It is true that for many African church members and leaders homosexual behaviour is regarded as unnatural, not moral, not Christian, nor African. But this is also true of a large number of other traditional societies anywhere in the world who resist modern cultural pressures and seek to deal with them in their own way. Churches with their global communities and their willingness to assess traditional and cultural norms by transcendent divinely authorized Christian values and norms and by their partnership with the global church and drawing on the knowledge and resources of the global church are best placed to help African societies deal with the challenges of modernity in an African way, relating the best of their cultures, refining their cultures and rejecting those who would assault their cultural identity and integrity.
It is sad to see that some leaders of TEC who have advised this project have departed from this very tradition of support of Anglican churches in the non-Western world to negotiate their cultural challenges in which Anglican mission work along with Roman Catholics has been a leader. It raises the question of their motivation in promoting such an attack on the African Anglican Churches ”“ perhaps it is a backlash against the African Anglican Churches breaking communion with TEC. Far from going beyond colonialism, this report falls back into it by universalizing the local culture of the United States.
As Canon Sugden and Canon Samuel note: “[The report entitled ‘Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S.Conservatives, African Churches and Homophobia’] was by and large ignored by the U.S. media, but has appeared on the desks of officials in the aid and development sector. It’s purpose appears to be not to get media coverage but to influence Governments and Aid institutions. And it appear to be making some progress here.”
Oops… hit send button too soon.
The report appears to contain a number of major falsehoods, in particular the allegation that the anti-homosexual attitude in much of African society is a recent “neo-colonial” export from the west. That of course is what liberals like KJS want to believe.
Samuel and Sugden ask the rhetorical question:
[blockquote]If we cannot use universal arguments in western societies, how can they impose such arguments on other cultures?[/blockquote]
The ironic answer comes at the end:
[blockquote]Far from going beyond colonialism, this report falls back into it by universalizing the local culture of the United States.[/blockquote]
Seems like a classic example of CS Lewis’s definition of one kind of sin: taking good things too far. International concern for human rights is good as far as it goes, so long as the understanding of human rights is truly universal. Here, the Western universalizers are apparently saying (singing?): “[i]We[/i] are the world – get used to it!”