Nigeria’s Archbishop Peter Akinola, the leading critic of Western liberals in a growing Anglican dispute over gay priests, insists he has no ambition to lead a breakaway church.
”That has never been on my mind,” he told London’s Times newspaper in an interview. ”We are going nowhere.”
”We have our traditions, we have not broken the law. It is your churches that are breaking the law. You are the ones doing what should not be done with impunity,” he said.
The 77-million-strong Anglican Church has been divided since 2003 when the Episcopal Church, its 2,4-million-member United States branch, consecrated Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop in the church’s 450-year history.
Some US Episcopalian congregations have already placed themselves under the jurisdiction of conservative bishops in Africa and elsewhere.
Akinola ignored a plea from the church’s spiritual head, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, and went to Virginia to install Bishop Martyn Minns as head of a new Nigerian-based church designed as a refuge for orthodox US believers.
Williams then announced that both Minns and Robinson would not be invited to the Lambeth Conference, a major church summit next year.
In his interview, Akinola did not deny the existence of homosexuality in Africa but said: ”All we are saying is do not celebrate what the Bible is saying is wrong. If the Bible says it is an aberration, it is an aberration. Do not do it.”
”We see it as a problem that can be treated,” he said of homosexuality.
The Nigerian archbishop said calls from the West for African churches to be more liberal was an attempt to reimpose old imperialist attitudes.
”For God’s sake, let us be. When America invades Afghanistan, it is in the name of world peace. When Nigeria moves to Biafra, it is an invasion.
”When England takes the Gospel to another country, it is mission. When Nigeria takes it to America, it is an intrusion. All this imperialistic mentality, it is not fair.” – Reuters