July 6, 2008

Episcopalians: Frederick Clarkson Explains How Peter Akinola’s Homophobia is Destroying Your Church

We’re always interested in the off-again, on-again split in the American Episcopal church — not because we’re Episcopalians (we’re not), but because we’re fascinated and horrified by the revelation that a Christian denomination we considered relatively moderate could house so many members who are so rabidly anti-gay, they’d rather follow a Nigerian despot like Peter Akinola than work out their differences over the consecration of Eugene Robinson.

For some backstory, see:

If Only They’d Move to Uganda, Too
September 3, 2007

Just Give It Up and Split Already!
September 10, 2007

Anglican Church in Five Words: “Dying By A Thousand Cuts”
September 24, 2007

African Anglicans May Not Want Us Dead, But…
September 27, 2007

Anglicans Split! Finally! Hallelujah!
September 29, 2007

Desmond Tutu is the one person who doesn’t have to apologize to us. But he does anyway.
April 11, 2008

Also, if you haven’t checked it out already, do visit the blog Akinola, Repent (”Akinola, Repudiate Anti-Gay Violence”), which we’ve had in our blogroll for some time.

With that, we direct your attention to an excellent piece at Talk to Action, “A Problem Pastor Worse than Hagee: Peter Akinola,” which deserves to be read in full. An excerpt:

Peter Akinola is not exactly a household name, but he could well be the problem pastor of neo-conservatism. He is certainly less well known in the U.S. than John (”McCain threw me under the bus“) Hagee, but he is every bit as consequential.

He is the spiritual leader of thousands of Americans, including many Washington insiders who attend schismatic Episcopal churches that have placed themselves under his authority in recent years. He is Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, a cruel and ostentatiously anti-gay cleric and a driving force in the widening schism in the worldwide Anglican communion, who makes James Dobson seem liberal and Hagee a relative man of peace.

He is the embodiment of many people’s worst fears about the theocratic, authoritarian nature of the Religious Right. (See also here, for a recent example.)

That Americans of any political or religious orientation would choose this man as their spiritual leader is disturbing enough. But there is a still darker side of Akinola, one linked to an infamous massacre.

But before we get to that — a few words about some of the Akinola Anglicans.

Akinola Anglicans are represented in the United states in part by, and are closely aligned with the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a neoconservative strategy and action center that has waged a war of attrition against mainline Protestantism for a generation, primarily under the leadership of conservative Catholics and evangelicals; and is bankrolled by the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson, whose neoconservative and theocratic agendas are respectively opposed by the historic communions of mainline Protestantism. …

Further reading:

“Anglican Conservatives, Rebelling on Gays, Will Form New Power Bloc“
Dina Kraft and Laurie Goodstein, New York Times, June 30, 2008

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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