I N take thee M as my partner, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, and thereto I pledge thee my troth.

With this ring, I thee bind, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Reverend Martin Dudley married them, and says he did nothing wrong and would do it again. This is by far from being the first time that two Anglican priests have wed in church, but two things make this different.

Before 5th December 2005, there was no legal recognition of same-sex relationships in the UK. Civil partnership is legally different from marriage (primarily, it has a different name: but there are some small legal differences, too). But the differences are not big enough to make the legal recognition comfortable to the Church - indeed, it's hard to see what differences would be. In common parlance, civil partnership is regarded as gay marriage.

The other difference: past ceremonies were carried out in secret. The Church of England has never objected to having gay bishops and gay priests so long as they lie about their sexual orientation to the laity: but honest priests who make no secret of their sexual orientation are distrusted, and honest bishops are very nearly anathema. Secrecy, shame, and concealment make being gay or bisexual all right: honesty, openness, and unashamed love are what the Anglican Communion cannot bear.

Giles Fraser spoke in the BBC Thought for the Day on 18th June:

So what, then, is the Church of England's theology of marriage?

Back in the 16th and 17th centuries, as the Book of Common Prayer was being put together, marriage was said to be for three purposes:

First, it was ordained for the procreation of children. Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication. Thirdly, it was ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.

As Fraser notes, the Church of England does not bar mixed-sex couples from marrying who cannot have children, and makes no intensive inquiry into whether couples wed in church intend to "procreate".

Why, then, does the Church of England object to same-sex couples marrying? (The argument "marriage is about procreation" can only be taken seriously when consistently applied: when it is used to ban mixed-sex couples who cannot have children together.)

The Bishop of London takes the Rev Dudley's action very seriously: he has issued a public rebuke where he says:

The real issue is whether you wilfully defied the discipline of the Church and broke your oath of canonical obedience to your Bishop.

In short: Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, says the problem is not that God is homophobic; is not that Chartres himself is homophobic (Chartes claims that "homophobia is not tolerated" in his dioscese): the problem is "the discipline of the Church".

The problem is that 300 homophobic bishops are declaring that if the Anglican Communion continues to tolerate openly gay bishops and priests, instead of requiring a gay person who is ordained to be dishonest and live in the closet, they can no longer be part of the Anglican Communion: they will walk away from it.

As Haaretz reports:

Some 300 bishops - a third of the Anglican bishops in the world - arrived in Jerusalem this week to attend the Global Anglican Future Conference, organized by the traditionalist wing of the church, which is opposed to ordaining homosexual bishops. GAFCON is being staged as a rival to next month's Lambeth Conference in London, the Anglican Communion's main event held every 10 years.

GAFCON has drawn some 1,000 participants: bishops, clergymen, and activists from Anglican congregations in 28 countries, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria.

These people believe that God hates queers, and that the Episcopalian Church ought to enforce celibacy and lies on gay clergy. When an openly-gay priest was appointed to a bishopric in 2003, they went mad: when civil partnerships became law in the UK, and gay priests who had been living together for years or decades began cautiously to wed, they screamed. They know God hates where they hate, and they can't understand why the rest of the Communion can't see it.

I'm an atheist, and before I was an atheist I was a Quaker, which is fairly far removed from the angst and ceremony of the Anglican Communion. (In the UK, Quakers decided some years before civil partnership that if a same-sex couple wanted to marry in a Meeting for Worship, they should make application to their local Monthly Meeting, just as a mixed-sex couple would, and it would be up to that Monthly Meeting to say yes or no. This is a very Quakerly solution: unlike most other Christian sects, the Religious Society of Friends doesn't just say they believe in freedom of conscience, they work to ensure that all Friends do have freedom of conscience. There is no hierarchy, and there can be no demand for ritual obedience.)

So why do I care about the Anglican Communion? Well, in 1986, I made a friend whose friendship I still treasure, though he died nearly 16 years ago. For his sake, in his memory, I still go to the church where he was ordained a deacon, for midnight mass on Christmas Eve, and other times when it occurs to me. I even take communion, though I never did when he was alive: I used to tell him that as I had never been baptised, and had never been a communicant member of any Christian congregation (Quakers don't do baptism and don't do Holy Communion) I could not possibly take communion as part of a Church of England service. I wish he were still alive to argue with me about it. But he died, and so I eat the bread and drink the wine and remember my friend, who unfairly won the argument by leaving it. He had a partner: they were never married, of course, but "for the mutual society, help and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity" they were an admirable couple.

So I care. In a sense, of course, as an atheist and a believer in religious freedom, if Peter Akinola and his homophobic cohort wish to uphold their belief that God hates where they hate, I see no reason why they shouldn't - I would wish it otherwise, but Nigeria is one of the countries in Africa where gays are actively persecuted, and an Archbishop who believes that Christians ought to persecute and humiliate gays is simply going along with mainstream opinion in his country. It would take enormous courage and steadfast principle to oppose the violent mainstream even if Akinola believed that God is love, but there's no indication that Akinola is anything but sincere in his belief, shared with many other Christians, that God hates and the Church should enforce God's hatred.

In the UK, Christians arguing that they have a right to incite hatred are mainly arguing they should have the right to abuse and intimidate schoolchildren, not for a right to incite lynch mobs. It's easy for me, living in the UK, not a schoolchild, to say "This is a matter of religious freedom" because it is not my life or my wellbeing on the line.

Nevertheless, in a detached kind of way, if you don't look at or care about the homophobic violence (and the Archbishop of Canterbury prefers not to) the situation becomes:

One third of the Anglican Communion has decided it cannot tolerate the majority. They are threatening to leave, if the majority won't support their homophobic beliefs and persecute lesbians and gays as the minority believes we should be persecuted.

The Anglican Communion survives on tolerance - on accepting, however reluctantly, that within the Church of England there can be a diversity of belief and opinion. If a significant minority of that Communion now finds the tolerance of the majority intolerable, they should leave.

What they shouldn't do is blame the objects of their bigotry for their leaving. Akinola's complaints are chiefly directed at the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams: because Williams has failed to persecute the openly-gay priests and bishops of the Anglican Communion with the rigour that Akinola believes God wants. Williams and others like him seem to blame the victims for being there - for being open and honest and in love.

====
Update: Archbishops fail to condemn violence against lesbians and gays (Ekklesia)

At the press conference [for GAFCON] Iain Baxter of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) from the UK asked the Archbishops how they reconciled their faith with their support for jailing lesbian and gay people, which had led to cases of rape and torture.

He also asked why they had refused to speak out against such incidents which had taken place in their respective countries.

In response Archbishop Peter Akinola said that he was not aware of any such incidents anywhere in Africa. He also said he was unaware that anyone had been imprisoned for being gay or lesbian.

When given the example of a lesbian women from Uganda [Prossy Kakooza] who had applied for asylum in the UK after being jailed, raped in the police station, and marched for two miles naked through the streets of Uganda, Archbishop Akinola said: "That's one example. The laws in your countries say that homosexual acts, actions are punishable by various rules. I don't need to argue."

"If the practice (homosexuality) is now found to be in our society" he continued, "it is of service to be against it. All right, and to that extent what my understanding is, is that those that are responsible for law and order will want to prevent wholesale importation of foreign practices and traditions, that are not consistent with native standards, native way of life."

It's quite clear: for Akinola, God is hate. More on this later.

Well, I actually have no idea if he did or not. But if not, what in the name of David Livingstone does THIS statement by Akinola mean:

"I'm not out to combat anybody. I'm only doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I'm living my faith, practicing and preaching that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to God, and they respect me for it. They know where we stand. I've said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence."

Now I understand the Nigerian Church's moral position so much better! It seems to go like this: "Christianity has a monopoly on the truth. If you are not a Christian you are going to hell. Muslims say the same thing about their faith, so we both understand and respect each another's desire to kill one another. You Northerners just don't get it."

It gets better. Akinola's spokesman later said that Akinola's reference to violence quoted above involved a time in 2006 "when Nigerian Christians were being slaughtered because of some cartoons published in Denmark."

"The Western press should learn from the Danish cartoons saga that articles they publish, whatever the motive might be, can be responsible for the death of many innocent lives hundred of miles away," he said in conclusion.

So now, not only does Akinola bear no responsibility for the violence in 2004, apparently no one else in Nigeria is, either! It's the Danes! Now I get it.

Listen, I realize it's easy for me to write about this from the relative safety of my New York apartment. I have no idea what it is like to live in Nigeria and face death for my religious beliefs. But I do know this: the root of all religious violence is the claim of exclusivity, that your tradition has a monopoly on truth. If Peter Akinola, and all the other Anglican separatists in the world fear the Northern liberals because we have departed from this theology, one that invariably breeds violence, then we are well rid of one another. Well rid, indeed.

Maundy Thursday gets me every time.

This post started out as a mild mannered survey of what the Better Bloggers than Me of the world were writing about. However, it seems that hatemonger and Christ betrayer Peter Akinola's real motives and beliefs about Christianity are finally coming to hideous light with the story of his complicity, before or after the fact, in the massacre of Muslims in Nigeria. He is a militant Christian exclusivist and fundamentalist, and he must, at long last, be denounced, rather than hailed as the savior of the Anglican communion many have made him out to be.

This month's Atlantic Monthly features an article by Eliza Griswold that should leave no doubt in the minds of those who foolishly hold him as their spiritual leader that their allegiance to - and faith in - Falsebishop Peter Akinola has at long last been shown to be tragically misplaced. His role in the retributive religious violence that has marred his country is no longer in doubt - he condemns himself by his own words, and more so by his silence, regarding attacks by "Christians" against "Muslims" in his country.

Father Jake Stops the World continues to attempt to hold Archbishop Akinola accountable for, and demands an accounting of, his possible role in the alleged massacre of Muslims in Nigeria. He also calls on us all to get off our butts and do something about this. I have written the proper authorities, and hope you do the same.

Episcopal Cafe has the story in full as well, excerpting heavily from Griswold's article and calling on Akinola and all his supporters to answer fully the questions raised about his involvement in inciting murder and rape of Muslims in Nigeria.

It is past time for reasonable Anglicans around the world to stop and take stock of the morals and values of this man, and at long last to admit that they have hitched their wagon to a false prophet, whose motivations are power and whose refusal to obey the command of the Lord he purports to confess - to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God - should shame all who ever walked with him.

"...if there is a God in heaven it will do neither you nor your cause any good."
- Joe Welch, Counsel to the United States Army, denouncing Senator Joseph McCarthy's brutal witch hunts for alleged communists in the 1950's.

And so I throw my two cents into the pot.  It seems like there is a considerable amount of misunderstanding between the Episcopal Church and those of us who are in churches departed from the Episcopal church. We say that we believe the Bible to be true and our highest authority, and so what Paul calls sin we call sin. We will be the first to acknowledge our own many sins, and can not begin to judge any person - that is God's role. We do say, however, that if something is called sin in the Bible, we will not affirm that behaviour. We do not hate sinners, but we can't affirm that their sin is acceptable

What is heard, or at least what it seems like is being heard, is that since we will not affirm sin, we hate sinners and refuse to accept them as people. I quote a comment from josh on akinolarepent.wordpress.com

"We don’t care what your thoughts are, or your justifications; those positions aim to assert heterosexual superiority in every aspect of public life. And just like the old doctrine of white superiority, that’s profoundly bigoted and sinful."

The problem is that the argument is constantly leaving its roots and hitting side issues. Conservative Anglicans do not aim to fashion ourselves higher or better or superior to anyone. We simply can't accept homosexuality as something that is pleasing to God, not because we formed that opinion by ourselves, but because that is what we believe that Bible says - and the Bible is the chief authority in our thinking.

And frankly, you will find that in a lot of these churches, GLBT people will be much more accepted that not. I have been in two different AMiA churches, and both of them had open arms to anyone in their church. There was no hate directed at GLBT people. Instead there was enough love to not carte blanche accept their sin, but instead to help them through it. In fact, I wish that attitude was presented more thoroughly to my own sins, that they would be brought to light so I could change them.

I know I have offended enough people already, so I end with this: the gospel is not about acceptance and affirmation, but about repentance and transformation. (I know wordplay is cheesy, but I can't help myself...)

Nigerian Primate Peter J. Akinola (left) installed Bishop Martyn Minns (right) as leader of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America during a May 5 ceremony at the Hylton Memorial Chapel in Woodbridge, Virginia. The service drew comments from Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori who urged Akinola not to proceed with the installation.

_____________________________________________

Archbishop of Canterbury
Lambeth Palace, London

Sunday, May 6^th, 2007

My dear Rowan,

Grace and Peace to you from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus the Christ.

I have received your note expressing your reservations regarding my plans to install Bishop Martyn Minns as the first Missionary Bishop of CANA. Even though your spokesmen have publicized the letter and its general content I did not actually receive it until after the ceremony. I do, however, want to respond to your concerns and clarify the situation with regard to CANA. I am also enclosing a copy of my most recent letter to Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori.

We are a deeply divided Communion. As leaders of the Communion we have all spent enormous amounts of time, travelled huge distances - sometimes at great risk, and expended much needed financial resources in endless meetings, communiqués and reports – Lambeth Palace 2003, Dromantine 2005, Nottingham 2006 and Dar es Salaam 2007. We have developed numerous proposals, established various task forces and yet the division has only deepened. The decisions, actions, defiance and continuing intransigence of The Episcopal Church are at the heart of our crisis.

We have all sought ways to respond to the situation. As you well know the Church of Nigeria established CANA as a way for Nigerian congregations and other alienated Anglicans in North America to stay in the Communion. This is not something that brings any advantage to us – neither financial nor political. We have actually found it to be a very costly initiative and yet we believe that we have no other choice if we are to remain faithful to the gospel mandate. As I stated to you, and all of the primates in Dar es Salaam, although CANA is an initiative of the Church of Nigeria – and therefore a bonafide branch of the Communion - we have no desire to cling to it. CANA is for the Communion and we are more than happy to surrender it to the Communion once the conditions that prompted our division have been overturned.

We have sought to respond in a measured way. We delayed the election of our first CANA bishop until after General Convention 2006 to give The Episcopal Church every opportunity to embrace the recommendations of the Windsor report – to no avail. At the last meeting of the Church of Nigeria House of Bishops we deferred a decision regarding the election of additional suffragans for CANA out of respect for the Dar es Salaam process.

Sadly we have seen no such respect from the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church. Their most recent statement was both insulting and condescending and makes very clear that they have no intention of listening to the voice of the rest of the Communion. They are determined to pursue their own unbiblical agenda and exacerbate our current divisions.

In the middle of all of this the Lord’s name has been dishonoured. If we fail to act, many will be lost to the church and thousands of souls will be imperilled. This we cannot and will not allow to happen. It is imperative that we continue to protect those at most risk while we seek a way forward that will offer hope for the future of our beleaguered Communion. It is to this vision that we in the Church of Nigeria and CANA remain committed.

Be assured of my prayers.

Sincerely,

Signed,

The Most Revd. Peter J Akinola, CON, DD

Archbishop, Metropolitan and Primate of all Nigeria.

(Church of Nigeria News)