The Episcopal Church and Trinity Wall Street need to keep their hands off Africa
The future of the Anglican Communion belongs to Africa
COMMENTARY
By David W. Virtue DD
www.virtueonline.org
February 29, 2016
There was a time when Africa was viewed as a backward continent, inhabited by half naked savages in need of westernizing and conversion. It was called the Dark Continent, a term of derogation by colonial powers, for no good reason than that many would become slaves and serve Western rulers.
Then came Western missionaries, and all that changed. Today, Africa is the last battleground of the Anglican Communion populated by nearly 60 million Anglicans who are orthodox in faith and morals. They are now considered ripe for the picking by revisionist western liberals, who have abandoned the faith, and are now hell bent on twisting and manipulating Africans to their post-modern, decadent worldview, especially on human sexuality.
It's why the insult hurled at the African bishops by Newark Bishop John Shelby Spong at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, touched a nerve and angered African believers, when he said African blacks had "moved out of animism into a very superstitious kind of Christianity," even though more black bishops have PhDs in Nigeria than the US and Canada put together. (Spong has no PhD.)
Spong is no ordinary racist. His racism comes with 15 books and a total denial of historic Christianity. Spong never quite recovered from his anti-African barbs at Lambeth, even though the African bishops forgave him. He was called an "intellectual racist" by Bishop Peter John Lee of South Africa for his comments at Lambeth about African Christians.
Spong said that Africa is a target, politically, culturally, and most important, spiritually. Africa is still viewed by many Western elites as a "colonial" seedbed. Because of its poorer economic status, various elites see an opportunity to advance their agendas of evil: contraception, sterilization, abortion, population control, homosexuality and more. This is being done largely through the United Nations, financed by Western governments, especially the United States.
U.S. foreign policy, aided and abetted by President Barack Obama, has been to push the West's pansexual agenda onto Africa, offering them aid with a singular carrot and stick approach. Seduce the leaders with money and the peasants will follow. This was tried in Kenya, but Obama got slapped down by that nation's president. You Will NOT Impose your "Gay Rights Agenda" in Kenya said President Kenyatta to Obama at that time.
It started with Ronald Reagan in Mexico City Policy, when he refused U.S. government funding to any NGO involved in abortion. Clinton, in 1992, rescinded that policy and helped fund overseas groups that work for abortion. Hillary Clinton has testified publicly as Secretary of State, that when she speaks of human rights, she includes that to mean abortion and contraception, including government financing.
It is deeply ironic that Obama, who has had such deep ties to Africa, should work so tirelessly to undermine the family in African nations, by tying hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars for economic aid to their acceptance of his immoral agenda.
At the deepest level, this directly attacks the Church and what it stands for. No wonder African Anglican leaders don't trust the US and the money that flows from TEC and Trinity Wall Street.
As Africa emerges from its former colonial rule and rulers, and rapidly engages with the West in economic development and most of its inhabitants speak English, it has become the number one target for Western leaders. The ramifications of this for the universal Church are extremely troubling.
What has undone the West even more than pansexuality is materialism -- it has corrupted the West and looks now to be a weapon to undermine the Global South.
Anglican African leaders look to the West for economic development and education but not the West's deconstruction of morality. Social justice, yes, fighting poverty, yes, bad morals, no.
In an interesting ecumenical note, both African Anglicans and African Roman Catholics are on the same page with regard to morality, which is not the same in the West. The Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church in the West, are on a continual collision course over sexuality issues, and they grow further apart by the day.
The truth is, the future of Anglicanism belongs to Africa, which begs the question: Haven't Episcopal leaders in the West done enough damage wrecking the faith of millions in the West? They need to leave their hands off Africa.
At least after thirty years of priming the pump of pansexuality and getting nowhere, African Anglican primates know the score - they have had a snootful of Frank Griswold, Jefferts Schori and Rowan Williams, and they not very impressed either with the waffle of the current leader of Anglicanism, Archbishop Justin Welby. "Nothing has changed," noted the Archbishop of Nigeria, Nicholas Okoh, following the meeting of primates in Canterbury recently. Indeed, he is right.
Will anyone really be surprised if, after years of patient endurance, the Global South archbishops rise up and declare that they are the true inheritors of Anglicanism, form their own more perfect union, and bid the West farewell? Certainly not this writer.
END