Religious conservative congregations within three US "Christian" denominations -- Episcopal, United Methodist, and Presbyterian -- are now actively exporting rabid homophobia to African churches.
Don't think this is something we can ignore.
Read on.
For several years many US Protestant religious denominations have been split to varying degrees over the questions of ordaining women and ordaining homosexuals. For the most part, the ordination of women no longer splits any but the more conservative denominations. However, the ordination of gays is ripping apart at least three traditionally liberal denominations.
Among the Episcopal, United Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, the ordination of homosexuals has led to the formation of "renewal" groups and congregations. These groups proclaim their allegiance to "traditional" biblical teachings that, in their view, teach that homosexuality is a sin and that homosexuals have no place in church leadership.
While some of this conflict has been kept below the surface in the name of denominational unity, some "renewal" groups have split their churches, dioceses, annual conferences, and presbyteries.
Political Research Associates (PRA) recently published a study titled "Globalizing the Cultural Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia."
Here's a summary from the PRA website:
Sexual minorities in Africa have become collateral damage to our domestic conflicts and culture wars as U.S. conservative evangelicals and those opposing gay pastors and bishops within mainline Protestant denominations woo Africans in their American fight, a groundbreaking investigation by Political Research Associates (PRA) has discovered.
Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia, a new report by the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, PRA Project Director, exposes the U.S. Right’s promotion of an agenda in Africa that aims to criminalize homosexuality and otherwise infringe upon the human rights of LGBT people while also mobilizing African clerics in U.S. culture war battles. U.S. social conservatives, who are in the minority in mainline churches, depend on African religious leaders to legitimize their positions as their growing numbers makes African Christians more influential globally.
The investigation’s release could not be timelier, as the Ugandan parliament considers the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. Language in that bill echoes the false and malicious charges made in Uganda by U.S antigay activist and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively that western gays are conspiring to take over Uganda and even the world.
These partnerships have succeeded in slowing the mainline Protestant churches' recognition of the full equality of LGBT people, in part due to liberals’ sensitivity to the charge of colonialism. However, as Kaoma argues, it is U.S. conservatives who are imposing their own concerns about homosexuality on Africa. Further, although U.S. conservatives have organized African religious leaders as a visible force opposing LGBT equality, it would be wrong to conclude that all of Africa stands with these clerics and their U.S. patrons.
In the United States, Kaoma focuses on "renewal" groups in The Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church USA, and Presbyterian Church USA; U.S conservative evangelicals; and the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a neoconservative think tank that for decades has sought to undermine Protestant denominations' tradition of progressive social justice work.
In Africa, Kaoma investigates ties U.S. conservatives have established with religious leaders in Nigeria, Uganda, and Kenya and the impact of homophobia exported from the United States to these Anglophone countries.
As Kaoma argues, the U.S. Right – once isolated in Africa for supporting pro-apartheid, White supremacist regimes – has successfully reinvented itself as the mainstream of U.S. evangelicalism. Through their extensive communications networks in Africa, social welfare projects, Bible schools, and educational materials, U.S. religious conservatives warn of the dangers of homosexuals and present themselves as the true representatives of U.S. evangelicalism, so helping to marginalize Africans’ relationships with mainline Protestant churches.
Here's a link to the PDF version of the study -- 49 pages.
I thought this had no impact on me but, after some reflection, it seems as though many of us may be touched in some way by these splits.
The Old Redneck left the Baptist church during the 1960's because of the church's position on racial segregation (they were for it). I left the United Methodist Church 20 years ago because of the attacks from our local congregation on my single daughter. (She was a high school teacher and coach who was attacked by some of our congregation allied with the Christain Coalition. They accused her of being lesbian and of teaching "liberalism" in her government and history classes. None of our friends in the church came to her defense.) Now, I sit on the sidelines and watch these people trash Jesus' teachings.
But enough of that.
I live on Virginia's Northern Neck, a rural area bounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. The Episcopal Church is big here because this area was settled in the 1600's by Anglicans from Great Britian. Recently, I learned that several of the local Episcopal congregations have split over the ordination of gay bishops in the church. The split congregations have fought -- still are fighting -- over possession of church property and history. The anti-gay congregations have aligned themselves with African Episcopalians while the "liberal" members of the congregations have been tossed out of the church properties, changed their name to "Anglican," and no one speaks to anyone.
For about five years after retiring from the Army, I worked for a Methodist church organization where I encountered the "renewal congregations," although I really didn't pay a lot of attention to them until I was forced to choose between two congregations. I left them both.
If the Presbyterian church canonized saints, my mother would be one. However, she spent her last years (she left us in early 2007) in personal turmoil over the growing split in her local Presbytery over the question of ordaining homosexuals -- she had no problem with it -- which is somewhat amazing for an 82-year-old woman from SW Mississippi. A few months before she died, the church of which she had been a member for 55 years split into two warring congregations and her heart was broken.
Well, the Old Redneck didn't mean to get off track with this.
Read the PRA report. And -- read the recent Kos diaries about the frat boys on C Street, The Family, and their support for the Ugandan death penalty for homosexuals.
I guess the point is: Even though you may not be a member of one of these congregations, don't think this cannot affect you. And don't think the Ugandan death penalty for homosexuals can't happen here. All it takes is time and some committed zealots.