Leader of Nigerian Anglicans Explains Wish to Sever Links Over Gay Issue
Episcopal News Service. June 30, 2003 [2003-152B]
Amid continuing disagreement in the Anglican Communion over the issue of gay bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions, the primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria has spelled out his reasons for wishing to sever links with dioceses that endorse homosexual relations.
Archbishop Peter J. Akinola of Nigeria--the world's biggest Anglican province, with about 15 million members--said he considered ungodly the move by a bishop in the Canadian diocese of New Westminster to issue a liturgy for the blessing of same-sex marriages.
He said ''convoluted reasoning'' had been behind the appointments of a gay man as bishop in Reading, England, and the election of a gay man as bishop in New Hampshire. Both developments, he contended, ran counter to Anglican teaching--especially since at a May meeting in Brazil, the Anglican primates had renewed their commitment to the authority of the Scriptures and had rejected same-sex marriage.
Akinola said: 'I personally think that this is an attack on the Church of God: a satanic attack on God's church because I cannot think how a man in his right senses would be having sexual relations with another man. It is so unnatural, so unscriptural.''
The archbishop suggested the recent developments amounted to a betrayal.
'As a communion we took a decision by an overwhelming majority in 1998 that we needed to uphold the authority of the Scriptures: that we must not deviate in the area of marriage or deviate from Biblical provisions,' added Akinola. 'What the Bible allows for is heterosexual marriage, a man to a woman. But where people have gone out of that and you have woman and woman speaking of love and you have man and man talking of sexual relationships, we feel this is unscriptural and not what we can tolerate.''
In a reference to his threat to sever links with dioceses which back homosexual appointments or which carry out blessings of same-sex unions, he added: 'We cannot continue to be in communion with people who have taken a step outside the Biblical boundaries.''
He said the church had recognized that 'quite a number' of members faced a delicate problem of sexual orientation and ''we are ready to accommodate them in the hope that through prayers God can intervene to change such people's orientation for the better.'