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African bishop spins homosexuality debate in tec diocese
David
W. Virtue, Behind The Mask
January 25, 2008
http://www.mask.org.za/article.php?cat=AfricaAbroad&id=1800
A liberal African bishop,
who has wrought havoc in his own diocese and the Province of Central
Africa over his liberal views on homosexuality, told delegates to
the 192nd annual meeting of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina
in Greensboro, recently, that the majority of African Anglicans,
about 37 million, are not bothered by the debate about sexuality.
The Rt. Rev. Musonda
Trevor Mwamba of Botswana blasted the African Anglican Church, which
represents the vast majority of the Anglican Communion, saying the
majority of African Anglicans have their minds focused on life and
death issues, like AIDS, poverty ... and not what the church thinks
about sex or the color of your pajama pants. "Villagers who
live on less than $1 a day aren't aware this is going on. The majority
of Africans who can afford TVs and radios, they don't want to see
the communion incinerate," he said.
"When I hear all
these harsh tones being exchanged, I ask if anybody is praying."
Mwamba said that most
of those who have been labeled as incensed over the ordination of
a gay bishop really aren't wrapped up in whether God particularly
cares about people's sexual orientation. The loudest voices do not
constitute a majority of the thought in the Anglican community,
as has been claimed, he said.
"The truth of the
matter is ... we must understand the majority of African Anglicans,
about 37 million, are not bothered by the debate about sexuality,"
Mwamba said.
Mwamba was invited by
Bishop Michael Curry, who oversees the diocese that includes Greensboro
and voted with the majority of the U.S. bishops to confirm Robinson
in 2003. Curry and Mwamba's diocese are working on a "companion
relationship" to spread the ministry.
Mwamba argued that there
can be middle ground in the lingering and angry debate over the
ordination of an openly gay man as a bishop by U.S. Episcopalians.
He never said precisely where it could be found however, and nobody
challenged him to produce evidence that such a "middle ground"
existed.
"I know that will
be new news to Americans," Curry said after the speech. "What
the bishop said is, in fact, accurate. These are not front-burner
issues (in Africa). It's 'How do I get my children a good education?'
It's 'Where do I find clean water and food to eat?' They go to church
to praise the Lord and to find the strength to live another week."
The truth is what Bishop
Mwamba has said is false. He has left a legacy and trail of pain
in the Central African province from whence he came. In the struggle
over who should be the next bishop of Lake Malawi, he interfered
by promoting and pushing the cause of the fey pro-homosexual English
London vicar, the Rev. Nickie Henderson, who poured tens of thousands
of pounds sterling into diocesan coffers to secure the bishopric.
To date, he
has failed to gain the position due largely to the intervention
of the Archbishop of Central Africa, the most Rev. Bernard Malango.
Mwamba's own ambitions
have been transparent. He wants Malango's job as the archbishop
has retired. Whether he gets it or not is unsure, but that is what
he wants. If by some odd political maneuvering he should get it,
it would be a break in the Global South evangelical fire wall against
pansexual intrusion.
When Mwamba's name was
put forward, a bishop told VOL that there should be some sort of
inquiry by the Global South into the fifth column, which is already
in its midst, and which will be strongly reinforced if Mwamba becomes
Archbishop and Henderson one of his bishops.
Mwamba has been Henderson's
biggest, loudest and noisiest supporter, a bishop who has aided
and abetted in his unremitting push for the job.
In February 2007, Mwamba,
who is also the Dean of Central Africa, delivered a shameless little
address to the Ecclesiastical Law Society in which he claimed that
homosexuality is not an issue in Africa, and blamed Nigerian Archbishop
Akinola for all the controversy!
This was heightened when
it was announced that Bishop Mwamba would deliver a paper, "Anglicanism
from an African perspective", at the MCU's international conference
in 2008 just prior to Lambeth.
The breakup of the Province
of Central Africa under Archbishop Malango and his failure to save
the situation is because he botched condemning the homosexual lobby,
led by the Bishop of Botswana, Trevor Musonda Mwamba.
Mwamba is in full flight
having being bought and paid for by American revisionist bishops
and Church of England liberals. If he continues to split the wedge
wider between Global South evangelicals and western liberal Anglicans,
then Africa will be vulnerable to the encroachments of western modernity
at precisely the moment they need to be a phalanx of orthodoxy in
an already confused global Anglican Communion.
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