Liberals’ ’satanic behavior’: CEN 8.24.07 p 9. August 24, 2007
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Rwanda, Church of England Newspaper, Lambeth 2008.trackback
RWANDA will not be bullied into compromising its position on gay bishops and blessings, the Bishop of Shyira, John Rucyahana,told the state radio service last week.
The Agence Rwandaise d’Information reported that the Anglican Church in that East African nation would not “be pushed into adopting the satanic behaviour of the ‘whites because they are whites’,” and accept the innovations of doctrine and discipline surrounding human sexuality advocated by the American Church.
It is the Americans who have “abandoned the faith, the law and doctrine of the church. They also do not believe in the teachings of the Bible”, Bishop Rucyahana said on Aug 14 to a nationwide radio audience.
The liberal western churches ‘do not conform to the religious conduct of the Anglican church’ because it is they who have “ordained homosexuals as bishops not Africans.”
The West had ‘never been challenged by African believers,’ he said, arguing that the present turmoil arose “because we remained faithful to the biblical teachings and instead challenged them about their conduct.”
Bishop Rucyahana’s strong words follow a statement released last month by the country’s bishops objecting to Dr Rowan Williams’ decision to withhold invitations to the 2008 Lambeth Conference to that Church’s American missionary bishops while inviting bishops to Lambeth who had participated in the consecration of Gene Robinson, the Bishop of New Hampshire.
Dr Williams’ invitation policy had been ‘divisive’ they said, and his words were ‘tantamount to a threat, and we cannot accept this’.
Rwanda, Nigeria, Uganda and Sydney have publicly voiced protests over Dr Williams’ invitation policy for the gathering of the Communion’s bishops next July in Canterbury and may boycott the conference in protest. Dr Williams’ options have also been limited by the left as well, with some bishops privately stating that if the ban on Gene Robinson is not lifted, they will not attend either.
Dr Williams meets with the US House of Bishops from Sep 19-21 in New Orleans. The Bishops have been asked to respond by Sept 30 to the united demand of the Primates that the Episcopal Church makes its position clear on gay bishops and blessings.
Bishop Rucyahana’s views of the Scriptures seem devoid of any notion of tolerance or respect for the views of others. This seems to be a problem with the clergy in Rwanda — not to speak of Bishop Rucyahana himself, but in general, the Rwandan Christian clergy did not distinguish themselves in the recent genocide as anything other than instigators and leaders of it. Some did try to protect people as much as they could, and in the hysteria perhaps they could not have done more, or spoken more forcefully. But on the whole, and in the years leading up to the genocide, the Rwandan Christian clergy’s record was deplorable. The Christian perpetrators of that genocide were sure that God was on their side, of course. “Whites,” as the Bishop refers to them, have plenty of experience with that, too, at least since the Crusades. In World War I, German soldiers wore a belt with “GOTT MIT UNS” (GOD WITH US) inscribed on the buckle, while French, British, Russian, Canadian, American, etc. soldiers, Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, were assured that God was on their side — in what, historians have long agreed, was a classic imperialist war for markets and resources, including, as it happens, Iraqi oil. African and Asian soldiers in large numbers were hauled into that monstrous and stupid slaughter by their British and French colonial oppressors, not that they got anything more out of it than the German, British, French or American soldiers did.
No one should view Bishop Rucyahana’s interpretations of the Scriptures as either correct or widely held, any more than anyone else’s should be viewed that way, since all have their fierce opponents ready to cite chapter and verse.
But a hundred and fifty years ago, in the United States, a far greater theological debate than the current US debate on homosexuality was taking place on the issue of slavery. Slaveowners and their clergy apologists could and did cite chapter and verse to support their view that slavery was ok (Jesus didn’t denounce it although he had opportunities; Paul seemed to defend it, or at least to accept it; there’s plenty more to be found in the Bible, and in the remarkable academic book The Arrogance of Faith, published by University of California Press. Opponents of slavery countered by pointing to the Golden Rule, and claimed that some of the slaveowners’ citations were mistranslations of “servant”, etc. etc. — all very reminiscent of the current homosexuality debate. The author of The Arrogance of Faith, Forrest Wood, points out that with the exception of the Quakers who had no base in slaveholding regions of the country, every single Christian denomination in the United States, including Episcopalians, had a segment of the denomination in slaveholding areas which actively defended slavery. Clergymen studied the Scriptures carefully, and after much contemplation and (no doubt) fasting and prayer, came out with a view of slavery which was by amazing coincidence exactly the same as that held by the wealthier members of their congregation. One would have to say that the slaveowners, using the same techniques as those attempted by Bishop Rucyahana, could make at least as good an argument in favor of slavery as he can against homosexuality. Eventually, of course, people just said, “Look, we don’t care what the Bible says about slavery, or what you claim it says based on your cherry-picked quotations. We’re not having it.”
The same is now being said about the Bishop’s scriptural claims on the need to discriminate against homosexuals.