An Anglican bishop in Zimbabwe, who asked not to be identified, said homosexuality is a “sin” and urged gay and lesbian people to “repent”. Pressed for comment, the right reverend of the Anglican Church in Lusaka, Derek Kamukwamba, said the church was engaged in “dialogue” to come up with a position on the issue.
He then described American Anglicans, who ordained Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in 2003, as “stubborn and arrogant”. Kamukwamba said stubbornness was “pushing people like Nzimbi” to consecrate anti-gay bishops. “We will not receive any gay priest in Zambia,” he pointed out.
Bernard Malango, the Anglican bishop for Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Botswana, described the consecration of Robinson as bringing “darkness, disappointment, sadness and grief” to the parishioners in his province.
Trevor Mwamba, the Anglican bishop of Botswana, when asked whether more US clerics would be coming to Southern Africa to be consecrated, said, “I hope not”.
Mwamba recalled the positions reached at the Lambeth Conference of 1998, which recognised that there are people “who experience themselves as having a homosexual orientation”. This conference decreed that the church commit itself to “listen to the experience of homosexual persons”.
While it rejected “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture”, it called “on all our people to minister pastorally and sensitively to all irrespective of sexual orientation and to condemn irrational fear of homosexuals”.
The conference, though, could not “advise the legitimising or blessing of same sex unions nor ordain those involved in same-gender unions”.
The article started with giving Kenyan Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi the wrong first name and it went downhill from there. It is so poorly written and so blatantly biased that one hardly knows where to start in commenting on it. An example of poor journalism.