12/05/2007

News from the Rwanda Front...Kolini speaks Peace, means War

Archbishop of Rwanda, Emmanuel Kolini, is reported in The New Times, to say, "“We are reformed Anglicans who want to adhere to the original creeds of the Bible, and that’s why our church has decided to ignore the 2008 Lambeth Conference because it has not done much to fight homosexuality in the communion."

Given that the reporter might have taken some liberties with sentence construction, the statement nonetheless stands as yet another affirmation that Rwanda intends not to be at Lambeth. (Thanks to Mad Priest for the connection to this.)

The construction "the original creeds of the Bible," is telling. Does the Archbishop of Rwanda seriously believe that there are "original creeds of the Bible"?

The reporter writes, "Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini has called on churches in the East African region to fight against homosexuality for the good of the society."

The leader of the Province of the Anglican Church of Rwanda insisted that Anglican churches in East Africa will not mingle with the homosexuals in the affairs of the church for the good of the community."

The article continues, "The Anglican Church of Rwanda has been at the forefront in evangelisation and peace building in the world.

The church is known to have given sanctuary to 130 American churches that departed from the Episcopal Church of America after the consecration of gay bishops and pastors.
The 130 American churches operate under the auspices of the Province of the Anglican Church of Rwanda under the banner of “Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMIA).”

The Archbishop, speaking at a Peace Crusade, is given credit for being "at the forefront in evangelisation and peace building." I presume the examples of AMiA activities are meant to support the proposition that Archbishop Kolini is a peacemaker. Since when is peacemaking accomplished by invasion and usurpation without any contact or engagement with Christians in place?

Archbishop Kolini seems to be making peace by making war. An odd bit of doublespeak.

Then of course he may not have said any of this. Perhaps the reporter got it wrong. If so, where is the Archbishop's demand that there be a retraction?

As it is he sounds either theologically ungrounded or prideful. He is (at least in my memory) neither. But his statement about the original creeds of the Bible is sloppy and his touting of the Church of Rwanda as in the forefront of evangelisation and peace building is a little much.

The trouble with about this and other news items from various papers in Africa is that they stand as the record unless the church is willing to recast, restate or repudiate the report. Worse, as part of the national and cultural efforts to align Government and Church together, thus making the Government look good and the Church look cooperative, around the bugaboo of homosexuality, these news articles serve the interests of the state and church both to further themselves at the expense of those terrible homosexuals.The result, as Mad Priest suggests, is the time when it can be said, "What Homosexuals? They killed them all." Then the Church of Rwanda and the Government can say, "See, we did good."

This is brewing hatred in ways that are counter to everything we believe as Anglicans, or ought for that matter to believe as Christians, or both.


13 comments:

  1. "Then the Church of Rwanda and the Government can say, "See, we did good."

    ...until the next generation. Then what? More hatred, more fear, more suspicion, more confusion and suffering. Clearly the fruit of the spirit.

    God grieves.

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  2. According to the Code Duello, as the challenged party we get to pick the weapons.

    Like I said on my blog, I choose hugs.

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  3. Reminds me of the good Christian mayor of a town in which my spouse was working for a shelter for homeless men. The mayor and the police would respond, "We don't have any homeless here." One day they said, "We don't have any homeless here, and if one shows up, we show him the way out of town." Fr. Jake has a link to an article by Martin Smith calling for less invisibility and more speaking out on the part of LGBT persons. Time for more presence and noise, rather than less.
    Lois Keen

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  4. Don't quote madpriest. He recently put an obscenity into the mouth of Almighty God in a cartoon and publishes similar pornography regularly. As for homosexuals, the most demonic of ideas is that we're doing them a favor by legitimizing that behavior. It's really the most narrow-minded of positions, because for every one that is partnered FAITHFULLY, there are a thousand courting emotional and medical turmoil through a constant succession of relationships. We have to look at the big picture in another way. The social problem that correlates the most closely with all the others is family breakup resulting in the loss of fathers. Support for homosexuality is just one of the errors that is symptomatic of reduced support for the intact family.

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  5. Perhaps, Anonymous, you should have some actual knowledge of the people of who you speak, as I don't see how smearing gays is helping us either.

    By the by, you do know that your description

    . . for every one that is partnered FAITHFULLY, there are a thousand courting emotional and medical turmoil through a constant succession of relationships.

    accurately describes the heterosexual community, don't you? It is that, from the heterosexual community that has devalued the family, not gays, gay marriage, or gay adoption.

    Work on your own house and stop taking the lazy way out of the problems you heteros have by blaming it on us.

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  6. Anonymous, you wrote:

    ...for every one that is partnered FAITHFULLY, there are a thousand courting emotional and medical turmoil through a constant succession of relationships...

    I would take this more seriously if you could actually cite a factual basis for this assertion and if it were not true of heterosexuals as well. I fail to see why not allowing faithful, partnered GLBT folks to have their unions blessed does anything but perpetuate that "constant succession of relationships." The Episcopal Church has set out monogamy and fidelity as the norm for ALL relationships (in 2000, I believe).

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  7. If the "good of the community" and "peace building" are the archbishop's priorities, there must be far more important work still to be done in the wake of the mid-90's massacre of between 5,000,000 and a million Tutsis by his and their fellow-countrymen, than is to be done by advancing the cleansing of society to a new plane, eliminating contact with yet more "undesirables". That Kolini is talking in these terms indicates how little he has learned - Christian charity least of all - from the recent, brutal history of his country.

    Whited sepulchres.

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  8. I think you need to be generous with translations of unknown provenance. The phrase "creeds of the Bible" might mean nothing more than "Biblical doctrine".

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  9. For "5,000,000" read "500,00". Excuse the typo. Still quite a lot of slaughtered people, isn't it?

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  10. "there are a thousand courting emotional and medical turmoil through a constant succession of relationships."

    ...because, you know, straight people don't do stuff like this.

    Perhaps the emotional turmoil over a breakup that the kid in Omaha who killed 9 people, including himself, yesterday wasn't as problematic, since he broke up with his girlfriend.

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  11. Well at least since he broke up with his girldfriend, Fred Phelps wont put him on his web site.

    ::sigh::

    FWIW
    jimB

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  12. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  13. anonymous...read the remarks concerning comments. Your comment of today Oct 29 has been deleted because I'm not allowing anonymous comments any more.

    ReplyDelete

OK... Comments, gripes, etc welcomed, but with some cautions and one rule:
Cautions: Calling people fools, idiots, etc, will be reason to bounce your comment. Keeping in mind that in the struggles it is difficult enough to try to respect opponents, we should at least try.

Rule: PLEASE DO NOT SIGN OFF AS ANONYMOUS: BEGIN OR END THE MESSAGE WITH A NAME - ANY NAME. ANONYMOUS commentary will be cut.