The Very Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane, bebop-quiffed Archbishop of Cape Town, has been the only native bishop to welcome the gay and humble Gene Robinson to the ranks of primates of the Anglican Church. He has cautioned the dark-skinned heirs of the missionary tradition up and down the continent and across the globe to show Christian charity.
‘Robinson has been consecrated by his province and that makes him a bishop of the church,” he said. ‘We would like to congratulate Gene Robinson and pray for him.”
The rest of the dusky primate crew from the former colonies have roundly condemned the appointment of the church’s first openly gay bishop in the strongest of terms.
Since their flocks account for 70% of the church’s membership across the globe, their voices are of no little importance, and threaten to irrevocably deconstruct the ancient institution — itself founded because of a schism with the Catholic Church about 450 years ago.
Nigeria’s archbishop, allegedly speaking on behalf of the Working Committee for the Primates of the Global South, said that the said primates ‘cannot and will not recognise — Canon Gene Robinson as bishop”. The threat was that all ties with the mother body would be severed if the church went ahead with this appointment. The flock was prepared to wander off by itself, if necessary.
The head of the church in Uganda (which, by the way, took matters into its own hands some time ago and changed its name from Church of England to Church of Uganda, thus already imposing some kind of independence from HQ at Canterbury) was more restrained. Ugandan Anglicans (a bit of a contradiction in terms, if you think about it — shouldn’t they then call themselves Ugandicans?) would not necessarily break away from the whole of the church. They would merely sever ties with Robinson’s New Hampshire diocese. So there.
This threat must have made New Hampshire quake in its Puritan boots.
The primates of Zambia and Zimbabwe declared the consecration ‘unbiblical”. The matter was further condemned by the diocese of Karachi and Baluchistan, just over the border from Afghanistan.
Even lighter-skinned ex-colonials found Robinson hard to swallow.
The Archbishop of South America said that, although it had not necessarily reached the point of divorce, they were nevertheless ‘having a time of separation and thinking”. And the Archbishop of Sydney, Australia, announced that it was ‘a very sad day for the church — As far as I am concerned he is not a bishop.”
But it was an African primate who put the situation in the starkest terms: ‘The devil,” concluded Kenya’s native Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, ‘has clearly entered the church.”
It is an alarming reversal when native clergymen start lecturing the countries that brought the Christian God into their midst about the devil.
Christian missionaries came into the colonies as a colonial vanguard, and relentlessly beat the horrors of heathenism and devil worship out of their astonished, captive audiences. Where many native rituals, like the Nyau spirit mediums in Zambia, had long absorbed and controlled the power of the devil through masked dance and ritual, the missionaries told them the only way to deal with Satan was to have nothing to do with him whatsoever.
‘Turn your backs on that horrid fellow,” they said. ‘And also stop fornicating and smoking dagga. One wife each, church on Sundays and early to bed.”
The Anglican missionaries did not mention that their own native England was full of witchcraft and covens of Satanism. Nor did they mention the fact that their own church had come into being through a contentious sexual issue that would rival the one that is rocking today’s church: namely the fact that King Henry VIII objected to the pope insisting that he take no more than one wife. He would rather leave the Catholic Church and start his own than be denied his urge to be polygamous — even if it was in a serial, rather than parallel, manner, like the Africans were doing when the missionaries arrived and registered their distaste.
Now the African primates, having discarded their devils along with their deities and dressed themselves in pompous robes and satin sashes, are pointing their fingers at their blasphemous former masters across the water and acting holier-than-thou.
Not that I’m taking sides either way. The rapturous faces of the congregation as Robinson was ordained spoke their own message — this was the man they wanted to lead them in prayer, to comfort them in adversity, heck, even marry them if they wanted and bless their children further down the road. Who am I to have an opinion, so far away from the diocese of New Hampshire?
But what the outraged Third World bishops seem to be complaining about is this ability of the Western world to continually move the goalposts. No sooner have they taught us to speak English, sip tea with a crooked finger, and stop coveting the neighbour’s wife than everything is turned on its head again. In fact, now the neighbour’s wife is not even a real wife.
Robert Mugabe must be chortling with delight. ‘See,” he is saying, ‘they are all gay gangsters after all — even inside their churches.”
Although, of course, he would also love for us to forget that sordid little episode of gay gangsterism that took place in his own presidential palace when he was still a mere prime minister, and the aptly named Reverend Canaan Banana was ceremonial head of state.
We wait for the Primates of the Global South to announce their next move. Meanwhile, the people of New Hampshire, by and large, couldn’t give a darn what they think — about the Bible or anything else.