One of the aspects of the sexuality debate in the Anglican Communion which has fascinated me is that of the differing attitudes of the various provinces in Africa.
My basic area of study was that of political and economic geography at a time when the department at Queen’s Belfast was under the genius and enthusiasm of Eystn Evans. Eystn was a human geographer. He more so than anyone else shaped my views in this area. Incidentally, his main text for his lectures on nomadic societies and the culture clash with sedentary societies centring on a fertility cycle was the Old Testament.
Identity, he posited, is a combination of environment, heritage, culture, determinism versus possibilism, and culture clashes brought about by war and/or colonialism, and/or prosletisation. With colonialisation came the victors’ religion. Roman Catholicism with the French, Portuguese and Spanish. Dutch protestantism with the Boers, and Anglicanism with the Brits, with a touch of Presbyterianism affecting countries from Malawi to China.
The African scenario as far as Anglicanism is concerned centres on the endeavours of various missionary societies which exported their own brand of Anglicanism. The geographic areas which were at the receiving end of these various missionary societies’ endeavours with their differing emphases, are fairly accurately reflected today in the varying stances and attitudes of the African provincial areas in which these societies were/still are most active.
Is it fair to say that where the more literal approach was taken to Scripture, there is today a church which will not permit any form of concession to homosexuality? And are these also the parts of Africa where the bishop or archbishop can assume a power which is de facto unquestioned? He is the chief and in some parts any church organisation, such as the MU, which wishes to operate there, must do business solely with him or his nominee regardless of the organisations own structures. I fully understand that in some areas it is said that Islam would attempt to undercut the church were it to appear to tolerate homosexuality – but there are those claiming to be Christian in Ireland, some say especially in the north, who would be as intolerant as some Islamic fundamentalists.
I have long had a specific interest in South Africa, having met Bishop Trevor Huddleston when I was a teenager, and when he was one of the most effective witnesses against apartheid. The Mirfield Community through Bishop Trevor and other brothers changed the direction of South Africa. Desmond Tutu states that he only began to take Christianity and the Church seriously when for the first time ever, he saw a white man lift his hat to his mother. That man was Trevor.
Archbishop Desmond has been a fearless confronter of cant and ill-liberal behaviour and attitudes. About thirty years ago I was present in New York when the US government prised him out of house arrest to visit there. I heard him at a conference denounce Nigerian diplomats who were present for their country’s continuing sale of oil to South Africa despite international trade embargoes. Having read most his work and met him a couple of times since then, I still am influenced by his vision, compassion and integrity.
On the current area of discussion, Archbishop Desmond has made no secret of his views. In his foreword to “Sex, Love and Homophobia”, a publication by Amnesty International, he commented on the shameful treatment worldwide of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. “We treat them as pariahs and push them outside our communities, he wrote. “We make them doubt that they too are children of God – and this must be nearly the ultimate blasphemy. We blame them for what they are.”
On the subject of gay marriage, he stated, “Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act – the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?”
It is an unavoidable question. As it is said, “Your starter for ten”.
Houston McKelvey
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