KenMASSA'S IN DE COLD, COLD GROUND -
Africa has always occupied a special place in the hearts of Episcopalians and other western Anglicans. Since most of them are liberals, they tend to romanticize Africans and other Third Worlders. They're somehow more "legitimate" or "real" than rich, western Christians. Many a western liberal Anglican has made an African pilgrimage, basked in all that legitimate reality and come home to go on and on about how "moved" they were and how "spiritual" the whole experience was.
The Episcopal Church even added some African hymns in its last hymnal revision which is most emphatically not a good thing. African acapella music is some of the most hauntingly lovely in the world. But to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one would have to have a heart of stone to listen to an African hymn played on a huge pipe organ and sung by white suburbanites without laughing.
Africa and Africans have always been viewed by western liberals as something to fix, something to improve, something the liberals can rescue from their superstitious darkness. For their parts, Africans are supposed to express their eternal gratitude to their white redeemers by going western liberal themselves and at least one African, Desmond Tutu, has been only too happy to oblige. So it is unbelievably funny to watch the befuddled western Anglican reaction to African outrage at the confirmation of Gene Robinson.
Canon James Rosenthal, communications officer for the Anglican Communion, thinks it's simply a matter of differing cultural values:
"In some cultures, there is no name for it," said Canon James Rosenthal, communications officer for the Anglican Communion in Canterbury, who has traveled extensively in Africa for the church. "The notion of two men or two women living together in a committed relationship just doesn't click."
Rosenthal said if he introduced a gay couple to people in the Central African state of Burundi, "they wouldn't grasp what was being portrayed in front of their eyes, because it is so foreign to their experience of what family means."
Likewise, Rosenthal said, if a person from, say, Indiana, met a man and his four wives in the West African state of Gambia, where polygamy is common, "it would cause equal shock."
You know how those savages are, right, Jim? Just one question. Are there lots of polygamous Christians in Gambia or anywhere else in Africa? Have you or Andrew Sullivan, who's also made this assertion, got some numbers? Because if you haven't, bringing it up might almost be seen as, oh, I don't know...a racial slur, Jim. Toss around too many of those and you may just lose your liberal card.
Of course, Jim's not alone in his assessment of Africa. Many liberals implicitly assert that Africans aren't, well, as far along as western folks are. Exhibit A being the fact that lots and lots of Africans actually believe that Bible stuff:
Interpreting scripture also raises complex issues. Many African Anglicans read the Bible strictly, taking parables and teachings at face value. Some scholars say such an approach is natural in societies where people believe in possession by demons, witchcraft and hexes.
Well, the evolutionists have always said that we're all ultimately Africans. Nice to see that those of us in the West who take the Bible's "parables and teachings at face value" have that in common with our African brothers.
It's interesting to note that Africa has its own counterpart of the Southron who moves north and becomes more Yankee than the Yankees(see Howell Raines). Uncle Desmond and his successor Njongonkulu Ndungane are two examples of this phenomenon. As is Lamin Sanneh, a Gambian who teaches at Yale Divinity School. The problem, says Sanneh, is that Africa hasn't had an Enlightenment yet:
"I think the Third World has received Christianity in a pre-Enlightenment frame," said Lamin Sanneh, a Yale Divinity School professor who was raised in Gambia. "When someone is ill, people believe there must be a spiritual cause. Nothing happens by chance. I think that is the fundamental clash."
We think the Africans should just shut up, says Sandye Wilson. After all, we don't go lecturing them about stuff:
"We're not going into their jurisdiction standing in solidarity with people against polygamy or genital mutilation," said the Rev. Sandye Wilson, rector of the Minneapolis' Downtown Episcopal Church of Gethsemane and a Robinson supporter.
Once again, are there lots of polygamous Christians in Africa, Wilson? Care to provide some numbers?
This story indicates to me that while I will probably abandon Anglicanism very shortly, I don't rule out the possibility of one day returning to it. While these may not exist in America to a great enough extent, there are many Anglicans in the world who have not and will not deny the faith in order to gain the approval of Western culture.
And one day, African Anglicans may become wealthy enough to send missionaries to America and set up on Sunday mornings outside parishes like mine to preach the Gospel to the rich, generally white suburbanites walking inside. God willing, I will still be alive so that I can stand with them.
Submitted by Ken
at 8/21/2003 12:21:23 AM| Polyamy in the African Church is tolerated - not accepted -on a limited and temporary basis due to the crushing burden of poverty and social shame that the plural wives would endure if put away from their husbands. That Canon Rosenthal would equate an unfortunate social situation with a radical departure from Christian moral practice makes you wonder if he is willing to say anything to advance his cause, or whether he just doesn't understand the differences.
First, the biblical backgrounds of polygamy and same-sex relationships are radically different. Second, the former is a social arrangement, the second a social construct of the individual. If you accept the premise that one can be "gay" in their being - I don't accept any such thing, but self-defined "gays" do - the difference becomes even more stark: a social arrangement vs. a state of being. A philosophy professor of mine once commented that the period from the rise of French rationalism (the "enlightenment") at least until now would come to be known as a second Dark Ages in the western world. I have to agree. God, send us Africans! |
Submitted by J. Scott
at 8/21/2003 8:50:31 AM| the period from the rise of French rationalism (the "enlightenment") at least until now would come to be known as a second Dark Ages
"French rationalism?" That sounds like an oxymoron to me. . . But now that you mention it, the fact that the "enlightenment" (love those scare quotes!) was largely a French invention makes me think we should pretty much abandon it! |
Submitted by J. Scott (again)
at 8/21/2003 8:57:57 AM| If you accept the premise that one can be "gay" in their being . . . the difference becomes even more stark: a social arrangement vs. a state of being.
Which sparks a question in my mind: which is worse - being gay or doing gay stuff? Most conservatives seem to think it's OK to be gay (they allegedly can't help it) but not to do gay stuff. But if looking on a member of the opposite sex with lustful intent is adulterous, then how bad is "being gay" since it means having both "inordinate affection" (KJV) and sexual lust for members of the same sex? It seems to me that doing gay stuff is bad but "being gay" is even worse! But we'd probably get sued for saying so. |
Submitted by Samuel
at 8/21/2003 10:28:31 AM| I commend to you the entire article on the Baltimore Sun site (linked above.) The journalist is as befuddled about African orthodox believers as the mainstrema media generally are about American believers.
Here's the rub for me. The African Anglican churches, it seems to me, are doing today what the liberals in the western churches *say* they want to be: growing, dynamic, culturally and socially relevant. The paradox, for the blinkered liberal, is that they do all these things--just like American evangelicals--without abandoning biblical orthodoxy. The Church of Nigeria, for example, is locked in a struggle against Islamic fundamentalism and the imposition of Sharia law by the State. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the scourge of AIDS means the Church's message of sexual relations restricted to marriage is not just an important question of doctrine, it's about life and death in a most direct way. The hub-bub about Robinson just points out how silly and irrelevant the ECUSA has become. If this is the issue that touches off a mass defection, as opposed to the slow bleeding-out over the past three decades, why has it taken so long? Have there not been serious theological stands to take before? They've suffered through Pike, Spong, the '79 "anything goes" Prayer Book, the '82 Hymnal and it's "inclusive" pabulum, ordinations by renegade bishops of women and notorious homosexuals in direct contradiction of church doctrine, etc., etc., ad nauseum. As more and more conservatives abandon ECUSA and the C of England, they'll continue on their death spiral, arguing more and more over less and less. As my Mom used to say, "they'll just become more like themselves" until they finally flicker out and the cathedrals become musuems. The more honest among them need to ask themselves, "where is God in this if we as a Church are dying." It's never too late to repent. |
Submitted by Peter
at 8/21/2003 11:30:46 AM| On being "gay." Substitute "alcoholic." Each of us has vices that prey upon us and they vary from individual to individual. Alcohol for some, other drugs, same-sex attraction, adulterous and lustful attraction for the opposite sex outside of marriage, greed, etc., etc. Now if I were an unrepentant alcoholic, how seriously would I be taken if in the name of "inclusion" I demanded the Church participate in my alcoholism by "blessing" my relationship with the bottle. Instead, we have AA meetings at our parish.
Indeed we worship God and ask for His forgiveness in order that His strength will relieve us of that which ills us and lead us down the path of repentance. To ask that His Church support us in fulfilling our destructive lust for alcohol, a lust which overpowers our love of God with love of self, is heresy of the first order. Robinson's greatest sin, and the sin of unrepentant gay Christians, it seems to me, is not his open homosexuality, it is his over-bearing pride and self-love. |
Submitted by Hugo Schwyzer
at 8/21/2003 11:40:59 AM| Gosh, when I was an Episcopalian and went to the large and liberal All Saints Church Pasadena, we white urban/suburbanites sang "Siyahamba" very, very well -- with organ, and choir. People wept. Of course, it is a SOUTH African tune, land of fine enlightened primates like Tutu and Ndungane...
Hugo http:hugoboy.blogspot.com |
Submitted by Ken
at 8/21/2003 4:33:55 PM| J. Scott wrote: It seems to me that doing gay stuff is bad but "being gay" is even worse!
Well, I don't believe there is any such thing as "being gay", but there are folks who experience sexual attraction predominantly or exclusively toward their own gender. As someone pointed out, that is not much different than being alcoholic - the drink is the difference for the latter, and fornication is the difference for the former. Now, if a person wants a holy, Christian life, same-sex attractions which preclude marraige are a burden, and it may be fair to say they are "worse off" for it. Lots of folks give testimony of deliverance from homosexual attractions, but God, for reasons of His own, doesn't deliver everyone. Lots of folks just learn to live with it. But then, if it wasn't that, it would be something else. We don't get to choose our crosses: only whether to bear them. Or not. |
Furthermore, the local Anglicans in Africa have no problem distinguishing Christian behavior from un-Christian behavior, something that non-judgmental muddle-headed liberals in the West just can't bring themselves to do, because it's all so not nice and stuff.