Dear Friends,I don’t know if members of this group can do much to help us in Nigeria?
This morning I got a call from an unknown caller who wanted to find out where I am at the time. I ask him to introduced himself since I don’t know him and he said so you are back from your trip and off the phone on me. I called the number back and a woman picked and said it is a public call phone. My surprise is how he did get my number which is very private.
I have been talking with friends and supporters of how to go to a safe place for some time at list.
The bill to ban us in moving fast to become law.
The worst of all is that +Akinola is the master and brain be hide this bill, recently he has been lobbying the presidency to put pressure on the senate and house of representatives to speed up the process in passing the bill.
This evening I have receive news from Abuja that the bill is likely to be passed be fore the end of March. And members of Akinola staffs boosting that CAN will soon be illegal and me will be sent to prison. Most of my members are now calling and sending me mails to ask what will become of them if this bill is passed?
This is one question that I don’t have the answers to right now, my appeal to everyone is to help use any medium that you can to drew the attention of the world and church leaders to this Nigerian problem.
If tears can changed things I think by now I would have changed the situation of the Nigerian LGBT Christians.
If you can dear brothers and sisters please give a last minute call to your bishops or anyone you know that can add there voices to put pressures on the Nigerian government and +Akinola who is the current president of the Nigeria Chastain Association that is requiting that the bill be passed soon.
Please spread this massage if you can.
Thanks
Davis Mac-Iyalla
Nigeria
For the life of me I don't see how this doesn't qualify as a crime against humanity. Here we have a country ready to codify a process which would be a civil rights violation in many other nations. Granted this is a third world country, but they are still part of the twenty-first century family of human experience.
ReplyDeleteI recently read a posting on one of the “blogs” I often visit. It talks about the term “Homophobia” and how our religious right hates when they are called that. I think it is time to start using the “word” every time we speak about these people. They need to be made to realize that many people in this world consider this type of treatment the real sin.
Allow me to quote from our resident clinical psychological therapist and blogger:
“This is all about politics and morals, they claim.
Hogwash. I couldn't care less about their emotional or affective states towards gays and lesbians. It has nothing to do with the emotions that they feel as they advocate against equality. Homophobia is defined only by behavior exhibited.”
To see his complete posting on this subject, go to:
http://denniswine.blogspot.com/2007/02/value-of-word-homophobia.html
Let us begin to call a spade a spade. This is Homophobia wrapped up neatly in the often misrepresented pages of the old and new testaments.
I think it is time for the Episcopal Church to formally excommunicate +Akinola for human rights violations done under his cure against lgbt people. These acts are excommunicable offenses. To believe that an Anglican bishop is supporting the death and marginalization of a child of God--and that child has to live in fear demands justice from the Communion. But will they give it, NO!
ReplyDeleteIf they want to use ancient Canons to make a bold statement so can our Church. The reality is we ARE going into schism. The Episcopal Church is going to leave the Anglican Communion, period. Unconsciously or perhaps consciously we are in communion with Canterbury because we want to belong to the Church of proper English society, and High Tea parties--we all know were our "quiant" vision of Church comes from--one that we hold on for dear life to feel that we are "better" than other Christians; Anglicanisn has not developed a theology where one needs the Chair of St. Augustine of Canterbury to be saved and receive sanctification. The papal model is dead in Rome and cannot be a model for our Church.
The lines have been drawn--and if ++PB Schori believes that she can live in both worlds: one where there is an inclusive Church and one where people like +Akinola can still claim to be Christians and push for laws criminalizing not just homosexuality and homosexuals, but even the mention of it--then she is sadly mistaken. The glbt community has "waited" for her to act and she is fencing it--Not a good tactic, Your Grace. Don't kill the constituency that helped you get in office.
There is NO middle ground--Jesus and his followers do not entertain communion with injustice.
Robert H.
Robert H., Let us not forget Rowam Williams' role in all of this as Akinola's facilitator in chief.
ReplyDeleteI truly believe that the Episcopal Church is at a point were she can choose to develop as a truly autocephalous Church within a re-aligned and re-constituted Communion.
ReplyDeleteThe Anglican Communion was always an entity ad experimentum. There is no scriptural or traditional mandate for its existence as a communion entity--it's essential vocation is within the bound of reason and affection. If it has a 'vocation to disappear' then it will.
To paraphrase Bishop Spong: "women don't go back in the kitchen (unless they *want* to), gays don't go back in the closet, blacks don't return to the back of the bus" and our Episcopal Church is not going to return to its comfortable existence being Catholic lite (A Latinist jab at our lack of credibility as a full Church--and oftentimes a phrase used proudly by the liberal camp as a form of Episcopal slapstick).
In order to claim our true and full Catholicity we need to assert our unique role in the Mystici Corporis--the Mystical Body. We stopped playing Church when we took the words of Amos seriously: (21-24 The Message)"I (The LORD) can't stand your religious meetings. I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals.
I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice—oceans of it.
I want fairness—rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want."
We are a just Church, a truly biblical Church: and if God wants "rivers of justice" than nothing can stop God's vision.
In regard to ++Rowan he has lost the battle--you can't stay Captain when most of your people are declaring mutany on both sides. ++It seems Akinola may become his deck boss--you may not like the deck boss, but he has enough support to be there. There is no "center" on a ship--you either choose mutany or loyalty. If His Grace wants our Church to chose exlusion for a "season" or permanently then we have to jump ship--our mutany will not take the ship or most of her crew. I don't have a problem with being Episcopal while mentioning as an aside that we were once in the ship named "the Anglican Communion".
We cannot develop a communion ecclesiology without becoming like the Latin Church--they are even having trouble holding it together under the leadership of the Pope--and the Eastern Orthodox are so divided into New and Old Calendarist Jurisdictions that unity is not possible for them. The Anglican project is also an experiment in what Dean Allen Jones of Grace Cathedral calls "the Catholic Church that hasn't happened yet." Indeed, the "Catholic Church" has not happened yet--we are just too human to let a divine reality manifest itself without tainting the process.
Unity needs division to clarify itself--like Orthodoxy needs heresy to state its position more clearly. To seperate for a season in order to procure greater visible unity, until the Anglican world has caught up, is a viable option. A traditionalist Catholic once told me that "the Episcopal Church is where the American Catholic Church will be in 50 years." We are a time capsule into the future Church--of course people will not accept our vision of the universe--just like at one time people laughed at science fiction writers who wrote that we would have light without gas and fire or missions to Mars. The Episcopal Church is a science fiction look into the human ecclesial destiny--one day everyone will say: "hey, remember when we used to say women cound't be priests and bishops or when gays and lesbians were not able to be partnered and bishops...funny isn't it?" The TEC is the Future Church--we are the Ekklesia of the 21st Century.
I realize Schori is still trying to hold the "centrist" view with nuances to the left occasionally in her speeches, and I also realize she wants to secure a place for women in Lambeth's future--but gay and lesbian mental health and social and spiritual stability is not lesser of a problem than world hunger and disease--It is not a bourgeois construct to develop a knowledge of one's sexuality.
The Church wants leadership and there is one way to do it with integrity: to own up to our baptismal ecclesiology rooted in the 1979 prayerbook and be honest that not only will we "refrain" from compromising that ecclesiology, but we will not tolerate a violation of that baptismal covenant by Global South Churches pushing truncated Evangelical Christianity or an idealised vision of Ango-Tridentine Catholicism down our throats. I was called in my baptismal covenant to "respect the dignity of every human being"--and I will be condemned by my conscience if I do not live that out. Amen.
In Christ,
Robert H.
Dear Mother Elizabeth:
ReplyDeleteI am humbled that you posted my response to this blog entry. My name is Robert Horwath and I am a member of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Sitka, Alaska going to Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, majoring in Religious Studies and Philosophy.
Ecclesiological issues in our Church have been on my mind for a long time. I think it is important since we are at such a kairos moment ecclesially, that we make the radical prophetic decision to assert our position.
Again, thank you!
Take care.
I ask your maternal blessing,
Sincerely in Christ,
Robert
Robert,
ReplyDeleteYou are a blessing of and to the church. I look forward to hearing from you.
Has there been any news yet about Davis Mac-Iyalla's safety? I have been in prayer about this, but have heard no updates. Has anyone heard anything?
ReplyDeleteThx!
Nothing about Davis, but I'm told that a good place to keep up with information about the situation in Nigeria is www.politicalspaghetti.blogspot.com
ReplyDelete