Church response 'insulting'
2004-10-21 19:19
Lagos - Africa's leading Anglican churchman, Nigeria's Archbishop Peter Akinola, condemned the worldwide church's response to the controversy over the ordination of an openly homosexual bishop as wholly inadequate and insulting, in a statement received here on Thursday.
The Right Reverend Akinola is Primate of the Nigerian Church, which with 17m worshippers is the largest in the Anglican communion, and the chairperson of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa, whose bishops will meet next week in Lagos.
In a statement on the Nigerian church's website, the archbishop attacked the Windsor Report, which was released by the church in London on Monday in a bid to calm the controversy that erupted last year when the US Episcopalian Church ordained a gay bishop and a Canadian diocese began blessing same-sex unions.
The Windsor Report criticised the liberal US and Canadian churches for going it alone and urged them to apologise to the more conservative believers within the Anglican communion whom they had offended by their actions.
Akinola, however, insisted that this response did not go far enough.
"It fails to confront the reality that a small, economically privileged group of people has sought to subvert the Christian faith and impose their new and false doctrine on the wider community of faithful believers," he said.
Akinola said that the actions of the North American churches had put at risk the lives of Anglicans promoting their faith in the developing world.
Filled with grief
"Where is the language of rebuke for those who are promoting sexual sins as holy and acceptable behaviour?" he demanded.
"We have been filled with grief as we have witnessed the decline of the North American church that was once filled with missionary zeal and yet now seems determined to bury itself in a deadly embrace with the spirit of the age," he added.
The Windsor Report had warned that if North American churches fail to step back from their endorsement of homosexuality, then the worldwide church might split. Akinola confirmed that this remained the case, and lambasted the report for failing to demand full repentance from the liberals.
"We have been asked to express regret for our actions and 'affirm our desire to remain in the Communion' How patronising! We will not be intimidated," he warned, adding that the North Americans "are already walking alone on this and if they do not repent and return to the fold, they will find that they are all alone. They will have broken the Anglican Communion."
- SAPA