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Africans suffer from ‘collateral damage’ in US culture clash
by Pat Ashworth
 Recurrent anti-gay protesters in Kampala in 2007 AP |
RIGHT-WING organisations in the United States are cultivating African religious leaders as part of a strategy to undermine the social witness of US mainline Churches and promote homophobia in Africa, says an investigative report by an Anglican priest and scholar, the Revd Kapya Kaoma. The report, Globalizing the Culture Wars: US Conservatives, African Churches, & Homophobia, was commissioned by the progressive think tank Political Research Associates. It argues that African bishops and other leaders are being used as proxies in an internal US conflict. The report charts how neo-conservative groups, such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), have presented the denominations’ commitment to human rights as an imperialistic attempt to manipulate Africans into accepting homosexuality — which they characterise as a purely Western phenomenon — and an attempt to destabilise and corrupt African morals. |
| Such groups have characterised the denominations — the Episcopal Church in the US, the United Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church USA — as opposed to family values, the report goes on. Their rhetoric has fomented homophobia in Africa with disastrous consequences, such as the proposed anti-gay Bill in Uganda, it suggests. Sexual minorities have become “the collateral damage” of US domestic conflict.
The report lists the tactics used, including the use of money and the ghost-writing by US conservatives of key speeches by African religious leaders. US religious conservatives have successfully presented themselves as representatives of mainstream US Evangelicalism.
The report suggests: “Many Africans do not distinguish, for example, between the Christian Right, Evangelicals, the neo-conservative IRD, mainline renewal movements, [the] Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, and [the] right-wing megachurch leader Rick Warren.”
The conservative renewal groups are generally small, says the report, but their relationship with wealthy US donors and powerful African bishops has made them key players in the fight for the future of the Anglican Communion.
African Churches are being persuaded to separate from their international partnerships and to realign with conservative replacements. These tactics have been most successful in countries such as Nigeria and Uganda, which the report characterises as those where political leadership is dictatorial and civil society weak.
Americans fomenting homophobia abroad must be exposed and challenged, the report says. And it warns: “Unless the conservatives are confronted with ‘progressive counter-movements’, they will succeed in taking over mainline US churches.”
www.publiceye.org
THE General Synod of the Church of Canada passed a resolution last weekend expressing its “dismay and concern” over the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill (News, 13 November), writes Pat Ashworth. It would “severely impede the human rights of Ugandan citizens both at home and abroad”, and “impose excessive and cruel penalties on persons who experience same-sex attraction as well as those who counsel, support, and advise them, including family members and clergy”, said the resolution, moved by the Bishop of New Westminster, the Rt Revd Michael Ingham. It calls on the Church of the Province of Uganda to oppose the Bill, and the Canadian government to “convey to the government of Uganda a deep sense of alarm about this fundamental violation of human rights and, through diplomatic channels, to press for its withdrawal”. |
