Marc Lacey/NYT NYT
Thursday, August 7, 2003

Anglicans may sever ties to U.S. church

NAIROBI Anglican church leaders across Africa, where homosexuality is widely scorned, denounced on Wednesday a decision installing an openly gay bishop in the U.S. Episcopal Church and predicted a schism in the global Anglican Communion unless the decision is overturned.

Quoting Scripture, angry church leaders from this conservative continent said their U.S. counterparts were deviating from the Bible by approving the Reverend Gene Robinson, who lives with his gay partner, as the bishop of the state of New Hampshire. Homosexuality, they said adamantly, is a sin that the church should do nothing to endorse.

"It's wrong and it's against the Bible," said the Reverend Joseph Mutie Kanuku, the bishop of the Machakos diocese east of Nairobi. "How can we go against God's words? Two men being joined is contrary to nature and contrary to the Bible."

African homosexuals remain closeted in all but South Africa, where there is somewhat more openness toward gays. African leaders regularly condemn homosexuality as a Western lifestyle choice that is being exported abroad.

"I'm not denying that it is here," Kanuku said. "But it's not in the open. It's taboo. It's against the teachings of the Bible, and we know it. Those who do it do it in shame."

Such anti-gay beliefs, common as well in Asia and South America, are difficult to ignore by a church that finds most of its growth in the developing world.

Acknowledging that some in the church are "gravely concerned" by the appointment of an openly gay bishop, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the world's 79 million Anglicans, urged restraint among the faithful.

"Difficult days lie ahead for the Anglican Church," Williams said in a statement Wednesday in London. "It is my hope that the church in America and the rest of the Anglican Communion will have the opportunity to consider this development before significant and irrevocable decisions are made in response."

The turmoil presents Williams with a huge crisis only months after his appointment.

He is regarded as a liberal among Anglicans, one who has argued for tolerance of homosexuality while adhering to traditional values. Last month, he moved to avoid a split in the Church of England by persuading a celibate gay priest, Jeffrey John, to turn down an appointment as bishop of Reading.

Some of the fiercest opposition to John's appointment came from Nigeria, where the archbishop of the 17.5 million-strong Anglican Church of Nigeria, the Most Reverend Peter Akinola, condemned the move. Akinola has been just as outspoken about the appointment of Robinson, calling for the severing of relations between his church and those dioceses that he believes are sanctioning sinful behavior.

In June, Akinola ordered his church to sever relations with the diocese of New Westminster in Canada after officials there ratified a liturgy for same-sex marriages and performed a marriage of a gay couple. The Nigerian church leader sent a letter to his members recently warning of the financial repercussions of their stand against homosexuality.

"This means that we must become self-reliant as a matter of urgency so that we will not only meet our own needs locally but also those of our poor African brethren who have long depended on handouts from the rich churches of the Western World," Akinola wrote.

Anglican bishops across Kenya, where there are more than 3 million church members, signed a letter of protest Wednesday against the appointment of Robinson. One of the signatories, Kanuku, said he planned to pray for the gay bishop and pray for the church as well.

"You in the West may not consider it a sin, but we in Africa do," he said by telephone. "We stand with the Bible. When we are wrong, those in the West should tell us. We are telling them this is wrong."

The bishop of the diocese that covers North Africa, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, the Reverend Mouneer Anis, portrayed the controversy as similarly grave.

"The Communion now faces a crisis over what holds us together and indeed whether we can remain together if we hold not merely adverse but contradictory views of the Scripture and what it teaches," he said, according to The Associated Press.

The opposition was just as fierce in Asia, where bishops said they may meet next week to discuss cutting ties with the 3.2 million members of the Episcopal Church USA. "Practicing homosexuality is culturally and legally not acceptable here," Bishop Lim Cheng Ean, leader of the Anglican Church of West Malaysia told The AP.

African church leaders are hoping their outspokenness toward Robinson's appointment will have the same effect as the earlier outcry against John. In his letter withdrawing his appointment, John said he was acting "in view of the damage my consecration might cause to the unity of the Church."

Some walk out of meeting

Episcopal conservatives protested the election of the denomination's first openly gay bishop by walking off the floor of their national legislative meeting Wednesday as they called on Anglican leaders worldwide to intervene in what they called a "pastoral emergency," The Associated Press reported from Minneapolis.

Some delegates turned in their convention credentials and left for home. Others refused to attend voting sessions.

Another group dropped to their knees and prayed as one of their leaders denounced Robinson's confirmation.