus Christ, a gospel which fully includes, respects and protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Colin Coward
Director of Changing Attitude England

Mary Glasspool’s consecration is a moment to celebrate God’s inclusive, transforming, radical love

Together with Diane Bruce, Mary Glasspool was consecrated bishop suffragan in the Diocese of Los Angeles yesterday. The Anglican Communion now has an open, partnered lesbian as a bishop as well as an open, partnered gay man.

The service at the Long Beach Arena was themed 'Rejoice!', lasted three-hour hours and was attended by 3,000 clergy and laity, family and friends, civic, ecumenical and other guests. Los Angeles' rich diversity was represented in song and dance by a mosaic of varying races, ethnicities, ages, genders, and sexual orientations.

In a sermon interrupted by applause and laughter, Bishop Jon Bruno Bruno paid tribute to the historical occasion, recalling how he had once protested women's ordination, and now would be serving with two women bishops. He said: "The world's transformed only if we turn to each and every one of our brothers and sisters and see the face of Christ superimposed on them. The ones we disagree with the most are the ones we're obligated to share our lives and teach the most."

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori served as chief consecrator and about 30 bishops, including the Rt. Rev. Martin DeJesus Barahona of El Salvador, retired Ugandan bishop Christopher Senyonjo and bishop Gene Robinson attended the service.

The consecration service was disrupted briefly by a man and a young boy who held up a sign and a bible and shouted anti-gay comments. Applause erupted when someone in the congregation yelled back: "We're praying for you."

Members of Westboro’ Baptist Church protested outside holding placards. Referring to them and to the disruption inside, bishop Bruno said, "They don't understand the inclusive nature of the Episcopal Church."

Conservative groups in Ireland including Reform issued a statement saying many Christians will share their sorrow and see Mary Glasspool’s consecration as a defiant rejection of pleas for restraint and as a rejection of the pattern of holiness of life called for in Scripture and endorsed by believers over the centuries, elevating to senior church leadership a person whose lifestyle is contrary to the will of God revealed in Scripture.

The claim the ordination shows a deliberate disregard for other members of the Anglican family and suggests that TEC does not greatly value unity within Anglicanism. They express support for the many people within The Episcopal Church who feel alienated and hurt.

Dr Philip Giddings and Canon Dr Chris Sugden issued a statement on behalf of Anglican Mainstream. They repeat their oft-made statement that the consecration shows that TEC has now explicitly decided to walk apart from most of the rest of the Communion.

They think it should result in three consequences:
• TEC withdrawing, or being excluded from the Anglican Communion's representative bodies.
• A way must be found to enable those orthodox Anglicans who remain within TEC to continue in fellowship with the Churches of the worldwide Communion.
• The Anglican Church of North America (ACNA) should now be recognized an authentic Anglican Church within the Communion.

The BBC reported that the ordination is likely to increase the turmoil in the Anglican Communion, coming despite warnings from the Archbishop of Canterbury that it would deepen an already bitter dispute on sexuality. He had urged the American Church not to proceed with the ordination, warning that it would further alienate traditionalists who believe active homosexuality to be a sin. The latest ordination is likely to accelerate the gradual marginalisation of the Episcopal Church within a two-tier Communion and increase tensions between Anglicans elsewhere.

All the negative comments about Mary Glasspool’s consecration made above can be looked at the other way round, from the perspective of those of us who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered and all who experience God’s love as inclusive and unbounded and follow a path of grace and not law.

It always astonishes me (not true, it no longer does) that conservative evangelicals who claim to be the true holders of authentic biblical Christian faith are obsessed with law and quite unable to follow the teaching of Paul, let alone the teaching of Jesus.

Bishop Jon Bruno said the protestors don’t understand the inclusive nature of the Episcopal Church. The Anglican leaders campaigning against the full inclusion, ever, of LGBT people in the church have a different theology from me. The true division in the church is between people and cultures which are re-learning from many sources the essence of Jesus’ teaching about God’s utterly gratuitous gift of love in creation and those who have adopted a legal understanding of God’s relationship with creation (simplifying drastically).

The majority in the Communion have agreed on a course of action in the Windsor Report which puts the Episcopal Church in the dock. I think the majority are wrong, not primarily because they are mistaken about God’s attitude to human sexuality but because they are wrong about Jesus and God’s relationship with us that Jesus reveals.

Far from Mary Glasspool’s consecration being a rejection of the pattern of holiness of life called for in Scripture as the Irish claim, I think that what the Episcopal Church is doing is actively living and modeling a scriptural pattern of holiness. TEC not only values the unity of the Anglican Communion but more importantly, values true discipleship in following the gospel of Jesus the Christ.

TEC is not walking apart from the rest of the Communion as Anglican Mainstream claim, the Anglican Communion is walking away from the Gospel of infinite and intimate love, tender and transforming love, sacrificial and life-giving. The consequences which Mainstream identify are irrelevant to those of us following a Christian path which I readily admit is dramatically different from the majority of Christian denominations.

Personal experience has taught me that the majority path is inherently abusive and corrupt and the continuing scandal of the abuse of children and young people in the Catholic Church is showing all who have eyes to see and ears to hear what happens when institutions follow false gospels – they become institutionally abusive and blind to love and truth.

Colin Coward

Confirmation of Mary Glaspool’s election

“Let us be firm and unswerving in the confession of our hope, for the giver of the promise is to be trusted. We ought to see how each of us may best arouse others to love and active goodness.” Hebrews 10.23,24

The Guardian’s headline today reads: ‘Crisis grips Catholic church as sex abuse allegations widen’. Yesterday’s headline in parts of the Anglican Communion was ‘Los Angeles Bishop-elect Glasspool receives church's consent to ordination’.

Sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and the cover up of abuse by bishops is evil. Dare anyone say that the confirmation of the election of a partnered lesbian as a bishop is in any way ‘evil’? Has Bishop Gene Robinson’s 7 year ministry brought ‘evil’ into the Anglican Communion, as some would claim? The Anglican Communion’s thinking about human sexuality is so utterly distorted now that the majority in our Communion claim that good people are evil and those who think and act in evil ways are good and holy.

Mary Glasspool becomes, for many in the Communion, another visible sign of God’s welcome to LGBT people and the blessing bestowed on those of who are faithfully and lovingly partnered and called by God to ministry in the church, lay and ordained, priestly and Episcopal.

Other groups in our Communion have ordained bishops to represent their particular version of truth and orthodoxy, bishops who are symbols of disunity and division. The Episcopal Church will ordain a bishop who is a symbol of hope to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people across the Communion and to all who long for prejudice about human sexuality to be overcome.

The world has moved on since Gene Robinson was ordained bishop in 2003. A period of restraint was exercised in North America while Instruments of Communion began to work our a process in reaction to his election and ordination. We now have the Windsor Report and the proposed Anglican Covenant.

In parts of the Communion hostile to the presence of homosexual Christians and same-sex couples, attempts have been and are still being made to further demonise LGBT people. Bills were introduced in Nigeria and Uganda; outbreaks of violence and persecution have occurred in Kenya and other countries; gay people murdered in the UK.

Same-sex marriage rights have been introduced in a number of countries and several US States and in England, Civil Partnerships. Inroads have been made in England into the Church of England’s reactionary stance against extending a welcome to LGBT people. The Church of England’s prejudice against the full inclusion of LGBT people is being steadily eroded, from within the House of Bishops and without as a result of equality legislation.

Networks of LGBT people, the majority of them Christian, are developing across Africa. They are yet to have a visible impact but they will.
2010 is not 2003. In seven brief years the global community has, by continuing a public discourse about the presence of LGBT people in society, inadvertently encouraged a process of education and awareness among peoples hitherto ignorant of the reality of LGBT people.

The discourse in Uganda has highlighted the prejudice, ignorance and bigotry found in Christian leaders. There is a division between the focus on anti-gay rhetoric by individual Primates, bishops and Christian leaders and other bishops who in private reveal more generous levels of understanding and tolerance. There is a gulf of understanding in the Catholic church between official Vatican teaching and the pronouncements of Ugandan bishops.

Mary Glasspool’s ordination will be controversial, but the controversy for many is now focussed on how reaction will reveal prejudice, ignorance and intolerance within the Christian community rather than a principled stand based on tradition, scripture and the unity of the church. Unity in Christ cannot be based on ignorance and prejudice.

“Spirit of the living God, in communion with you and with the cries of those who suffer injustice, work in and through us new deeds of discerning wisdom and true judgement, that we may know among us the fulfilment of your promises, even the firstfruits of your rule of justice.”

Coda to Psalm 94 by Jim Cotter from Out of the Silence ... Prayer’s Daily Round (Cairn Publications)

Four wasted decades - the Anglican inability to engage with homosexuality

There is a thread running through the Anglican Communion’s engagement with homosexuality that I find curious - the inability to grasp the nettle despite tentative initiatives over 4 decades. I’m interested in the history of the Anglican Communion’s failure to grasp the nettle and wonder if there are lessons to be learnt.

In 2005 The Episcopal Church produced a response to the request made in the Windsor Report 2004 that the church explains how a person living in a same gender union may be eligible to lead the flock of Christ. TEC presented ‘To Set Our Hope on Christ’ (TSOHOC) to the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Nottingham in 2005. I attended the presentation. Since then the report seems largely to have been forgotten but I recently re-read it.

A long appendix outlines the historical development of beliefs and policies regarding sexuality in the Episcopal Church, USA. It was at the General Convention in 1967, two years before the Stonewall riots of 1969 (the key event that led to the modern gay rights movement), that a resolution was passed instructing the Executive Council to 1) Initiate studies to express Christian attitudes with respect to ... homosexuality; and 2) Develop an educational program designed to communicate such attitudes to the Church at large.

What struck me re-reading the report is that nothing happened as a result of the resolution. The report, says TSOHOC, was probably referred to staff, since there is no mention of a follow-up study, a bare mention of homosexuality in the 1970 General Convention Journal, and a cryptic entry in the minutes of a House of Bishops meeting in 1972. Integrity was founded in 1974 and General Convention dealt substantively with homosexuality for the first time in 1976, nine years after the 1967 resolution.

The Windsor Report Appendix Three reprints resolution 10 from the Lambeth Conference 1978 and Resolution 64 from 1988. Resolution 10 ‘recognised the need for deep and dispassionate study of the question of homosexuality ...’ Unlike TSOHOC, the Windsor Report doesn’t say what happened in the decade following Lambeth 1978 nor Lambeth 1988. Does the silence mean that nothing at all happened? As far as I’m aware, no action was initiated in relation to homosexuality. Resolution 10 also addressed marriage and family life, broken marriages, abortion and genetic engineering. Were they deaslt with? Who was responsible for the failure to initiate action on Resolutions 10 and 64 recommendations about homosexuality – the Anglican Communion Office?

In the 1950s Church of England bishops were among those who advocated for reform of the law in relation to homosexuality which resulted in the 1967 Act. There was a confidence in arguing for decriminalisation, at the same time upholding ‘traditional church teaching’. The confidence exhibited then has evaporated over the following five decades. Why – what happened?

Post Stonewall 1969 LGBT people became more articulate and visible and more confident in arguing and campaigning for change. We were pretty much invisible in the 1950s and yet the Church of England was well-aware that homosexuality was an internal as much as an external issue.

Why did General Convention take 9 years to respond and the Anglican Communion 20 years - by which time forces of opposition had time to organise, with Tony Higton’s 1987 General Synod motion and the 1997 Kuala Lumpur Statement.

Was it simply that those who were responsible for initiating action were incompetent, or was it a failure of nerve, a fear of engaging with homosexuality, prejudice, lack of confidence? I would love to hear from someone who was at Lambeth 1987 or 1988 or working for the Anglican Communion Office then. Even more curious, how did those resolutions get onto the agenda in the first place? If there was enough confidence to table the resolutions, why the inability to take action after Lambeth? Now, we can only speculate how different the landscape might be today if the Communion had started deep and dispassionate study in 1978.

What is the Communion avoiding now? The most strident voices in the Communion are either demonising homosexuality or trying to marginalize the pro-gay Christian experience by presenting ex-gay ministries as the solution. The majority in the Communion would like to be persuaded that there is no such reality as homosexuality, no gay gene to prove that I exist in my gay identity. What a contrast with Church of England bishops in the 1950s. At least they were under no illusion as to the reality of homosexuality and the effect on a minority group of criminalizing sexual activity.

It has been left to the secular realm and to a minority of courageous Provinces and Christians to maintain the campaign not just for equality but at the moment for the very survival of LGBT lives in Africa. Christians who dare to make the case for LGBT people and exemplify mature, adult gay experience and ideals are vilified.

So what lesson can we draw from five decades of Anglican history? Never, never let the Communion forget that the Body of Christ includes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Never, never allow the church off the hook, never let the church escape judgment for its prejudice towards LGBT people. Never lose faith in Christ, whose unconditional love embraces all of us.

Lessons to be learnt from the report on Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia

The report Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia by Political Research Associates (PRA) Project Director Reverend Kapya Kaoma presents evidence of the relationship between the domestic conflicts and culture wars being waged by US conservative evangelicals and the growing criminalisation of homosexuality and the infringement of the human rights of LGBT people in Africa.

The findings of the report have serious implications for the campaigns being fought across the Anglican Communion, including those groups and individuals campaigning against the blessing of Civil Partnerships and equality in ministry for LGBT Anglicans.

Key findings of the report include the following:

Conservatives have successfully recruited a significant number of prominent African religious leaders to a campaign seeking to restrict the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

The campaign has had the effect of slowing, if not stopping altogether, the recognition by the Anglican Communion of the full equality of LGBT people.

As a direct result of the campaign, homophobia is on the rise in Africa— from increased incidents of violence to antigay legislation that carries the death penalty.

Conservatives are in the minority within Anglican Provinces in the west and are depending on African religious leaders to legitimize their positions.

It is the intensity of the conflicts created by the conservatives which promotes the very real threat of schism in the Anglican Communion.

A radical reversal of positions has taken place. The Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a neoconservative think tank that opposed the African liberation struggles is now one of the main organizations promoting homophobia in both Africa and the United States.

Conservatives present mainline denominations' commitments to human rights as imperialistic attempts to manipulate Africans into accepting homosexuality—which they characterize as a purely western phenomenon.

The report finds that conservative evangelicals have built relationships with African bishops and Provinces to oppose progress on LGBT issues —sometimes through deception but always through substantial financial incentives.

Traditionally, evangelical African churches have been biblically and doctrinally orthodox but progressive on such social issues as national liberation and poverty, making them natural partners of the politically liberal western churches. However, their religious orthodoxy means that Africans resonate with the denunciation of homosexuality as a postcolonial plot. Their homophobia is as much an expression of resistance to the West as a statement about human sexuality.

Right-wing groups have enticed African religious leaders to reject funding from mainline denominations—which require documentation of how the money is spent—and instead to accept funds from conservatives. This money usually goes to individual bishops without accountability or oversight for how it is used.

Christian Right activists use rhetoric about "family values" to foment homophobia in Africa with disastrous consequences, such as the proposed antigay legislation in Uganda.

Conservatives have engendered an insidious, inverse relationship between LGBT rights in the West and in Africa. Evangelicals portray victories for equality for LGBT people as evidence of the encroaching gay conspiracy, exciting bigotry and violence among their African audiences.

The report makes a number of recommendations, including:

Progressives should confront major figures in the conservative campaigns and call upon them to stop their promotion of homophobia.

African activists and scholars should be given support to lead the struggle for LGBT rights and the study of sexuality in Africa.

Work on LGBT issues in Africa should be led by Africans themselves.

Western scholars and journalists should promote research by Africans into sexuality.

Progressives should build relationships with the next generation of Anglican African leaders. We should seek out, support, educate, and network with young church leaders committed to human rights, rather than focusing on dialogue with the entrenched reactionary leadership.

Disseminate reliable information and continue the research. The destructive campaigns of conservatives against LGBT people are not widely known. A robust and sustained research and communications effort is needed.

Changing Attitude England will continue to work with out partners in Australia, Canada, Kenya, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, UK and the USA, in building church in which equality of place in church and society is granted to LGBT people. We will follow the commitments made by Lambeth 1.10 and the Windsor Report to oppose all legislation which criminalizes and dehumanises LGBT people.

The Anglican Communion is committed to the inclusion and pastoral care of LGBT people

Reactions to the proposed Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 from CA trustees, conservatives, ex-evangelicals and others has persuaded me that Changing Attitude has been too generous towards those oppose the inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in every province of the Anglican Communion. There are understandable reasons why, and I’ll deal with them in a moment. My re-reading of Lambeth 1.10 and the Windsor Report has been strengthened by developments over the past week.

Conservatives have claimed that the Windsor Report and Lambeth 1.10 give them authority to react to LGBT expectations in a negative way. I argue that they are committed to exactly the opposite.

The Anglican Communion has already given full support to the inclusion of LGBT people in every Province of the Communion – not full inclusion in every order of ministry and with equality in relationships, obviously, but inclusion nevertheless. We LGBT advocacy groups have been slow to see this.

Lambeth Resolution 10 in 1978 recognized the need for pastoral concern for those who are homosexual. There can be no debate in the Communion about whether homosexuals exist. I know that seems to be a statement of the obvious but some groups advocating ex-gay ministries still believe that there is no such thing as a homosexual identity. The Anglican Communion decided otherwise in 1978.

Lambeth 1.10, in all its confusion, actually commits the Communion to:
• assure homosexual people that they are loved by God
• assure homosexual people that they are full members of the Body of Christ
• minister pastorally and sensitively to homosexual people
• condemn irrational fear of homosexuality

The Windsor Report recognizes:
• the reality of committed same-sex relationships
• the debate on the issue cannot be closed
• the demonizing of homosexual persons or their ill treatment is against Christian charity and the basic principles of pastoral care

Windsor committed the Communion to self examination and:
• urged provinces to be pro-active in reassessing the care for and attitude towards persons of homosexual orientation

We don’t like the terms homosexual, homosexual practice and sexually active which the resolution and report use. As a result, we with the whole Communion failed to see what a decisive commitment Lambeth 1998 made to the inclusion of LGBT in the church and to equality of pastoral care for us.

The Communion has never understood what it committed itself to in the fullness of resolution 1.10. Conservatives think they won a victory over any accommodation for gay people in the Communion. That isn't what Windsor, Lambeth 1.10 and Lambeth 1978.10 committed the Communion to. All three documents provide absolute authority and support for the inclusion and pastoral care of LGBT people in every Province.

This is why the proposed Ugandan and Nigerian legislation should be opposed by the Anglican Church in both countries with support from every Province and Primate.

The Communion should be working to revoke all residual colonial legislation which criminalizes homosexuality.

If I had been more alert to the authority given by Lambeth 1.10 and Windsor, I would have been challenging the Communion to respond to words spoken, action taken and legislation proposed which failed to protect the safety and pastoral care of LGBT people.

The delay, prevarication and silence over the Ugandan and previously the Nigerian legislation, I now see as a deliberate failure to act on the commitment voted for by a majority of bishops in 1998 and by the Primates in endorsing the Windsor Report.

We failed to pay attention to what Windsor actually says because we were defending ourselves from attack and trying to protect Jeffrey John when he was forced to withdraw from Reading and Bishop Gene when he was elected in New Hampshire. The demands of the Global South and later, GAFCON and ACNA, display no respect for the Windsor Report, let alone the care of LGBT people in the Communion.

My stance has changed significantly this Summer and Autumn. The Ugandan legislation confirms my resolve. Life becomes more and more intolerable for the growing numbers of people identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Africa and elsewhere in the Communion, where daily life is risky and sometimes violent. They live in secrecy against a background of prejudice.

This becomes normative. The gay Ugandan journalist I spoke with on Sunday afternoon said the Bill will pass and it will have no effect. But then he said that he had been subjected to repeated attacks. What he means is, that kind of life will continue and the Bill will have little effect on what is normative for him.

Windsor and 1.10 have committed the Communion to an affirming attitude to homosexuality. This must be the basis of Anglican policy.