Rightwing alliance seen behind gay defeat

[06/08/98 - Madeleine Bunting - Web - http://reports.guardian.co.uk/articles/1998/8/6/14882.html]

Madeleine Bunting on 'new colonialism' linking developed and developing world 

Repent, repent, was the shout. "Repent of your sin. You have no inheritance in the Kingdom of God. You are going to hell. You have made yourself homosexual because of your carnality," shouted the Rt Rev Emmanuel Chukwumu, Bishop of Enugu in Nigeria. 

Sweat was pouring off his face as he continued his chant, "Repent, repent", to Richard Kirker, spokesman for the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.

"We have overcome carnality just as the light will overcome darkness.

"God created woman for man. You make yourself homosexual. God did not create you as a homosexual. That is our stand.

"That is why your Church is dying in Europe - because it is condoning immorality. You are killing the Church. This is the voice of God talking. Yes, I am violent against sin. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed."

Whenever Mr Kirker began to speak, Bishop Chukwumu raised his voice, while his wife echoed his comments with "Alleluia".

The vehemence of his outburst stunned the Lesbian and Gay Christians who were demonstrating with a banner outside the hall where the bishops were later to begin their debate on homosexuality.

One woman watching called out to a gay priest to show respect to the bishop. When he tried to reply, an African priest intervened, telling him not to talk to them: "We don't want our Church to be polluted."

The passionate intensity of the anti-homosexual lobby has stunned the organisers of the Lambeth Conference.

No one expected the African bishops to be interested - let alone, preoccupied - by the issue. In many of their countries, homosexuality is a taboo. In consultations prior to the conference, homosexuality was ranked seventh in importance, well behind international debt and relations between Christianity and Islam. But the conference has been dominated by homosexuality; it has found its way on to the agenda of virtually every section.

The anti-homosexual lobby commands a sizeable majority of the conference; the alliance includes conservative evangelicals from North America, Britain, New Zealand and Australia, well used to fighting this issue on their home territory, as well as bishops from South-east Asia and Africa.

There are persistent rumours that the anti-homosexual alliance has been mobilised and is being co-ordinated by American rightwing evangelicals. In return for funding meetings of bishops from the developing world in recent years, they have primed them with the importance of arresting the decline of the Church in the West caused by liberal decadence. It is claimed that American evangelical bishops promised to support a tough stand on international debt in return for the developing world bishops taking up the crusade against homosexuality.

If true, the "new colonialism" as it is described, has been an unequal trade, with homosexuality dominating the headlines, not debt.

For the evangelicals across the globe, homosexuality is so important because it is a litmus test of the authority of the Bible.

Is the Bible the literal word of God, or to be interpreted afresh in every generation? This question has dogged Christianity for hundreds of years.

Because homosexuality is explicitly ruled out in the Bible, it is potentially much more divisive than women priests ever was. Earlier in the conference, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the Vatican's representative here, warned that any softening of the position on homosexuality would seriously damage ecumenical relations between Anglicans and Catholics.

But the passionate anti-homosexuality is also home-grown in both Africa and South-east Asia. In Zimbabwe, homosexuality is illegal and gay rights activists have been imprisoned. Uganda, which has a large and growing Anglican Church of more than 8 million, is haunted by the memory of its first martyrs, killed when they refused to be sodomised by the King of Uganda in 1885 - one amendment yesterday specifically referred to them and warned the Church it would be committing "evangelical suicide" if it did not condemn homosexuality as a sin.

For many of the fast-growing churches in Africa and South-east Asia, any acceptance of homosexuality would open them up to a substantial loss of credibility at home. In states such as Nigeria and Singapore, Anglicanism is competing for souls with Islam but also with independent evangelical churches which would both exploit to the full the unpopularity of supporting homosexuality.

Among the many pamphlets on homosexuality being pressed on the bishops is one from a Singaporean priest living in Los Angeles who points out that homosexuality was accepted among Chinese, and that it was only under the British Empire they adopted the "Victorian Christian mores against homosexuality". The anti-sodomy laws in Singapore are a legacy of the British Empire.

Bishops supporting gay rights have become increasingly frustrated. The Rt Rev Jack Spong, Bishop of Newark in New Jersey, and an advocate of gay rights, described African Christianity as superstitious and close to witchcraft.