Death threats against homosexual Christians
I am glad that Rowan Williams has condemned the attacks on homosexuals in Nigeria and the death threats against the Rev. Colin Coward, director of Changing Attitude (an organisation that campaigns for acceptance of LGBT people within Christianity). You can read copies of the death threats here.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that the condemnations from Williams or the machinery of the Anglican Communion will do much good; indeed, they may make things worse. The conservative end of the Anglican Communion, particularly in Nigeria, are feeding off a general homophobia in society (and in so doing stoking that same homophobia) in part as a means of increasing their power and position within the Communion. Rowan Williams and the liberals – a misnomer, theologically, but nevermind – are a bugbear and promoted as being tantamount to evil. Given what church leaders will say in public, one can only imagine what they say sub rosa. I’d go so far as to say that, alone, protestations from the Archbishop et al. will be used to reinforce homophobia in sub-Saharan Africa.
At a pinch, Dr Williams could insist that some of more, ahem, extreme homophobes in the Anglican Communion condemn, in their own sees, any violence against homosexuals, although I rather doubt we will see that happening.
xD.
