The archbishop of Canterbury claims Christians in Africa are being massacred because of growing acceptance of gay unions in the West.
From Barry Duke at the Freethinker:
Justin Welby said he had stood by a mass grave in Nigeria of 330 Christians who had been massacred by neighbours who had justified the atrocity by saying:
If we leave a Christian community here we will all be made to become homosexual and so we will kill all the Christians.
Who are these “neighbours”? Welby didn’t elaborate, simply saying:
I have stood by gravesides in Africa of a group of Christians who had been attacked because of something that had happened in America. We have to listen to that. We have to be aware of the fact.
And so “we” have to ditch other people’s human rights, because there are theocratic terrorists who will kill people because of them.
Yemisi responds to this idea with admirable ferocity.
Did the Archbishop not read the news stories of the bombings that led to the death of these people before he visited the mass grave? Many of Boko Haram victims were school children who were murdered in their dormitories and not all of these victims were Christians. Boko Haram means ‘No to western Education”, it does not mean ‘No to Gay Marriage’.
Suggesting that a segment of the society be deprived of their inalienable human rights because of the ridiculous and sometimes violent beliefs of another is not justifiable. It is the same silly excuse I hear people spew when they blame the growing legalisation of homophobia in many African countries on the acceptance of LGBT Rights in some western countries. If some African leaders are so stupid as to criminalize a segment of their society because of the actions of some foreign governments, they should be called out on their stupidity, not try to justify it for them. Blaming the government that is respecting the equality of their citizens for the atrocities other governments are committing in reaction to this equality, is indeed ridiculous.
Think harder about this, Mr Welby. You really don’t want to take moral instruction from Boko Haram.
Cartoonists cause riots and shootings; Western political and legal changes cause bombings and massacres.
Wait-did the cartoonists pull the triggers? Did the lawmakers wield the machetes? Am I missing a step here?
Oh, right.
“NOW LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!”
What a God. We become more tolerant in the West, so he takes it out on Africa. Are we so strong that the schoolyard bully can’t take us on personally? Oh, wait, I forgot. Tornadoes in Oklahoma, because Oklahoma has become so tolerant of the gays…yeah, that’s right. Right? Oklahoma…Africa…punished for the sins of Blue America.
And yet another example of, no matter how annoying and wishy-washy Williams could have been at times about homosexuality in the priesthood and the Church itself, he was at least an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights of GLBT people in general. His successor is a reactionary throwback.
Like the current pope, Welby is supposed to be super-nice but is in fact just another monster. He’s an example of the some-of-my-best-friends-are-gay variety of homophobe. Some of his best friends are gay, but he thinks they should be denied rights that heterosexuals have automatically. You have to wonder why these people are friends with him at all. Or whether they even exist. He feels he has to ‘listen’ to LGBT* people ‘prayerfully’ as though that has any other meaning than to condescend to them while judging them with the full power of the church to be sinners and therefore tolerated at best but certainly not included in his club. We’re supposed to be impressed that he doesn’t demand the the immediate burning of all non-heterosexuals. I’m not impressed. It just reminds me of the No Homers Club.
I suppose we should consider ourselves fortunate that Sentamu didn’t get the gig, I just wish there weren’t a gig to get.
@Jenora Feuer
Don’t forget that Williams was in favour of Sharia courts in the UK.
The position is unashamedly a political one, just like the papacy. The candidate chosen is the one the church thinks will cause the fewer schisms.
Oh, I’m not saying Williams didn’t have his faults. Among those faults were the fact that he KNEW the position was primarily a political one, and in some cases (including the issue of homosexuality and the church) he allowed the political angle to override what he actually believed. He explicitly said in an interview that as a result of his position he could not push the arguments he himself had made several years earlier before becoming the Archbishop.
That, and the fact that he seemed to believe that avoiding a schism was more important than doing the right thing. (Which you could argue was part of his job.) We’ve seen around here exactly what happens when avoiding a schism becomes the primary motivator: the assholes start running the place because all the bending is done by the people who are willing to. And hence, the louder reactionary African churches yelled over the more liberal American and Canadian churches, and now we have Welby.
@jenora
Yes he did. A monstrous position, isn’t it?
Look at the people archbishops are delighted to throw under buses so that the church doesn’t fall apart (gasp! how awful THAT would be!)
In Williams’ case, women and particularly moslem women. In Welby’s case. homosexuals who want to avail themselves of the now legal right to simply get married.
We’re all rightly cynical about politicians who support or oppose platforms to garner votes, but we understand that there’s an immediate imperative to do so and recognise that it’s an inevitable flaw of democracy. By contrast, churches aren’t voted in and history keeps telling us that they sure as shit can’t be voted out. Why do they care about bums on seats? It’s supposed to be about saving people from hell (or whatever other fictional after-death punishment) but it isn’t. I don’t know of any religion that says you have to save a certain number of souls before you’re allowed into heaven or whatever. The whole point is that people choose whether to believe in a particular god or not. What would religions do if there were no non-believers? Would there even be a reason for them to exist? This bums-on-seats business is obviously entirely about influencing politics, which seems to me to be something Jesus specifically opposed. Well, at least in the wishy-washy cherry-picked interpretation of the new testament the CoE tends to employ. Their goal is to influence politics and their tactic is to have it both ways as much and as often as possible.