The Straits Times story made it sound like another feather in Singapore's cap, with the headline reading "S'pore archbishop elected to lead global church body".
We should be utterly embarrassed, as we would be if a Singaporean rose to lead a multinational league whose aim was to persecute minorities.
The Anglican Global South, which John Chew, head of the Anglican Church in Singapore, now also leads has basically just one raison d'etre: to stoke the fire of intolerance against gay people.
Left: Gene Robinson (left) was the first openly gay man
to be consecrated as a bishop in 2003;
Right: Mary Glasspool has been elected Bishop of Los Angeles
It sprang to life around 2002 when The Episcopal Church in the United States which is the American branch of the Anglican Church, ordained Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. Several members of the Anglican Communion were aghast that Robinson, an openly gay man, was not discriminated against and barred from a church position. Most of these angry churches were from non-white countries and they banded together to form the Anglican Global South to press for the disciplining or ejection of The Episcopal Church.
This was resisted by other members of the Anglican Communion including the Anglican Church in Canada and large sections of the Church of England, branches that saw the communion as a broad tent that could embrace different interpretations of Anglicanism.
More recently, The Episcopal Church, which last year formalised its policy that ordination should be open to gay persons in committed same-sex relationships the same way that it is open to heterosexual persons in committed relationships, elected Mary Glasspool as Bishop of Los Angeles. Glasspool is a partnered lesbian. Naturally, this move has incensed the dinosaurs in the Anglican Global South even more.
While, technically, the issues motivating the Anglican Global South relate to who is qualified to take church positions, it is undergirded by their doctrinal belief that homosexuality is a terrible abomination. It shows in the way member churches rave and rant about homosexuality generally, and push for the criminalisation of gay people at every opportunity. It is nothing short of a campaign to persecute people different from themselves. That is why we should be ashamed that a Singaporean now leads such a global league.
Archbishop John Chew (left) succeeds Peter Akinola
of Nigeria as head of the Anglican Global South.
It is all the more reprehensible that John Chew succeeds Peter Akinola, the Archbishop of Nigeria as head of the Anglican Global South. Akinola's bigotry is second to none. For example, as reported in Andrew Brown's Blog, the Nigerian Church under Akinola has been pressing for more laws against gay people even though the equivalent of our Section 377A (Singapore's anti-gay law) is already on the country's books, and used. Brown highlighted how the Nigerian Church wants the government to punish anyone involved in a same-sex marriage with three years in jail for the participants and five years in jail for witnesses.
In fire-and-brimstone language, the position paper issued by Akinola and his church opened with these words:
Same sex marriage, apart from being ungodly, is unscriptural, unnatural, unprofitable, unhealthy, un-cultural, un-African and un-Nigerian. It is a perversion, a deviation and an aberration that is capable of engendering moral and social holocaust in this country.
You would have noticed the blame being cast on gay people for creating a new "holocaust".
What is even more chilling is the possibility that Akinola's position is not just the result of his own irrational homophobia, murderous though that can potentially be. It is also the result of a very canny political calculation in the interest of worldly gains, as argued in the PJA Blog.
The gist is this: Nigeria is a country that has slightly more Muslims than Christians. Adherents of these two religions have often engaged in butchery against each other, as frequent stories of religious riots testify. Akinola is battling to maintain or grow the Christian share of power in the country. He cannot afford to lose adherents -- it's a numbers game. Since homophobia is widespread among Nigerians, and especially since Islam too preaches homophobia, Akinola and his church have to play the "holier-than-thou" card, pandering to the basest instincts of the masses, to avoid losing out to Islam.
In other words, he is more than happy to lead the persecution of gay people in his quest for worldly power. But aren't religious leaders supposed to be focussed on matters of conscience, compassion and enlightenment instead of politics and the spoils of power?
One might argue that just because John Chew succeeds Akinola, it doesn't mean that he and other leaders of the Anglican Church in Singapore share the Nigerian's views. But why is the Singapore Anglican Church even in the Global South network? As the Straits Times story noted, only about half the Anglican churches worldwide have chosen to be involved, where involvement means signing up to an anti-gay platform.
In any case, the reactionary nature of the Singapore Church has been well known for years.
For example, you could refer to an article right here in Yawning Bread (Insurrection in St Andrew's Cathedral) from ten years ago that described how St Andrew's Cathedral itself was the place where, defying Anglican traditions, the then-Archbishop of Singapore attempted to consecrate ultra-conservative bishops to serve in America as part of an attempt to displace The Episcopal Church. This combative move was carried out in association with a number of antediluvian African bishops, earning the whole lot a reprimand from the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Last year, Christian leaders in Uganda campaigned loudly for a new law that would make homosexual sex punishable by death. It would also impose an obligation on everybody to report others whom they suspect of being homosexual, on pain of imprisonment. It would have meant that neighbours would have to spy on each other, and teachers would have to send their pupils to the police. Fortunately, after intense pressure form Western governments and Western churches, the proposal was put on ice.
The Anglican Church in Uganda is also prominent in the activities of the Anglican Global South. It is shameful that the Singapore church chooses such allies.
You might also refer to the call by the National Council of Churches (NCCS), during the 2007 debate on Section 377A, for the law to be expanded to criminalise lesbians as well. The reason offered was that lesbian sex was as "sinful, abhorrent and deviant" as gay male sex. It is shocking that they expected a secular state to pay to heed to what are really scriptural or subjective judgements. (Actually, whether it is even scriptural is subject to debate.) The Anglican Church is a member of the NCCS.
Apparently, this church's understanding of equality is that if gay males are criminalised, so should gay females. Not once does it seem to occur to them that equality should mean this: If heterosex is legal, so should homosex.
And not least, readers will recall what Singaporeans refer to as the "AWARE saga", when a group of women associated with an Anglican parish church, urged on by their pastor Derek Hong, surreptitiously seized control of a women's rights non-governmental organisation (NGO) in 2009, all the while denying that their religious beliefs had anything to do with it. It was finally revealed that their chief motive for doing so was their homophobia, wanting to purge the NGO of its progressive attitude to sexual equality.
It is tempting to think that that was a move by a bunch of crazy cowboys and cowgirls shooting from the hip, but it is probably wrong. The move was no isolated one. It sprang from a culture of militant homophobia spawned and cultivated by the very top leadership of the Anglican Church in Singapore. There is no better evidence for that than this church's participation in the Anglican Global South conference and the fact that John Chew now leads it.
Alex Au has been a gay activist and social commentator for over 10 years and is the co-founder of People Like Us, Singapore. Alex is the author of the well-known Yawning Bread web site.
Reader's Comments
Christianity is supposed to be a faith of love, forgiving and benevolence, not persecution, oppression, and intolerance.
I PITY these people who goes around telling others that they're "God's messengers, and are only carrying out God's will and missions."
To me, it'll be a total insult to all the vulgarities and animals if we were to use the vulgarities and animals to scold these low-class attention seekers.
I mis-quote from an anonymous psychology professor who's a devoted Catholic herself:
"We should PITY these attention seekers. It's mainly because something went wrong with their upbringing, especially due to lack of parental love, care & discipline, that's why these grown-up kids have to seek attention through such disgraceful methods."
Clearly I have been missing something all these years ........
the fact that religion tried to tell us how we should live our lifes is back to the medieval ages, its history and thus belongs in history books.
I wish someone can write some great/inspired gay people, like scientist, artist, blah blah who contributed not just for the gay community but as "people for people" documentary type
Take your pick John Chew
how can people be like this in the 21st century? talk about tolerance, understanding & acceptance...
Yes, Catholicism is not anti-gay, just anti-gay sex.
So if you are a horny Catholic and like gay sex, there is always Purgatory if Hell is not where you care to end up :)
As for VICTORWANG88's comment: "We need gay leaders who can show tolerance and get along with religious people, even though we don't agree."
I see shudderingly similar parallels in that remark, to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazi's which contributed to the Nazi aggression during WW2. 6 million Jews died in the gas chambers during that era.. And sadly, so did homosexuals labelled with the ignominy of the Pink Triangle, as well.
Let me tell you something. My name is Bob Ketler and my grandfather wrote a book in 1902 entitled, "The Tragedy of Paotingfu." It was the story of a group of missionaries, my grandmother's cousins among them, who went to China to "spread the gospel." (Better they should have been spreading sperm instead!) They were massacred in the Boxer Rebellion. While I'm sorry ANYONE died....they had NO business....NONE....spreading anything in China. I have NEVER felt one ounce of pity for them because they were MEDDLING where they should not have gone.
When will religious freaks learn that whatever THEY wish to believe WITHIN themselves is fine....but NOT to spread hate (and THAT, folks is EXACTLY what religion does) from one group to another. Osama Bin-laden and his GANG of Religioso freaks are no different from John Chew or the Nazi POPE we now have. It's all an evil, rotten pony and dog show that squeezes money out of poor people, inflames and plays to their prejudices and condemns honest hardworking people who just want to be allowed to love. HOW IRONIC!!!
I happen to personally believe in God....but I don't have a CLUE as to WHAT he is (Maybe a far venturing astronaut from another star system long ago) or WHO he is or WHERE he is. I LIKE believing in the traditional idea of God (in many religions) but it may, in fact, all be just a fantasy. I also think it is just as likely that there were or ARE MANY gods. Maybe the ancient societies who, it turns out, were pretty smart and right about a lot of things, had it right in the first place. Hail Jupiter!
However...for ANY religion to condemn ANOTHER religion or those believers OR the sex or sexual orientation of those believers...is hypocrisy of the highest order. How does John Chew defend the bible condemning women who wear red? How does he defend the commandment to kill your neighbor's son if he offends you and all the rest of those kinds of diatribes locked in a book that men wrote.
Half of the wars of the world would NEVER have occurred (and thus BILLIONS of people would have lived out their lives) were it not for religion....from ancient times of battling gods of different cultures....to the crusades.....to the very present, religion has marched a bloody, rotten road and left the corpses of innocent people in its wake.
I am SICK to death of priests who decry homosexuality and then when murders of young gays take place, perpetrated by the hatred-infused scum who listen to the priests, they absolve themselves of ALL responsibility by saying, "I didn't mean they should KILL them....only SAVE them. It is WRONG to kill." Such hypocritical denial of responsibility makes me sick to my soul.
In the brilliant play and movie, BECKET, Henry wails at one point, "Will no one rid me of this priest?" Maybe ALL societies need to rid themselves of ALL priests and let people find GOD in nature and within themselves.
Too many gays have died at the hands of men like John Chew.
And for those who think I am atheist......think again. I'm NOT! But if I were God and 2012 was fixed in the minds of many people as the end of the Mayan calendar, I might take this opportunity to announce in the skies above ALL lands, in ALL languages at the same moment....that ALL the priests who have preached this kind of smuttish hate....were forever barred from my kingdom.
Thus may speaketh the Lord, if we are lucky!
I may not know Alex personally but as an gay activist, political or not, he has more contributions & balls than the number of "made in china" fish balls you have for a brain, or lack thereof.
How can anyone with the smallest instant noodle for a brain advocate getting along with a group of supposed men of god, that is behind the support for "Kill the Gays and their friends" in Uganda??? It defies every logic and basic survival instincts. It's akin to preaching- " C'mon now boys and girls, Smile with Love and Understanding!", when Hitler is about to gas your Jewish gay ass in chambers. Therefore You & Akinola are a match made in deluded heaven.
These power hungry churches are only in it for power and control. In Singapore, from all the past recent debacles, from S377a, AWARE saga to the Ronny Tan incident, it speaks volume of how these wolves intend to take over secular governments and administrations to rule and then take over the world. It's always about conquest.
Just like now, City Harvest mega church now owns a part of Suntec. Well done. One small step for X-tians, 3 giant steps backward for humanity.
The bottom line is that religions are about control... wrapped up in the cotton wool of salvation for the insecure. Their followers, having first been rendered insecure by the power mongers of religion itself
The sins of religion (esp Islam) are the fabrications of men designed to strike fear and submission in their followers. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of the sins that do not relate to the violation of the person or his/her property. Yet, many religions will turn a blind eye to the 'real' sins while fanatically pursuing their own agenda of made-up sins... homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, pigs, dogs, ratio and tv. And so the list goes on
It is very tempting and easy to say "so what?" And "who cares". It's a form of denial. Remember this: when they come for you, who will save you if not other people like you?
@#3 - you are merely exhibiting another form of intolerance. Why can't some people choose to enjoy sleaze, or multiple partners, or operate saunas? As long as no one gets hurt, we should be free to be who we are and do what we want. Surely that is the essence of human rights and freedom? The very same things we all want. The things that people like Alex is writing about and giving an indispensable voice to.
Maybe it isn't naatural to you to speak up against injustices and discrimination. I for one am glas Alex is on the job.
Points WELL taken.
Thank you.
JPS
And is there a measurement for sin? So if a man fools around with other women, does it make him less of a sinner than a man who sleeps with another man? A murderer is less a sinner than a gay man?
If the church continues this way, it will just ostracize more gay people when Christianity is a religion of love. Jesus' first command is to "Love one another". Aren't these straight priests just following their own agenda?
The famous Billy Graham, when asked what happens if he has a gay son replied that he will love him even more for God says to love the marginalized. That is what I call "True Christianity".
Yes you hate us we know. Can you hate something else new for a change?
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