Africa leads gay bishop revolt

2003-11-03 15:16

Lagos - African churchmen declared a breakdown in relations with the United States' Episcopalian Church on Monday, leading a revolt in the developing world against the appointment of an openly gay bishop.

"The overwhelming majority of the Primates of the Global South cannot and will not recognise the office or ministry of Canon Gene Robinson as a bishop," said a statement from the primate of Nigeria's Anglican church.

The Right Reverend Peter Akinola said he was speaking on behalf of the Working Committee for the Primates of the Global South, which represents 50 million Anglicans in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Akinola's statement on behalf of his colleagues stopped short of severing ties completely with US Anglicans, but he made it clear that ties had been badly damaged.

"We deplore the act of those bishops who have taken part in the consecration which has now divided the church in violation of their obligation to guard the faith and unity of the church," it said.

And some African churchmen went further, making good on their threats to cut off all ties with the US Episcopalians.

"As a church, we are not going to support homosexuality in the church, primarily because it is a sin," Bishop Thomas Kogo of Eldoret Diocese said, speaking on behalf of the Kenyan Anglican establishment.

"And on that note, we have broken our links with the US Episcopal Church," he said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams - the spiritual head of the Anglican church - has been informed of the Kenyan move which would be formalised at a meeting of the country's bishops in two weeks, he added.

Uganda's Anglican Church reacted less severely, restricting the severance of its ties simply to Robinson's New Hampshire diocese.

Worshippers in developing countries make up more than five-sevenths of the Anglican communion, and are its fastest growing element.

Conservative prelates in Africa accuse their counterparts in liberal dioceses of allowing their societies' increasingly secular morals to corrupt the traditionalist beliefs of Anglicanism.

"The consecration of a bishop who divorced his wife and separated from his children, now living as a non-celibate homosexual, clearly demonstrates that authorities within Ecusa consider that their cultural-based agenda is of far greater importance than obedience to the word of God," Akinola said.

- AFP