Greetings. The 2023 General Synod of the Church of England passed major resolutions for the global Anglican Church. The General Synod, which serves as the legislative assembly for the global Anglican Communion, voted for clergy to confer blessings on same-sex unions, as well as revisiting the wording of the Lord’s Prayer to acknowledge a gender-neutral god. Leaders of the Anglican church in other countries have expressed their disdain towards the proposed policies. The Archbishop of the Church of Uganda issued a statement denouncing the mother church and proposing to initiate the process of splitting from the Church of England. Irrespective of which side one falls in the ideological divide on same-sex relations, this case was the latest reminder on the folly of Africans designing their anti-homosexuality arguments based on western religious thought.
The White Man Giveth And The White Man Taketh
The Church of England has its origins in the sixteenth century English reformation, and the English monarchy Henry VIII’s desire to annul his marriage yet Pope Clement VII kept thwarting his requests. However, on a much grander scale, Henry VIII was seeking to have greater autonomy in his domain. Henry therefore proceeded to have Parliament declare him Head of the Church in England. To bring the clergy on board, the king “bullied, bribed, or blackmailed” most of them. The Church was born out of one man’s political and personal machinations, and the opportunity presented to him by the reformation.
During the partition of Africa in the nineteenth century, religion was used as a political and socio-cultural tool by the colonialists. Firstly, in a race to have the most converts, the European missionaries sowed deep divisions amongst the Africans. Kinsmen were at cross purposes for as long as each belonged to a different branch of Christianity. In the career advancement of native Africans, religion played a major role and those who found themselves sticking to the faith of their forefathers were greatly disenfranchised.
Secondly, Africans were made to feel inferior
about their culture. This inferiority complex has pushed Africans away from
appreciating and utilising the tenets of this culture to tell their stories and
defend their points of view. Therefore, their arguments have been fostered in
foreign languages with foreign ideas. As Ngugi wa Thiong'o once wrote, African thinkers have come to be defined and to define themselves "in terms of the languages of Imperialist imposition". In this way, majority of arguments
against homosexuality have been crafted around the Bible. Like most of the
western-borrowed institutions utilised by Africans today, Christianity’s rules
are dictated miles away on European soil. It was only a matter of time that the
Church would okay same-sex unions and possibly rewrite the Bible and vanquish
the very arguments that have been used by Africans for decades.
Anyone with a
familiar grasp of church history would know that almost every single pillar of
Christianity has been debated. The very divinity of Jesus was debated at the first
Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. (God the Son was adopted, so to speak). The
modern concept of an academic dissertation defence has its origins in Church
proceedings of the canonisation of saints; priests debate on the merits of a
candidate for sainthood, and there’s an assigned “Devil’s advocate” to find
faults that would deter the candidate’s ascension to sainthood! Therefore the church
– whether Anglican, Catholic or Orthodox – has always had a tradition of
discussing propositions to adapt the religion to the changing times.
The Christian
basis for African arguments against homosexuality have had their day. As with
most Euroscentric institutions, the rules change and we just have to adapt
them. If only we knew what Wanga, Mukasa and Unkulunkulu thought about this
issue. Sadly, we will never know.
Ceteris. Paribus.
References
Editor, (February 2023). Church of England split over gay vote ‘obvious’. The Daily Monitor, retrieved 12th February 2023.
Shagan, E. H.
(2019). The Emergence of the Church of England, c.1520-1553. The Oxford
history of Anglicanism; Volume 1: Reformation and identity, c.1520-1662, 28-44.
Sherwood, H., (09th February 2023). Church of England votes in favour of blessings for same-sex unions. The Guardian, retrieved 12th February 2023.
Wa Thiong'o, N. (1998). Decolonising the mind. Diogenes, 46(184), 101-104.
