Fridae

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. 

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.