The Anglican Communion is tying itself into knots trying to square the circle of bigotry in the name of Christ. Poor dears, you have tried to do this impossible thing in the past. You supported slavery and fought very hard against women’s suffrage. Yes, there were primates of the Anglican Confession piously nattering about God’s will while Isobel Pankhurst was being force fed in prison. Well, Lambath Palace is behind history’s eight ball again and you are tut-tutting at the Episcopal Church of America just because we love weddings.
bigot: A person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions
Origin:Late 16th century (denoting a superstitious religious hypocrite): from French, of unknown origin. ( Oxford English Dictionary)
This definition is so clear and so damning. “A religious hypocrite.” The Church Temporal is that imperfect knowledge of Christ which lives in the world and history. The Church Temporal has preached and lied. It lied about the Jews thereby creating its greatest sin. It lied about slavery. And it lied about queers in all of its history.
First we must acknowledge that nobody in the Hebrew Scriptures cared about who women loved. There is not one statement or law about women loving women. And there is but one single verse about men loving men and that is Leviticus 18:22—”Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” That’s it, that’s all there is. There is no more about man love than there is about wearing blended fabrics (Deut. 22:11) or facial hair (Lev. 19:27). And yet the Church Temporal has made itself mad and cruel, so very cruel, on the subject of men loving men. What is the deal?
Why is homosexuality the worst thing that anyone in the Church Temporal can think of? Not slavery, not the subjugation of half the human population, but simply the love of man for man. And this pernicious bigotry is tearing at the very heart of the Anglican Communion. All that we in the Episcopal Church of America have done is to let loving, believing Christians get married. What, y’all don’t like marriage? No that’s not the problem. The problem is the British Empire and its aftermath. The problem is colonialism and overcompensating.
The Anglican Communion is embarrassed. It is embarrassed by its colonial history, the history of how it came to Africa and how it set its roots there, a foreign religion imposing itself on cultures it did not understand.
We in the Untied States know this song too well. We brought our fellow human beings to our shores in chains. We denied them the use of their languages and religions. We forced our faith on them. Yet that faith miraculously became their own, sustaining their lives and feeding their liberation.
I have no problem with evangelical religion. Evangelism sits at the heart of Christianity. Francis Xavier was perhaps the greatest evangelist after St. Paul. And he knew that to spread the Gospel one must know the culture to which it would be spread. He was the father of cultural anthropology. But the evangelical mission combined with empire is just bad for everybody. Send out the missionaries, but never support them with armies. We did it so many places and got it so wrong. Hawaii and the Presbyterian missionaries is only one example. The Bible supported by the Rifle did not work for us. And this is what the Anglican Communion is facing right now.
Dear Anglican Brethren, you know that anti-queer bigotry is real. And you know that it is not Christian. But you turn yourselves inside out to “accept cultural differences.” You are so afraid of offending your post-colonial nations that you won’t do the work of evangelism. Our job as Christians is to speak the truth of Christ and his Grace. Where there is hatred or denial we must sow love. Where the Church finds racism, it must fight it. Where it finds the hatred of women, be it cutting, plural marriage or the under-education of girls, the Church must fight it. This is our love and duty to Christ. As an evangelistic faith we have to preach to all the World. And sometimes, because of our long and dirty history, we have to address and take out the beam in our own eye.
Why the Anglican Confession and larger Church Temporal is so anti-queer is a question I cannot answer. What matters is that we can fix this sin. In my lifetime I have watched a very homophobic nation, my own, change to full equality. It’s not that hard to do and so much love can be taught. The father doesn’t need to piously deny his daughter or son. The mother doesn’t need choose between her child and her faith. These easy lessons can be taught to anyone. But, it seems, Lambeth Palace does not choose to do the work. Rather than lead the Anglican African churches to the love of all, it succumbs to colonial guilt. “I cannot tell you what to do now as I told you what to do in the past down the barrel of a gun.” Well folks that is the history of the Church Temporal. Just cowboy up and do your job of love.
Get over your Anglican selves. You have destroyed some of your very best: Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde (to mention only two) were ruined by this strange fear of man love.
Changing a theology that was wrong from its inception is not very hard. You can flail around and deny the Episcopal Church of America a seat at the governing table, but we will just go on our merry way and take our money with us. Or you can just admit that you are on the wrong side of history again. You can open your arms and hearts by letting loving faithful Christians get married. It really isn’t as hard as you think it is. Oh, and by the way, just to remind you, we did “open a big can of whoop ass on you at Yorktown.”
bigot: A person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions
Origin:Late 16th century (denoting a superstitious religious hypocrite): from French, of unknown origin. ( Oxford English Dictionary)
This definition is so clear and so damning. “A religious hypocrite.” The Church Temporal is that imperfect knowledge of Christ which lives in the world and history. The Church Temporal has preached and lied. It lied about the Jews thereby creating its greatest sin. It lied about slavery. And it lied about queers in all of its history.
First we must acknowledge that nobody in the Hebrew Scriptures cared about who women loved. There is not one statement or law about women loving women. And there is but one single verse about men loving men and that is Leviticus 18:22—”Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” That’s it, that’s all there is. There is no more about man love than there is about wearing blended fabrics (Deut. 22:11) or facial hair (Lev. 19:27). And yet the Church Temporal has made itself mad and cruel, so very cruel, on the subject of men loving men. What is the deal?
Why is homosexuality the worst thing that anyone in the Church Temporal can think of? Not slavery, not the subjugation of half the human population, but simply the love of man for man. And this pernicious bigotry is tearing at the very heart of the Anglican Communion. All that we in the Episcopal Church of America have done is to let loving, believing Christians get married. What, y’all don’t like marriage? No that’s not the problem. The problem is the British Empire and its aftermath. The problem is colonialism and overcompensating.
The Anglican Communion is embarrassed. It is embarrassed by its colonial history, the history of how it came to Africa and how it set its roots there, a foreign religion imposing itself on cultures it did not understand.
We in the Untied States know this song too well. We brought our fellow human beings to our shores in chains. We denied them the use of their languages and religions. We forced our faith on them. Yet that faith miraculously became their own, sustaining their lives and feeding their liberation.
I have no problem with evangelical religion. Evangelism sits at the heart of Christianity. Francis Xavier was perhaps the greatest evangelist after St. Paul. And he knew that to spread the Gospel one must know the culture to which it would be spread. He was the father of cultural anthropology. But the evangelical mission combined with empire is just bad for everybody. Send out the missionaries, but never support them with armies. We did it so many places and got it so wrong. Hawaii and the Presbyterian missionaries is only one example. The Bible supported by the Rifle did not work for us. And this is what the Anglican Communion is facing right now.
Dear Anglican Brethren, you know that anti-queer bigotry is real. And you know that it is not Christian. But you turn yourselves inside out to “accept cultural differences.” You are so afraid of offending your post-colonial nations that you won’t do the work of evangelism. Our job as Christians is to speak the truth of Christ and his Grace. Where there is hatred or denial we must sow love. Where the Church finds racism, it must fight it. Where it finds the hatred of women, be it cutting, plural marriage or the under-education of girls, the Church must fight it. This is our love and duty to Christ. As an evangelistic faith we have to preach to all the World. And sometimes, because of our long and dirty history, we have to address and take out the beam in our own eye.
Why the Anglican Confession and larger Church Temporal is so anti-queer is a question I cannot answer. What matters is that we can fix this sin. In my lifetime I have watched a very homophobic nation, my own, change to full equality. It’s not that hard to do and so much love can be taught. The father doesn’t need to piously deny his daughter or son. The mother doesn’t need choose between her child and her faith. These easy lessons can be taught to anyone. But, it seems, Lambeth Palace does not choose to do the work. Rather than lead the Anglican African churches to the love of all, it succumbs to colonial guilt. “I cannot tell you what to do now as I told you what to do in the past down the barrel of a gun.” Well folks that is the history of the Church Temporal. Just cowboy up and do your job of love.
Get over your Anglican selves. You have destroyed some of your very best: Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde (to mention only two) were ruined by this strange fear of man love.
Changing a theology that was wrong from its inception is not very hard. You can flail around and deny the Episcopal Church of America a seat at the governing table, but we will just go on our merry way and take our money with us. Or you can just admit that you are on the wrong side of history again. You can open your arms and hearts by letting loving faithful Christians get married. It really isn’t as hard as you think it is. Oh, and by the way, just to remind you, we did “open a big can of whoop ass on you at Yorktown.”
