Why does Rowan Williams bow down before those belligerent African Anglican bishops and their conservative supporters who view homosexuality as “unnatural” and a “sin”? By doing so he is not only betraying the spiritual welfare of gay Anglican communicants but also undermining any claims his church has to be established asks Will Self in The Evening Standard, UK.
The Archbishop may assert that there is scriptural authority for the denial of equal opportunities to gay Anglicans, yet this is the same Old Testament fundamentalism that leads to denying the discoveries of Galileo or Darwin – not something he subscribes to at all. Besides, his is an explicitly political church – he owes his own appointment to a prime minister – and Britain is a nation where gay rights are enshrined in law, including the right to same-sex union. If Dr Williams wants his church to remain the official state religion in this country, he and his male bishops should get with the programme when it comes to the full recognition of women and homosexuals, instead of insisting that there be a moratorium on any further ordinations of openly gay priests, let alone – gulp! – women bishops.
But, most worryingly, the Archbishop’s position gives ammunition to those regimes where institutionalised homophobia and misogyny have truly tragic consequences. Two of the bishops who’ve been vocal in their lambasting of the liberals hail from Uganda and Nigeria, states where punitive laws against homosexuals are still on the statute book: a man was sentenced to death for being gay by sharia courts in northern Nigeria only last month
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