One of Africa's most senior churchmen broke ranks with fellow African and developing world archbishops yesterday to denounce their arrogance and intolerance over homosexuality, the issue that threatens to split the worldwide Anglican communion.
In an interview with the London-based Guardian newspaper, the Most Reverend Winston Njongonkulu Ndungane, Archbishop of Cape Town and Primate of Southern Africa, implicitly criticized his colleagues for undermining the 70 million strong communion with their denunciations of the election in the US of an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, and the earlier aborted appointment of Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading.
His remarks appeared directly aimed at Peter Akinola, Archbishop of Nigeria, head of the largest single church in the Anglican world, who has claimed that homosexuals are lower than beasts and who has called for the American and Canadian Episcopal churches to be thrown out of the communion.
Those views have been backed by other bishops and archbishops, mainly from South America, the West Indies, other parts of Africa, the Far East and Australia. They are also supported by many British evangelicals.
Both Ndungane and Akinola are among the 38 primates summoned to Lambeth Palace by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, next month to discuss the threats of schism caused by the gay issue. Opponents are claiming more than half of the archbishops will take a hard line on the issue and may attempt to force the US church out of the communion.
But Ndungane said: "There is an attempt to divert us from the major life-and-death issues in the world. There is a woman waiting to be stoned to death for adultery in Nigeria and yet we are not hearing any fuss from the leadership of the church there about that.
"People are going hungry across the world, the Israelis are building a fence around the Palestinians, HIV/Aids is a global emergency.... These are major, urgent, issues which should be a priority for the Church and we must not lose our focus on that."
The Archbishop succeeded Desmond Tutu eight years ago as leader of two million worshippers in the oldest province in Africa, covering eight countries up to Zimbabwe.
He insisted that the integrity of the US church's decision at its general convention last month to confirm the election of Robinson as diocesan bishop of New Hampshire should be respected. Some archbishops are demanding that the appointment must be rescinded, although there is no mechanism for that.
Ndungane said: "The Episcopal church is an autonomous province with its own procedures and processes which determine its own decisions. It is full of good people and they have followed one of the most transparent and democratic processes of decision-making in the whole Anglican communion.
"It is very arrogant to assume that the people in America do not know what they are doing. We have got to respect their decision.
"We must also respect the integrity of our provinces as autonomous entities whether we agree with them or not, or whether they make us uncomfortable or not. The Archbishop of Canterbury is first-among-equals, but he has no jurisdiction or authority to intervene."
On homosexuality, the archbishop speaks with particular force since he chaired a committee of 60 bishops at the last Lambeth conference five years ago that looked into the issue of human sexuality. The committee was overruled at the conference by other hardline bishops.
"I am very concerned about this current debate, because it seems to me that some kind of hypocrisy is going on in the Church. Gene Robinson and Jeffrey John have been open and honest about their private lives," Ndungane said.
"It is no secret that there are gay clergy and there are gay bishops, and the institutional church seems to be turning a blind eye when we should be encouraging honesty. If Gene Robinson had kept quiet, there would have been no issue.
"Our church must learn how to live together as a diverse community. That's what should be on the agenda, not seeking to cast stones or talking about schisms."
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS