Acceptance: A memorial service for Desmond Tutu. During his life the archbishop rejected homophobia. (Rajesh Jantilal/AFP)
‘His words of homophobia disgust me. In the postmodern era, these words belong to the Dark Ages, and the church must disown them, and I am sad I overheard them being repeated by the bishop of my church,” said a young Anglican priest.
The words are familiar. Every day we hear them in the townships, the suburbs and the villages. We hear them among the sophisticated and the unsophisticated. They are words that have found a home in the hearts and minds of millions of South Africans and worldwide. They are voices that are heard in the church, in academia, in our homes.
They are words of hate, fear and ignorance, needing to be extricated from society, and expunged from the human lexicon. But, like racism, they are words that are difficult to exorcise for they are borne out of prejudice.
The young priest who recently spoke to me, said: “As recent as 2019, at the Anglican Synod of Bishops where I was a delegate, I overheard an Anglican African bishop tell his colleague he would never in a lifetime ordain to priesthood a gay person.
“His words disgusted me. There is a lot of teaching that must happen. The church must begin to appreciate that its laws, canons and all need to be adjusted to conform with the provisions of the Constitution, which is the supreme constitution of the land,” said the priest.
Several South African mainstream churches remain in the Dark Ages when it comes to accepting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other (LGBTQ+) neighbours.
With the death of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the LGBTQ+ community has lost an ally whose prophetic voice had been scathing in admonishing the “homophobic church”.
“I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this. I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven — no, I would say sorry, I would much rather go to the other place.”
These words Tutu uttered nearly 10 years ago at the launch of the Free and Equal campaign held in Cape Town.
Tutu’s daughter, the Reverend Mpho Tutu-Furth, has been debarred from practising as a priest in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa because of her same-sex marriage to Marceline van Furth, of the Netherlands. But her right to practice as a priest in the US Episcopal Church, which is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, has not been affected.
Bishop Paul Verryn, a Methodist bishop who lives in Soweto and is a champion of social justice and human rights ministry, said the church should be cognisant of the fact that dealing with vulnerable people begs for understanding.
He said a number of churches, including his own and other mainline churches, were struggling to come to terms with issues of human sexuality.
The bishops or clergy of the church cannot change people’s sexual orientation, and that to try to do so would be to move to the opposite side of God’s love, said Verryn.
The Most Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane, a retired Anglican prelate, said in an interview with ENCA on the occasion of Tutu’s death that theology should inform the church that “we are all equal in the face of God, including the LGBTQ+, and that we are created in the image of God” and so there can never be a justification for discrimination.
Quoting from the scriptures, Ndungane said: “There is neither Jew nor gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female.”
Although there was some understanding “here and there”, there still remains hesitancy [in the church]”, he said, stressing that the fundamental point is that “we are all created in the image of God”.
Father Joseph Khanye, an Anglican parish priest in Kempton Park, argued that the church and its discrimination of LGBTQ+ people could not be justified by any theological reasoning. He said those in the church who subscribe to this philosophy were pushing a conservative ideological agenda whose nature was based on “patriarchal heterosexual hegemony”.
“The solution, I suggest, is for the Anglican church to revisits its historical core ethos from which flows a balance of theology and spirituality, and to acknowledge Tutu’s theology and prophetic ministry of equality, which embraces the blessing of same-sex partnerships,” said Khanye.
The late Bishop John Shelby Spong, the Anglican/Episcopal church leader known worldwide for his stand against injustice of any form, said the homophobic church had no future. He argued to the end of his life that the basis on which the church condemned homosexuality and gay marriages or unions was a false and weak theological premise, and that it was a dogma that could never be ethically or philosophically sustained.
Spong, in 1977, was one of the first American Anglican bishops to ordain a woman priest. Some 12 years later, he ruffled feathers by becoming the first bishop to ordain a gay man to the Anglican diaconate.
At that time, he said the church should hang its head in collective shame for promoting the idea that “God hated homosexuals and loved heterosexuals”.
He argued that biblical passages should never be read literally, but should rather be contextualised, and reinterpreted in pursuit of achieving the ideals of “social justice and equality”.
A delegate priest to the last provincial Anglican synod in 2019, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “In 2019 the provincial synod talked about the appointment of a permanent provincial commission on human sexuality to look into these issues. There are hawks and doves in the church.
“Given the pain and suffering endured by the gay community, the Anglican Church should be taking a firm and decisive stand, but it is not. The church is not serious about issues of equality and justice.”
The Reverend Dr Makhosi Nzimande, an executive in the office of Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, would not comment on the position of the church on sexuality, particularly as it pertains to the church’s treatment of the LGBTQ+ community.
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