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Why Global South Anglican Leaders Will Not Compromise With Western Liberals

WHY GLOBAL SOUTH ANGLICAN LEADERS WILL NOT COMPROMISE WITH WESTERN LIBERALS

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
5/21/2007

As The Episcopal Church (TEC) moves inevitably towards its denouement with history, it is now apparent that the gulf that separates Global South Anglicans and Western Anglican liberals is unbridgeable. The days of 'why can't we all just get along' and Anglican fudge are over.

No one has made that clearer than Nigerian and Uganda archbishops Peter Akinola and Henry Luke Orombi. On nearly every public occasion when both men speak either in the U.S. or in their respective countries, their words ring with increasing clarity. They can be summed up in two words - no compromise.

For openers, African, Asian and Latin Anglican provinces are growing rapidly, while Western Anglican communities are withering and dying.

The Global South is seeing rapid growth based on the proclamation of the gospel in clear and unapologetic terms. Western Anglicanism has abandoned the Good News message in favor of pluralism, inclusivity and social amelioration through something called Millennium Development Goals.

One preaches the gospel of St. Paul, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Wesley and Billy Graham; the other the gospel of Walter Rauschenbusch, a gospel that has little need of a suffering Savior. The latter "gospel" is that of Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, titular head of The Episcopal Church. She and her fellow liberal and revisionist bishops have dumped the problem of evil and its belief that we are sinners in rebellion against God-- and replaced it with the allegedly loftier challenge of social injustice.

Their hope is that The Kingdom of Heaven will come if only the collective will of people can be drawn together to eradicate poverty and all manner of diseases. It is the rehash of the old collectivist Socialist notions that devastated the Soviet Union for nearly 70 years. Someone should give Mrs. Schori the collected writings of Malcolm Muggeridge who saw through this nonsense and brilliantly articulated its total failure.

African Anglican leaders are not, for a moment, buying the West's liberal gospel. Why should they? Who puts money on a nag with a broken leg to win the Kentucky Derby? Does one really buy stock in Enron, however lucid a broker might tout it, as the company heads into oblivion?

Furthermore, the patience of African leaders has run out. They are sick and tired of the prevarications and nonsense perpetrated first by Frank Griswold (following numerous Primates' meetings) and now Mrs. Schori. Statements that begin with, "I can't possibly imagine a conversation..."

In his letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, after being asked by the ABC not to come to the U.S. to install a new CANA bishop, Akinola said this: "We are a deeply divided Communion. As leaders of the Communion we have all spent enormous amounts of time, traveled huge distances - sometimes at great risk, and expended much needed financial resources in endless meetings, communiques and reports - Lambeth Palace 2003, Dromantine 2005, Nottingham 2006 and Dar es Salaam 2007. We have developed numerous proposals, established various task forces and yet the division has only deepened. The decisions, actions, defiance and continuing intransigence of The Episcopal Church are at the heart of our crisis."

It cannot be said more clearly than that. It is why the Global South will not, at the end of the day, compromise on the truth of the Gospel and the proscriptions of Holy Scripture against sexual misbehavior.

Still, the Anglican fudge continues. The latest gig, out of the Anglican Communion Office led by Canon Kenneth Kearon, is to play for time by introducing the notion of hermeneutics and hoping a dozen or so hermeneutical approaches to the pressing issue of sodomy from provinces around the communion will produce an enormous blur, so that everyone will throw up their hands and give The Episcopal and Canadian churches a pass. That dog also will not hunt. In the meantime, revisionist Episcopal bishops rip and tear at orthodox priests and congregations for not wanting to be a part of a church the orthodox think is going to Hell in a hand basket with no Good News to proclaim.

Mrs. Schori and The Episcopal Church are fulfilling H. Reinhold Niebuhr's brilliant statement about liberal Protestantism, "A God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without cross."

It is why archbishops like Akinola will come to these shores and rescue the orthodox from gospel-less Episcopalians like Bishops Peter Lee, J. Jon Bruno and Rob O'Neill; shun liberal secular media and Episcopal diocesan communications directors like Jim Naughton (Episcopal Diocese of Washington); and plough ahead to rescue the saved from among the lost.

In language that could not be more specific, Ugandan Primate, the Rt. Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, said recently that Christians practicing lesbianism and homosexuality will "attract God's wrath." He doesn't mince his words. Orombi said the acts violate God's purpose for marriage. "People have abandoned relationships with the opposite sex. One wonders whether God was stupid to create Eve for Adam. Why isn't Eve beautiful any more? Eve is going out with Eve and Adam with Adam." He added that just as the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were razed to ashes, God will not let this sin go unpunished.

American Episcopal liberals and the broad secular media just do not get it.

The sheer nerve of Mrs. Schori's condemnation of Archbishop Akinola for poaching souls on her turf as a violation of the "ancient customs of the church" is disingenuousness and ludicrous beyond words. Akinola blasted right back, "since when have you American liberals given a fig about the ancient customs of the church?" He has more than just a point; he has the whole point. Mrs. Schori thinks she can pick and choose from the ecclesiastical Anglican smorgasbord with impunity (whatever she damn well pleases). Then she has the nerve to turn around and say that TEC will never turn back from its previous positions and decisions on same-sex blessings and ordination of bishops living in same-sex relationships. She even called Bishop Robinson's election a "blessing" and only regretted that his election was done prior to formal approval by TEC of rites for same-sex blessings. What part of the "ancient customs of the church" do these innovations represent!

She then has the gall to say that it is only a matter of time when Africans will eventually "catch up" and accept homosexual behavior. TEC will lead the way into a brave Orwellian future that just might become her and TEC's non- existence within two decades.

Mrs. Schori has more respect for Mr. McGreevey, an openly homoerotic former Governor of New Jersey wanting to become an Episcopal priest, than she has for Global South Archbishops views at odds with her own.

Akinola has been taken to task for supporting his country's stand on prohibiting same-sex marriages. Western and Episcopal media have condemned him for being homophobic. Even though there was an attempt to pass anti-homosexual legislation in Nigeria, the fact remains that Nigeria is winning the battle against HIV/AIDS. The epidemic has only just crossed the 5% prevalence threshold and has not as yet entered the explosive phase of an epidemic. The HIV population in Nigeria is nearly 4 million with news AIDS Cases reaching over 101,000. AIDS deaths this year have topped 85,195.

By contrast, the AIDS pandemic in the USA, as of December 2005(unadjusted), has had nearly one million diagnoses of AIDS reported. There have been 538,310 reported deaths of persons with AIDS through December 2005 (unadjusted).

Why shouldn't Nigeria have laws prohibiting this deadly behavior?

The position of the Church of Nigeria on the sexuality agenda of the "West" is well known. The message is clear. The church does not have to acquiesce before society while it DOES have a duty to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to all. The Gospel has the power to liberate any situation and any condition. It has indeed transformed cultures, it has transformed governments; it has certainly transformed millions and billions of people in God's world.

This is something The Episcopal Church is not prepared to confess. It wants to accommodate the world through its new fangled doctrine of inclusivity thus denying the Christ who bought them through his shed blood. Without a message of transformation, it ultimately cannot survive.

Akinola is leading and challenging his church, by creating twenty new bishops and forming new dioceses. It is his intent to not only engage people with the message of salvation through Jesus but also to roll back the Islamic tide that shows every possibility of sweeping northern Nigeria.

Despite criticism from Bishop John Chane (Washington) that Akinola is politically inept, the Nigerian Archbishop has persistently called the Nigerian government to account, most recently over government corruption and flawed elections.

As one Nigerian commentator noted, "Far from basking in the media spotlight abroad as The Falls Church Press avers, the Archbishop consistently refused on his visit to the United States to give interviews or press conferences, and the very fact that he has to travel to the US to provide oversight for orthodox Episcopalians and be distracted from his home responsibilities shows just how serious the issue is globally!"

The truth is most African provinces are spiritually alive, while Western Anglican provinces are spiritually dead or dying. That is the major difference.

If and when the balloon goes up on September 30, the American church will have no one to blame but itself if it does not relent in its drive towards full acceptance of homosexuals and lesbians in the church, and the Global South bishops say that they will have no further truck with TEC.

In the end the Episcopal Church will send itself to Hell. It is not being driven there by Dr. Rowan Williams or the Global South. Every accommodation has repeatedly been made. The Anglican Communion has been strained to the point where there is nothing left in the strainer. The Episcopal Church is a husk fit only to be tossed out, even if the garbage can is lined and filled with Dead Men's Money and millions of dollars from Trust Funds and Endowments. Ultimately, one cannot buy a ticket into the Kingdom of God and promoting MDG's will not save The Episcopal Church.

END

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