However, unless we are to succumb to cultural relativism, the proposed legislation cannot simply be ignored given its apparent support from a leading government minister, its incompatibility with Anglican teaching, its undermining of Anglican ministry and mission, and the danger it represents to many Anglicans and others in Uganda who are likely to face prosecution should it become law. We need therefore to:
*
Pray for David Bahati (the Bill’s sponsor) and the Minister for Ethics and Integrity (who is so supportive of it), for all those who will be involved in any Parliamentary discussion of it (due now in January 2010) and able to amend or defeat it, for all those who now feel even further threatened simply by its publication, and for all those in the Ugandan Church seeking to be faithful witnesses and salt and light in their country.

* Seek to understand more about what is happening and the wider context in Uganda eg most of us in this country would not know the answer to many, if any, of the following questions: (1) how likely is this to become law in its present form, what sort of amendments are realistically possibly, and what will happen if it does enter the statute book?, (2) how does it compare in terms of stringency and penalties to existing legislation in relation to other (hetero)sexual conduct viewed as wrong?, (3) what are the real social and criminal problems which it is a misguided attempt to address and how can they be better addressed? eg has there been a rise in sexual abuse of minors?, (4) is there any reason other than homophobic prejudice and scapegoating as to why the bill and signficant political leaders are particularly targeting homosexual people?, (5) how widespread are the attitudes the bill represents within Ugandan church and society and how can the Christians there and elsewhere in the Communion best reform that culture and its laws?, (6) how is the Church of Uganda ministering to GLBT people?, (7) what are the real threats to marriage and family life in Uganda that this bill claims to be responding to?

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England – the people in the United States known as Episcopalians – is in a terrible bind. Talk about “dithering.” The current Archbishop, a certain Reverend Rowan Williams, is stalling for time; which, of course, is a sign that he doesn’t know what to do. His problem is that the more conservative Anglicans or Episcopalians, especially the Africans, say they will leave the Church, known among Church types as the Lambeth Communion, unless the Archbishop disciplines the Americans, who have – horror of horrors – ordained a Gay Bishop and also, equally scandalous from their point of view, tolerate women priests. The Americans, on the other hand, are having none of the African stuff. They say, in effect, that if the Archbishop does something they don’t like, THEY will cut and run.

So, the Reverend Williams dithers. He stalls for time. I, of course, follow all of this stuff, but having grown up Baptist – people who are all too familiar with splits – I am not as sympathetic with the Archbishop’s plight as might be desired. In the U.K. I frequently suggest to my Anglican friends that splitting is not necessarily a bad thing. First there is one church, then two, then four, then eight, and so on. They don’t like that at all. Nor, of course does the Archbishop. His problem is simple: The Africans have the numbers and the Americans have the money. What a mess.

Read it all.

The offer has raised questions whether it will not weaken the status of the Anglican church and reopen the issue of celibate priesthood for the Catholics. Kenyan clergy and scholars argue that the Pope’s move may not augur well for conservative Catholics who view the Apostolic Constitution as a dilution of the traditional Catholic doctrines.

Conservative Anglicans may, however, find the offer appealing as a way of sidestepping the controversies occasioned by the consecration of gay bishops and ordination of female priests. “There is necessity to prepare the Catholic clergy to avoid mass exodus as happened in 1963,” said Father Stephen Mbugua, an Egerton University chaplain.

ACK Archbishop Eliud Wabukala has rejected the papal offer arguing it was ill-timed. But he faces opposition from within as some of his bishops say there is nothing wrong with it. “I do not see why it is necessary at this point in history,” Archbishop Wabukala told the Sunday Nation on the phone.

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Since the Vatican launched its bold bid Tuesday to make it easier for Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church, the question on everyone’s mind has been: How many will convert?

Will the much ballyhooed Anglican divide over the Church’s moves to accept openly gay and female clerics now cause hundreds of thousands of conservative Anglicans ”“ mostly in Africa and parts of the US ”“ to flock to Catholicism?

Early indications from African bishops are that most Anglicans, despite their fierce opposition to homosexuality, will be saying “thanks but no thanks” to Rome’s new offer, largely because of the autonomy that they enjoy within the Anglican church.

“I don’t think that priests in Uganda are going to leave and join the Roman Catholic church,” says Bishop Stanley Ntagali, head of an Anglican diocese in the east African country of Uganda. “Uganda is [already] a separate region from the Church in Canterbury. They are able to do things their way, and we have to do things our way.”

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People on very low incomes in the developing world may soon be able to access health insurance thanks to the Anglican Health Network (AHN).

Based in Geneva, AHN announced 6 October that it will establish a new pilot project to test the concept of providing a ‘micro health insurance plan’ in an African setting. The AHN was established at the Anglican Consultative Council meeting in May, 2009. Its key ambition is to support Anglican health providers to improve health care in the developing world.

“In an era when faith communities have been rediscovered as key health services providers, we are pleased to be leading this innovative approach to low income health care” said the Rev Paul Holley, President and Co-founder of AHN.

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The Catholic population of Africa has shot up from 1.9 million in 1900 to almost 165 million today, and more than 40 per cent of all adult baptisms in the world take place in Africa.

During the synod’s opening liturgy, which featured more Latin and Gregorian chant than African languages and hymns, the Pope blamed the “so-called First World” for continuing to “export its spiritual toxic waste” to the continent.

“In this sense, colonialism, which is over at a political level, has never really entirely come to an end,” he said in a lengthy homily delivered entirely in Italian.

Read it all.

Update: The Catholic Herald has a lot more here.

Together we thank the Good and Merciful God for the many gifts bestowed on the Church in Africa which are placed at the service of all, especially the poorest of the poor and the most in need. In particular, we give thanks for its great dynamism witnessed in the following statistics.

In a world population of 6,617,097,000 inhabitants, the number of Catholics is 1,146,656,000, that is, 17.3%. However, the percentage in Africa is higher. In fact, out of 943,743,000 inhabitants, the number of Catholics is 164,925,00, namely 17.5%. This figure is very significant if one considers, for example, that, in 1978, at the beginning of the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, the number of African Catholics was about 55,000,000. In 1994, the year in which the First Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops was held, the number was 102,878,000 faithful, that is, 14.6% of the population in Africa.

In that same period, we also have a significant increase in the number of vocations to the priesthood and the consecrated life. In fact, thanks be to God, a consistent increase is witnessed in all sectors, particularly among Christ’s faithful: bishops, priests, deacons, men and women in the consecrated life and committed lay people, among whom catechists occupy an important place. This is proven in a comparison of statistical data from 1994 with that of 2007.

Read it all–it is not short but there is much interesting material to learn from.

Before Benedict XVI offered the synodal fathers points for reflection, the participants gathered in the Synod Hall in Vatican City to sing the hymn “Veni, Creator Spiritus” (Come, Holy Spirit).

After the intonation to the Holy Spirit, the Pontiff noted: “We just began our synodal encounter by invoking the Holy Spirit and knowing that we can’t do in this moment all that is needed to be done for the Church and the world: Only with the strength of the Holy Spirit will be able to find what is right so as to apply it later.”

Speaking of the action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope explained that it is only with that force that the Church can continue its work, and with his invocation, he prays that Pentecost be not only an event from the past but that it be recreated here and now.

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Elected to take up the leadership of the Church of Christ (Anglican Communion) by March 25 next year, the Primate-elect Archbishop Nicholas Okoh has already started drawing media attention. On Monday, September 28, he was widely reported as speaking out powerfully against the country’s rulers.

Okoh, speaking in Abuja, the nation’s capital, on the country’s independence, berated Nigeria’s leaders for the plight of the country, cautioning that unless they mended their ways, the country would remain stagnant.

Providing more details, he said unless leaders of the country change their attitude, have the fear of God, shun thuggery, ballot box snatching, political assassinations and treasury looting, that Nigeria would remain backward, “even if it celebrates its 1,000-year anniversary.”

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U.S. and international officials say the situation in Sudan’s war-torn region of Darfur is improving, but that is little comfort to Darfuris, who have a very different perspective. The situation in Darfur now may not qualify as war, but many say it doesn’t look like peace, either.

The outgoing commander of the international peacekeeping force in Darfur, Nigerian Gen. Martin Agwai, said in late August that the war there is essentially over. The new U.S. envoy to the region, Scott Gration, says he has noticed encouraging changes as well.

Gration says the fighting has lessened significantly between militias loyal to the Sudanese government and rebel groups. The war that has reportedly killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions is now dormant.

Read or listen to it all.

[Martin Luther] King…had this to say in 1968 about anti-Zionism at Harvard University: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews; you are talking anti-Semitism.”

Today, Gandhi’s influence is still keenly felt globally. Yet it is interesting to note that India today rejects its spiritual founder’s worldview. A nuclear power, it has adopted Israel’s approach to threats from suicide bombers and other terrorists.

So with all due respect to Tutu, Israel and the Jewish people are clear about the lesson of the Holocaust: that never again will the destiny of our people be placed in the hands of others. For 2,000 years, Jews depended on pity; they had no land and no army, and what they got in return were inquisitions, pogroms and the Nazi genocide. The Holocaust also taught us that freedom and justice come to those who are prepared to fight for them.

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Three ugly developments in Africa have weakened its case on the eve of a G-20 summit at which the continent will seek attention from the world’s economic and financial leaders.

What Africa will want is financial help to soften the blow from the recession. Africa is perhaps the part of the world least able to sustain the setback. Its countries are feeling the effects of the downturn and their governments have few, if any, resources to put into economic stimulus packages.

Their case will be appealing but Africa is hard to help, to some extent because of what it does to itself or, more precisely, what its leaders do. Three recent cases are examples….

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In a kind of high-level pen pal relationship, theologians from six African dioceses are now exchanging essays about sexuality with theologians from four Canadian dioceses. Dr. Kawuki (Isaac) Mukasa, General Synod’s coordinator for dialogue, paired up dioceses during two trips to Africa, including visits to South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda from July 31 to Aug. 21.

Mr. Mukasa, a native Ugandan, considers this work essential to improving communication within the Anglican Communion, which is divided over the place of gays and lesbians in the church.

In Canada, the dioceses of Niagara and New Westminster have agreed to bless same-sex unions, and several other Canadian dioceses are considering following suit. Most African Anglican churches are conservative on the issue.

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A devastating drought is sweeping across Kenya, killing livestock, crops and children. It is stirring up tensions in the ramshackle slums where the water taps have run dry, and spawning ethnic conflict in the hinterland as communities fight over the last remaining pieces of fertile grazing land.

The twin hearts of Kenya’s economy, agriculture and tourism, are especially imperiled. The fabled game animals that safari-goers fly thousands of miles to see are keeling over from hunger and the picturesque savanna is now littered with an unusually large number of sun-bleached bones.

Ethiopia. Sudan. Somalia. Maybe even Niger and Chad. These countries have become almost synonymous with drought and famine. But Kenya? This nation is one of the most developed in Africa, home to a typically robust economy, countless United Nations offices and thousands of aid workers.

The aid community here has been predicting a disaster for months, saying that the rains had failed once again and that this could be the worst drought in more than a decade. But the Kenyan government, paralyzed by infighting and political maneuvering, seemed to shrug off the warnings.

I caught this one coming home last night on the plane. Read it all and look at that remarkable picture.

Above all, the crisis in church and state has invited everyone to deepen their faith and to rediscover the prophetic symbolism of the broken bread and wine at the heart of the Christian shared meal, in the presence of the one whose sacrifice enacts and enables real justice to be both seen and done. That may sound like pious old hat in a west so over-secularised it can’t see the cross for the trees. But in Zimbabwe, the shared reality of Jesus Christ is helping a whole nation to transcend tyranny. I found myself using as a prayer this short hymn, which a distinguished friend of mine, David Isitt, a former chaplain of King’s College, Cambridge, and canon of Bristol, wrote to help people grasp this hope of transformation.

Lord, we receive /Your body and your blood /And claim communion /in one bond of love. In faith and hope /For all your world we plead, /Where hungry children /Cry for want of bread. Take in your hands /Once more, O Lord of Life, /This broken bread, /this cup of sacrifice. So shall the world /In mercy find relief; /Your children make their /Eucharist in peace.

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Kenya’s coalition government has lost the confidence of its people and must go, the National Council of Churches of Kenya said on July 31 after the government reneged on its pledge to bring to justice those responsible for the 2007 post-election violence that led to the deaths of 1,500 people and the displacement of 300,000 others.

In a statement published on its website and distributed to the media by the group’s chairman, the Rev Canon Peter Karanja, the NCCK said the government’s decision to drop a special tribunal to “try the suspected perpetrators of the post-election violence is the greatest betrayal of the people of Kenya.”

President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga had “failed to protect justice” and “in the face of such betrayal, Kenyans must resoundingly put across a strong message that the moral authority of the grand coalition government to govern has been grossly undermined.”

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The Nigerian bishops’ conference is calling for a new beginning so as to save the country from “collapse” in the wake of recent violence.

This was affirmed in a statement distributed Thursday by the Nigerian Catholic Secretariat, signed by Father Louis Odudu, the deputy secretary general.

The statement responded to a wave of violence that claimed hundreds of lives and displaced thousands in the north of the country.

The confrontation began Sunday when a fundamentalist Islamic group called “Boko Haram” staged a raid on a police station in an effort to establish a Taliban-style regime based on a strict observance of Shariah law.

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A week of brutal violence in northern Nigeria has spurred questions over whether an obscure homegrown religious fundamentalist group represents a broader threat to national security in Africa’s most populous nation.

More than 800 people were killed last week during fighting between an Islamic fundamentalist group calling itself Boko Haram, and Nigerian security forces. The clashes spread across several northern states.

A Red Cross worker in the northern city of Maiduguri, where most of the fighting occurred, said that 780 bodies had been collected in the past few days, and that at least 3,600 Maiduguri residents had been displaced. Officials in Bauchi, where the violence began, had earlier confirmed more than 50 deaths.

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Public hearings over Kenyan constitutional reforms lead to a shouting match and police intervention last week in Mombasa. The role of Sharia law within Kenya’s civil code prompted sharp disagreements between the Anglican Bishop of Mombasa, the Rt. Rev. Julius Kalu and Sheikh Khalifa Mohammad, chairman of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya (CIPK).

The push for constitutional reform in Kenya began in the early 90’s, but took on added intensity following the 2007 elections, that sparked communal violence in what had been one of Africa’s “model democracies”.

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Crime in South Africa is commonly portrayed as an onslaught against the wealthy, but it is the poor who are most vulnerable: poor people conveniently accessible to poor criminals. Diepsloot, an impoverished settlement on the northern edge of Johannesburg, has an estimated population of 150,000, and the closest police station is 10 miles away.

To spend time in Diepsloot over three weeks is to observe the unrelenting fear so common among the urban poor. Experts point to the particularly brutal nature of crime in this country: the unusually high number of rapes, hijackings and armed robberies. The murder rate, while declining, is about eight times higher than in the United States.

In Diepsloot, people usually bear their losses in silence, their misfortune unreported and their offenders unknown. If a suspect is identified, victims usually inform quasi-legal vigilante groups or hire their own thugs to recover their property.

This ran on the front page of Tuesday’s New York Times. It is a sobering account of just some of the plight of the urban poor globally. Read it all–KSH.

“I have to tell you about Maggy,” my colleague said excitedly. He was just back from Africa, and I was eager to hear about his work and his meeting with 100 Christian leaders from east-central Africa. But he wanted to talk about Maggy.

“Love made me an inventor,” Marguerite “Maggy” Barankitse had told several of my colleagues with a sparkle in her eye. The more she talked, the more my colleagues wanted to see her Maison Shalom (House of Peace). They arranged to travel from Bujumbura to Ruyigi, the city in Burundi where Maggy lives.

Maggy’s story goes back 15 years to the civil war in Burundi…

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(ACNS) The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has issued a statement in support of today’s ”˜Sudan Day of Action’ which calls for a renewed commitment to sustainable peace in Sudan. The Sudan Day of Action, organised by Baroness Cox and the Sudan Action Group, aims to raise awareness for the desperate plight of the people of Sudan.

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The fight against corruption in Africa’s most pivotal nations is faltering as public agencies investigating wrongdoing by powerful politicians have been undermined or disbanded and officials leading the charge have been dismissed, subjected to death threats and driven into exile.

“We are witnessing an era of major backtracking on the anticorruption drive,” said Daniel Kaufmann, an authority on corruption who works at the Brookings Institution. “And one of the most poignant illustrations is the fate of the few anticorruption commissions that have had courageous leadership. They’re either embattled or dead.”

Experts, prosecutors and watchdog groups say they fear that major setbacks to anticorruption efforts in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya are weakening the resolve to root out graft, a stubborn scourge that saps money needed to combat poverty and disease in the world’s poorest region. And in Zambia, a change of leadership has stoked fears that the country’s zealous prosecution of corruption is ebbing.

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Sudan is in real danger of sliding back to war, according to the head of the Anglican Church in the Eastern African nation.

On Monday, Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, Primate of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, wrote a passionate letter to representatives of the international community in the country appealing for their increased support for implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended the civil war in 2005.

He said he had recently toured many parts of South Sudan and witnessed first-hand the suffering of the people due to growing insecurity.

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“What would you say to someone who is hesitant to invest in Sudan’s schools or health clinics given the likelihood that violence will return to Sudan?” My colleague was addressing Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul of the Episcopal Church of Sudan during a Lambeth roundtable on the church’s needs in his country. Archbishop Deng replied, “It is only by building schools and health clinics and supporting sustainable agriculture that we will have a chance that peace will come at last in Sudan.”

My colleague expressed what many of us were thinking. We worry about investing in infrastructure that may be destroyed by the violence of militias; we wanted reassurances. Yet Deng’s response was compelling. He pointed to the significance of visible institutions that form and support Christian leadership and care, thus bearing witness to God’s healing, redemptive love. He knows his people need them.

I found my heart breaking as I talked with Sudanese leaders who told stories of recurrent violence and of battalions mobilizing in violation of the fragile peace agreement. Would elections be held as planned? What would make the most sense in the face of so much violence?

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Today Rwanda is a much different place thanks, in part, to this man””Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana

Bishop JOHN RUCYAHANA (Chairman, Prison Fellowship Rwanda): People are smiling because they have the hope, but the wounds and the healing is a process that we’ll continue to engage deliberately to tell people that they just can’t cover it up. We need to be able to unearth it and deal with it head on.

[LUCKY] SEVERSON: That’s what the bishop has been preaching from the pulpit of his beautiful church in northern Rwanda since the killing stopped: deal with it head on. And it was personal for him. How could it not be after so many members of his extended family were murdered, including his niece?

Bishop RUCYAHANA: I have forgiven those who killed my niece, and they peeled off the flesh off her arms to the wrist, and they left bare bones, and they gang-raped her, and I forgive them because forgiving is not only benefiting the criminal, it benefits me.

Read or watch it all.

This month, as Rwanda marks the 15th anniversary of its genocide, an Anglican church in the Triangle is trying to glean lessons from the aftermath of the mass killings.

All Saints Church has good formal reasons to undertake the study. From a denominational standpoint, it is part of the Anglican Mission in America, which is overseen by the Anglican Church of Rwanda.

The congregation, formed in 2005, also has a sister parish relationship with a church in the southern Rwandan city of Butare.

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JN:

What is the nature of the moral challenge they face?

ABC:

Commitments have been made. The Millennium Development Goals I think provided a really important focus over the last few years for the responsibility of the developed nations to the less developed ones. This is no time to think of alibis for that because there is no economic problem that is just local in our world. We’ve already seen growth rates slowing down in Africa. It’s estimated that perhaps as many as over 50 million people could be in absolute poverty in the next few years – so I think that has to be at the top of the list this week.

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(ACNS) ‘Continuing exaggerated weather patterns across Southern Africa are a further illustration of the urgent need to tackle global warming’ Archbishop Thabo Makgoba said on Tuesday, calling for swift and decisive global action on climate change.

Speaking in the week before the G20 summit, the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town said ‘We have had enough of talking. The international community cannot continue to prevaricate while countries like ours are increasingly suffering inestimable human cost, in deaths, displacement, and the destruction of livelihoods. Northern Namibia is experiencing the worst flooding in decades, as is Southern Angola. This year has already seen serious storms, flooding and loss of life in Gauteng and Kwa-Zulu Natal in South Africa, as well as in Mozambique, where we are told we should expect further flooding, while other parts of the country suffer extensive drought.’

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[BOB] ABERNETHY: But this condom thing, that was not an accident. I mean, all questions for the pope on his plane must be submitted in advance, in writing. So he knew what he was going to be asked?

Mr. [KEVIN] ECKSTROM: Exactly. I mean, they knew exactly what they were getting into on this one. And it always makes you wonder if they were actually trying to make some news out of this. You know, the pope’s trip to Africa was news before he even landed in Cameroon.

ABERNETHY: It was, as you said, very successful. He encouraged the Catholics in Africa?

Mr. ECKSTROM: Right. I mean, this is a growing, thriving part of the church that the pope sort of wanted to see and almost needs to see. He’s been decrying this dictatorship of relativism in Europe in sort of an anemic church. And you go to Africa and they can’t fit enough people into the churches. They can’t ordain enough pastors for all the people. It’s a rapidly growing part of the church, and I think there’s a bit of an energy boost for both sides there.

Read it all.