Friday, April 4, 2014

ABC Justin explains that marriage equality = dead Christians

As if the tired old C of E didn't have enough trouble with things, now Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has compared gay people to adulterers,
Although he continued to uphold what he called the historic position of the church, of "sex only within marriage and marriage only between a man and a woman", he agreed with the presenter, James O'Brien, that it was "completely unacceptable" for the church to condemn homosexual people more than adulterous heterosexual people.
and claimed that marriage equality in the US is the cause of Muslims murdering Christians in Africa.
African Christians will be killed if the Church of England accepts gay marriage, the archbishop of Canterbury has suggested.
 And not a peep did he make about the Anglican Church in Africa supporting criminalization of homosexuality.

IT's OUR FAULT, people!  Us gay folks!  If we would just go back in the closet, and live inauthentic lives of fear and hiding, then none of this would happen!  It's our cross to bear!  We're in too much of a hurry!

Oh, my.  The Rev Martin Luther King, a modern prophet, had words for Justin Welby, written in a Birmingham Jail  (paragraphs broken for ease of reading).  Perhaps someone should send the Abp the link.
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? 
We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. 
I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. 
More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.    

3 comments:

JCF said...

Shoulda known you would have already gotten to this story, IT.

Appalling. Welby's victim-blaming.

Kyrie eleison!

PseudoPiskie said...

I wonder how many lives he might have saved if all along he had chided the governments and especially his clergy that we are all God's children and none should be subject to what they are doing. He lost all credibility when he didn't do that in a timely manner if really at all. He is as guilty as Lively IMO. We need to expand the Episcopal Church in Europe to England.

Erp said...

Bishop backbone removal seems particularly effective in England except for the bits necessary for defending church privilege. Don't forget that when the United Kingdom abolished slavery in the West Indies that at least one major church entity (the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Foreign Parts) and one bishop (Exeter) were still slave owners (admittedly that likely was true in the US also, there was even a catechism for slaves) and were compensated for the loss of 'their property'. The established church has never been progressive. There are a couple of exceptions among the bishops, Harries who though retired was given a set in the Lords in his own right and Wilson who has been a light in the storm recently. I don't know where the Scottish Episcopal bishops stand.

As far as Africa, Welby is mistaking the given excuse for the actual causes. If the CoE and the Episcopal church were treating gays and lesbians as the worst of sinners and howling for laws to be enacted like the one in Uganda, Christians would still be killed or forced to flee (note other groups killed and harried such as Muslims in the Central African Republic by Christians and African LGBT people by just about everyone).