Political Spaghetti

Not that my audience is any bigger than the one I have while singing in the shower, but I had to be at an all day meeting today, and I'll be in the same predicament tomorrow. Catch you Saturday night, or Sunday, at the latest.

There's still lots to say.

The most rigorous and longest-running study of the power of prayer to date has just been published, according to the New York Times, and the results are earth-shattering: nothing happens.

Not so fast, says Bob Barth, the spiritual director of Silent Unity, the Missouri prayer ministry. "A person of faith would say that this study is interesting," he said, "but we've been praying a long time and we've seen prayer work, we know it works, and the research on prayer and spirituality is just getting started."

Without staking out a personal position on what prayer can and cannot do (really! isn't it a question of whether there is or isn't an active God?), the problem with the scientific study of prayer isn't, as the NYT article says, "the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends, families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the sick and dying," but the human tendency to misunderstand probability -- to interpret infrequent but personally and socially signficant aberrations from the "norm" as signs of an active God. If I pray for someone with a one in ten chance of surviving a disease, and that person happens to survive, am I really seeing "prayer at work," or am I erroneously elevating to the status of divine intervention what is actually an "inevitability"? That is, if there are 100 people in the world suffering from a disease with 10% survivorship, aren't the odds good that around 10 people will survive, no matter what? It's a big world -- something unusual is bound to happen to someone. That's why someone always seems to win the lottery, no matter what the odds.

The one clear result from the study was that if you know you're being prayed for, you are more likely to suffer complications, "perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created." The researchers agreed that, if anything, "the role of awareness of prayer should be studied further."

Conservative American Anglicans are about lose all "civil rights" credibility.

The storm clouds have been looming on the horizon for some time, but today Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo urged the Nigerian Federal Assembly to expedite the passage of a two-month old bill (pdf) that would ban not only gay marriage (homosexual activity, i.e., "sodomy", is already illegal) but also speech in advocacy of homosexuality, or organizations that might petition their government (or their church) on matters relating to homosexuals.

Where do American Anglicans fit in this? -- because their powerful colleague in the Anglican Church of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, has endorsed the legislation, and they have remained silent or, worse, defended the Archbishop.

It's one thing for American Anglicans to find common cause with Archbishop Akinola over the issue of human sexuality and whether the Church should bless same-sex unions or elevate non-celibate gay clergy. And who are we in the United States -- a people who are themselves in the midst of a debate over whether same-sex marriages or civil unions should receive recognition by the states -- to criticize Nigerians for passing a law that would express the majority Nigerian position on the issue?

But it's quite another thing for American Anglicans to support legislation that would ban speech, assembly and press, in order to silent opposition. I mean, why don't they just go ahead and strip they're citizenship while they're at it.

Here is the Daily Trust (Nigeria), today:

President Olusegun Obasanjo has written the National Assembly urging the parliament to ban same sex marriage or homosexuality in the country.

The President's letter was read on the floor of the House of Representatives by the Deputy Speaker of the House, Hon Austin Opara, who presided over yesterday's plenary session.

The letter introduced to the House an executive Bill seeking to ban same sex relationship in the country. It was entitled "Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act, 2006".

Opara said while announcing the receipt of the letter to the members at the commencement of yesterday's proceedings that the President urges the National Assembly to give expeditious consideration and passage to the bill. "This is because the problem has become topical and embarrassing in recent times".

The leader of the House, Hon Abdul Ningi, said the problem of homosexuality has become very disturbing in view of the increasing number of gays and lesbians in the country.

Ningi called on the House to commence debate immediately on the matter considering its necessity, but the presiding officer, Austin Opara, asked that the debate be suspended because the Bill needed to be gazetted and sent through legislative processes before it is debated upon.

The Federal Executive Council (FEC), recently condemned the menace. This might have prompted the executive arm of the government to come up with the Bill to outlaw the social problem. [emphasis mine]

I need not remind anyone that once the legislation passes, clerics like Dr. Lateef Adegbite, secretary-general of Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), will have license to "[monitor] the lifestyles of our people and their relationships to ensure that such practices are exposed in Nigeria and that offenders get their due punishment."

I wonder what punishment he has in mind.

Indeed, as Human Rights Watch put it:

Laws criminalizing homosexuality can also act as a licence to torture and ill treatment. By institutionalizing discrimination, they can act as an official incitement to violence against lesbians and gay men in the community as a whole, whether in custody, in prison, on the street or in the home. By stripping a sector of the population of their full rights, they also deprive lesbian and gay victims of human rights violations of access to redress while the abusers are allowed to continue abusing others with impunity.

Are there any conservative Anglicans out there who plan to step up and do the right thing?

In the last post I alluded to an editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (March 8) by the Rev. Luke Mbefo, an associate professor of theology at Duquesne, and a Nigerian (h/t David Virtue), in response to Bishop Chane's (2/26) op-ed in the Washington Post. What drew my attention to Mbefo's editorial was the broad theme he paints -- Nigerians are oriented toward community, while Westerners are oriented toward the individual. This theme underlies his argument that Western notions of individual liberties, especially as applied to homosexuality, are alien to Nigeria. He writes:

Africans live in two interpenetrating worlds at the same time. For them the individual, although endowed with those rights the Enlightenment considers sacred, is not recognized as the measure of all things. The African world of experience belongs to what writers on religious experience name "the primordial tradition." It is centered in the ubiquitous world of spirit which envelops and intermingles unceasingly with the world of peoples.

The decision of a section of African Anglicans to break with the U.S. Episcopal Church because of the consecration of a gay bishop, and to delete references to the mother church in Canterbury from the constitution, cannot be properly appreciated when separated from the role African traditional religion continues to play in African forms of Christianity.

The present generation of Anglican bishops in Africa are heirs of a two-fold tradition. Before many of them became Christians, they had been formed by the traditional religions of their ancestors.

The veneration of ancestral religious tradition is strongly embedded in them and their acceptance of Christianity is, in many ways, based on Christianity's congruence with that traditional heritage. They are opposed to the ordination of gay people because their reading of the Hebrew-Christian Bible and their traditional African piety have no sympathy with gay practice.

Homosexuality is, in their traditional heritage, seen as taboo and anybody seen to be so inclined was thought of as threatening the divinely ordained order of the community. In this tradition, the individual is free to the extent that he or she is at the service of the common good and not in so far as he or she is the center of sacred rights and privileges.

Mbefo's vision of the African mind is probably more congruent with my vision of the Western mind than he might think. There isn't much of a distinction to make. We in the West (yes, even here in the US) are not simply rugged individualists, defined by our adherence to personal rights and freedoms. Our behaviors are circumscribed, if not by scripture then by tradition, by a set of morals that prevent us from, say, permitting men to sleep with boys, something that is not historically taboo in all cultures. We are loathe to enslave others (though it still effectively happens that we do -- see Saipan), despite our history, and despite the Bible's equivocation. We believe, at the very least, that a family is an important social unit for raising children -- it could be that a variety of familial configurations for raising kids work just as well as one father and one mother, but we would all agree that children need parents.

Then there are prohibitions against killing, stealing, rape and incest. Not all of these are culturally defined, and some are the result of our religious history. In fact, there are many instances (even in the US) where the state is allowed to kill, with or without the approval of the governed. There are cultures where killing is necessary to establish and maintain social standing. Multiple wives are called for by some religious traditions, and are permitted by some states. Not all cultures have viewed homosexuality to be wrong.

Rev. Mbefo is fortunate, given the historically downtrodden status of his faith, to have been brought up in a culture where faith and history are so congruent (though it is ironic that Christianity was brought to Nigeria by those intent on its exploitation -- as Tutu said: "When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land"). What he is arguing is that individualism is Western and that it ought to be avoided in lieu of the communtiy and family-centered approach of the Nigerian Church, attuned as it is to the traditional values of Nigerian Society. Banned by both tradition and the Bible, Mbefo argues that homosexuality is not Nigerian.

However, by invoking "individualism" as the enemy, Mbefo is in effect arguing for an abrogation of personal liberties of all kinds. There are, in fact, a wide variety of "Western" imports that most Nigerians would probably be unwilling to do without (despite cynicism engendered by the election rigging that has soiled past efforts at pure democracy). Voting is one. I know that the Third Term push of Nigerian President Obasanjo is widely unpopular -- even his own party begins to admit that such a push is on the agenda, I don't imagine that Nigerians now wish to get rid of their civil rights.

Individualism allows individuals to have a voice in society. If there is a wrong that needs reform, even if a majority opposes that reform, a healthy society still allows the voice of reform to be heard. In doing so, the whole society -- the community -- accepts, rejects, or ignores that voice, and in doing so is strengthened. It is this lesson that Afghanis have never learned, or had long forgotten, in their indictment and incarceration of Abdul Rahman under Shar'iya for his conversion to Christianity nearly two decades ago. It is that lesson that we in the US have long understood (though we have recently grown foggy on why it is important), which led us to advocate on behalf of Abdul Rahman for his release (as of today, he has been granted asylum in Italy), and which led us, 217 years ago, to embed minority protections throughout our constitution.

Rev. Mbefo's letter is in response Bishop Chane's objection to Akinola's endorsement of the Nigerian gay marriage ban legislation (pdf). But it is important to realize that Chane's objection was not simply to the legislation's ban on gay marriage (in fact, he bends over backwards to avoid a blanket condemnation of that provision), but rather to the fact that the legislation would silence certain voices to the tune of 5 years' imprisonment.

The error in Rev. Mbefo's editorial is not his effort to protect his cultural traditions. In fact, as a civil libertarian, I must at least acquiesce to the Church of Nigeria's decision to prohibit the blessing of gay unions or the elevation of non-celibate gay clergy -- that's their choice and their right.

Rather, his error is to impose the teachings of the church -- even the "teachings" of his nation's cultural history -- on the right of individuals to at least speak their mind. To do so is equivalent to taking away the right to vote, and voting is an "individualism" that the "collective" cannot do without.

(updates below)

An editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (March 8) from a Nigerian clergyman working in Pittsburgh, which I will write about in a near-future post, got me to thinking about what Nigerians really think about their country, who they are, and where they are going.

One question that I've had is what relationship Nigerians have to the Church, whether Anglican, Catholic, or Pentecostal. The relationship is important to understand -- Nigerian politicians and clergymen talk about what Nigerians want and what they believe, and people like me, who are most definitely not Nigerian and have never visited the country let alone the continent, have to trust them. But what if the way those politicians and clergymen talk about the world is so different from how we talk about it that their presentation of Nigerians and their needs is hopelessly distorted to our ears?

Today's total solar eclipse, which started in Brazil, crossed the Atlantic and then covered a swath of countries on the Gulf of Guinea and up into Niger and Libya (6 Nigerian states experienced total eclipse), provides a window into what a visit to Nigeria might be like, and what we might learn about the flock led by such organizations as the Anglican Church of Nigeria.

First, as the eclipse approached, some news organizations published warnings, in part to avoid the religiously motivated violence that followed the 2001 eclipse in Borno State. As This Day (Lagos) pointed out on March 27:

Eclipse occurrence is not new in Nigeria. One occurred in 1898, another one in 1947 and that of 1959. The most recent was in 2001, the very particular case in Borno State that people did not understand. According to the Information and National Orientation Minister, Mr. Frank Nweke, government said it was nothing ominous in such occurrences. "The Federal Government once again reminded Nigerians about the impending solar eclipse, otherwise known as the eclipse of the sun. This incident occurs at new moon and only if the moon passes between the sun and the earth, which causes the brightness of the sun to be replaced, momentarily, by the black disk of the moon. This does not happen very often but it is expected to take place on March 29.

"I will like to inform Nigerians that solar eclipses are occurrences within the solar system, whereby the moon is directly between the sun and other planets, including the earth, our planet. Many of us would recall that in June 2001, some parts of the world including Nigeria experienced solar eclipse.

"I know it is natural for people to be frightened and react terribly to unusual incidents but I urge Nigerians and foreigners resident in Nigeria not to panic over the expected eclipse. It is not expected to have any real damaging effect, only on social and psychological discomforts are envisaged.

"However,, since eclipses are now of interest not only to scientists but also to the public, I passionately appeal to all Nigerians not to look at the sun directly because it may cause eye ailments that may lead to blindness in the long run. This is why scientists use a special type of glasses or other devices to view solar eclipses. I therefore strongly advise people to stay indoors for the period the eclipse is expected to last", the minister advised.

...

From a religious point of view, an eclipse has certain implications. Uluocha reiterated that when the lunar eclipse that occurred in 2001 at the Northern part of the country, it caused a lot of distractions in the sense that the Moslem communities, especially the Almajiris, went on rampage. They thought that the light of the moon was darkened because of the sins of the people.

"They went out to look for the infidels who were accused of being responsible for the darkening of the light of the moon. As far as they were concerned, it was unnatural for the light of the moon to be darkened when it was supposed to be shining very bright. So, they went out destroying properties, hotels, churches, killed non-Moslems, prostitutes, native doctors amongst other things. They felt that what happened was as a result of the sin of the people", he said.

...

[Dr. Ernest] Afiesimama advised that people should not regard the eclipse as if something has gone wrong in the universe or wanting to know if it is a bad omen, whether the gods are angry or it is diabolical and so many speculations that may be expected of people who are not sensitised in the atmospheric phenomenon. From his point of view, there is nothing to panic about the eclipse.

Now, the Mail & Guardian Online (South Africa) reports on today's response to the eclipse:

Shouts of "Allah Akbar!" (God is greatest) rent the air in parts of Kaduna, northern Nigeria on Wednesday as a four-minute eclipse turned daylight into darkness.

Many residents ran indoors before the eclipse started. Some did so for fear of looking at the phenomenon directly and damaging their eyes.

Others did so in the belief that that it was a satanic development. The eclipse was experienced in 11 of Nigeria's 36 states.

Musa Abubakar, a Kaduna resident, told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that scientists' claims that it was a mere expression of nature were not sacrosanct.

"Why Nigeria? Why Kaduna, if not because our sins are legion?" he asked, even after he was told that other countries would also experience it.

Kabuna resident Amina Yusuf also believes the eclipse was God's way of warning Nigeria to turn away from sin. Another resident insisted it was conjured by witches and wizards.

"I did not allow my children to go to school today since we have been hearing on radio and television that there would be an eclipse," Fati Sale said.

Teacher Ezekiel Zubair said he deliberately stayed outdoors to see the eclipse "for a few seconds, because it may be a once-in-a-lifetime experience".

Muslim cleric Abu Thanni said the eclipse was Allah's way of showing that he is "omnipotent".

Pastor Joseph Aku quoted the Bible to buttress his view that the eclipse was a divine event. His text read: "The time is coming when I will make the sun go down at noon and the earth grow dark in daytime. I the Sovereign Lord have spoken."

An eclipse in 1989 led to rioting in Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north as gangs burnt and looted homes and hotels to "atone for the sins of infidels". [emphasis mine]

I do not wish to make Nigerians look foolish. Far from it. When I saw my first solar eclipse (it was only partial), I was overwhelmed by a sense of smallness. Despite having known the true nature of a solar eclipse since I was a small child, I was still awestruck by the grand movements of these celestial bodies, so far away and out of our control. Some react to eclipses, as I did, by reveling in the grandeur they evoke; others, perhaps because of that same sense of smallness, make calls to God to save them from their sin.

So far, I've seen no reports of violence.

UPDATE: 3/29/2006, 6:46 PM. The BBC reported on the 2001 eclipse-induced violence here. The violence took place in Maiduguri, the town, along with Bauchi, in far northwestern Nigeria where Muslims attacked Christians, ostensibly because of the Danish cartoons, this February.

UPDATE 2: 3/29/2006, 7:02 PM. "The world isn't ending." Or so says the Nigerian Ministry of Information and National Orientation (?):

"The solar eclipse is not an evil occurrence. It is not the end of the world. There is no need to panic. It is a wonderful expression of Nature."

(update below)

I guess today's meeting with Bush was too important for President Obasanjo to screw up.

Charles Taylor, after attempting escape on Monday night from extradition to Sierra Leone for 17 war crimes indictments, was just arrested as he tried to sneak into neighboring Cameroon.

Obasanjo had at first resisted surrendering Taylor, but bowed to the request of new Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, saying that Taylor was not a prisoner in Nigeria and that the Liberians could take him whenever they wanted.

UPDATE: 3/29/2006, 7:02 AM. The New York Times also gives front-(web)page coverage to the recapture. Lydia Polgreen, writing for the Times, notes that President Sirleaf of Liberia was "harassed" by Congress during her recent visit to the US to ensure that Taylor sat for war crimes in either Liberia or Sierra Leone. Knowing full well what havoc he could wreak if he returned to Liberia, she was reluctant.

Well, Nigerian security forces are first taking Taylor to Abuja, then directly to Liberia. Hopefully Taylor's supporters will make good on their pledge to let him sit for the prosecution of his indictments.

Serves me right for not surfing the web a bit more -- I had missed until now Mark Harris's 3/16 response to Bishop Duncan's 3/14 response to Bishop Chane's 2/26 Washington Post op-ed.

He made many of the same points I did on 3/15, and others I didn't.

I strongly recommend reading his response since he can speak to the religious and political implications within the Anglican Communion of Chane's op-ed in ways that I cannot.

I was going to write something this morning about how lame Nigerian President Obasanjo's efforts have been to convince Nigerians at home that his visit to the US (right now) has nothing to do with seeking a Third Term. But this trumps it (AP via the New York Times):

Liberian warlord and former President Charles Taylor has disappeared from his haven in Nigeria, just as he was to have been handed over to stand trial on war crimes charges, Nigerian officials said Tuesday.

Taylor vanished Monday night from his villa in the southern town of Calabar, the government said. Last week, Nigeria's government agreed reluctantly to surrender him to stand before a U.N. tribunal on charges related to civil war in his homeland and its neighbor Sierra Leone.

A government statement said that President Olusegun Obasanjo was creating a panel to investigate Taylor's disappearance on Monday night. The statement raised the possibility he might have been abducted, but did not elaborate.

A presidential spokeswoman said members of Taylor's Nigerian security detail had been arrested.

The presidential statement offered no details on how Taylor's disappearance was discovered or whether he was being hunted.

Nigeria's Guardian newspaper reported Tuesday that dozens of people who had been living with Taylor in the villa in a walled government compound had left Monday and were flying to Lagos en route to an unknown destination.

The irony, of course, is that President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had agree on Saturday to hand over Taylor to a UN tribunal sitting in Sierra Leone after receiving repeated requests from Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, was probably relieved that Taylor would not be on the schedule when he arrived at the White House this Wednesday. It should be an interesting meeting.

The White House is set to welcome him and Human Rights Watch has prepared their message for him.

But there's still no word from conservative Anglicans on whether they think a potentially major human rights violation, against professed Christians (who just happen to be gay), is worth speaking up about.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo visits the White House on Wednesday. The Presidents will discuss, among other things, "continuing cooperation in the areas of Darfur, regional security, energy security, fighting corruption, strengthening democratic institutions, and the need to bring Charles Taylor to justice."

Given Secretary Rice's vigorous lobbying for the release of Afghan Christian convert Abdul Rahman last week, and her numerous Sunday morning talk show appearances discussing that topic, I'm sure that she and leaders in the Anglican Communion will be eager to voice their concern that the same arguments applied toward the release of Rahman also be applied toward pressuring President Obasanjo to withdraw the so-called "Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act 2006" (pdf), legislation that was endorsed by the head of the Anglican Church of Nigeria (the largest Anglican province in the world), Archbishop Peter Akinola.

I have argued previously that, given the coming schism within the Anglican Communion over the ordination of non-celibate gay priests and bishops, it is unlikely conservative Anglicans will attempt any kind of effort to pressure Akinola to withdraw his endorsement, or similiarly pressure the White House to get Obasanjo to withdraw the legislation (despite State Department condemnation). Akinola is too powerful an ally in the American conservative movement's desire to fight homosexuality here at home, and Obasanjo is too important for the US's national energy strategy for a President who is already weak on civil rights to insist too vigorously.

But this may be their only chance to take a stand on the side of those rights. If they let it go by, conservative Anglicans will have lost all credibility as a group with any interest in protecting democratic institutions (something Bush lost long ago). By association, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), which has provided at least in kind support to conservative Anglicans through the American Anglican Council, which has received considerable support from major Republican donors, and which has recently impeached its own self-declared mission to protect the human rights of oppressed Christians by prioritizing the human rights of some Christians over others, or of Christians over non-Christians, will have come to the point where it should seriously think about removing "Democracy" from its name.

IRD's new president is James Tonkowich, the former managing editor of BreakPoint, the newsletter of Chuck Colson's Prison Felloship. Now, I won't hold Tonkowich to Colson's words, but here's what Colson said in October, 2004, in Christianity Today (Hat tip Andrew Sullivan):

Radical Islamists were surely watching in July when the Senate voted on procedural grounds to do away with the Federal Marriage Amendment. This is like handing moral weapons of mass destruction to those who use America's decadence to recruit more snipers and hijackers and suicide bombers.

One vital goal of the war in Iraq, and the war against terrorism, is to bring democracy to the heart of the Islamic world. Our hope is to make freedom so attractive that other Muslim countries will follow suit. But when radical Islamists see American women abusing Muslim men, as they did in the Abu Ghraib prison, and when they see news coverage of same-sex couples being "married" in U.S. towns, we make our kind of freedom abhorrent—the kind they see as a blot on Allah's creation.

Preserving traditional marriage in order to protect children is a crucially important goal by itself. But it's also about protecting the United States from those who would use our depravity to destroy us. We must not give up simply because the Senate voted down the FMA. It took William Wilberforce and his allies 20 years to shut down Britain's slave trade; it will take years to win the battle for traditional marriage.

By Colson's logic, the more vocal and violent Islamic extremists become, the more rights we must curtail here at home, especially if those rights are offensive to Islam.

Yikes.

I should point out that, in some sense, this is the same argument used by many conservative Anglicans to defend Akinola's endorsement of the legislation: David Virtue, the Rev. Martyn Minns (board member of the AAC), Faith McDonnell (Director of IRD's Religious Liberty Program), and the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan (Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh and moderator of the Anglican Communion Network). And, of course, it's exactly the opposite argument used to advocate for the quick release of Abdul Rahman in Afghanistan.

Was Chane right? Was he wandering into the realm of "conspiracy theory," as Faith McDonnell put it, when he said "what we see in Nigeria today may well be on the agenda of the Christian right tomorrow"?

Maybe. Maybe not. But we'll know them by their deeds.

Providing additional reason to believe that conservative Anglican are -- at the moment -- constitutionally incapable of seeing a crisis of conscience for what it is, David Virtue has posted a now old letter (March 6) from the Rev. Dr. Paul Zahl, the dean and president of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Zahl writes:

Camille Paglia says it well in this week's New York Times (6 March 2006). She says that faculties like Harvard's want diversity in all things except diversity of thought. She could have been speaking of the Episcopal Church.

Paglia's point is apt to an editorial that has appeared in newspapers throughout the United States this past week, beginning with the Washington Post. It is an opinion piece by the Bishop of Washington, John Bryson Chane, accusing American traditionalist church people of backing figures such as Peter Akinola, the Primate of Nigeria, who is supporting a piece of repressive legislation in his homeland that criminalizes homosexual activity and is thus opposed to human rights. Bishop Chane wants the American "orthodox" to speak out against Archbishop Akinola's support of this legislation.

We certainly want to look at all things in the light of core Christianity. And if the Nigerian legislation is as bad as Bishop Chane says it is, then we are required to say something.

But I, for one, have become almost unable to "hear" anything that the power-people in the Episcopal Church have to say until they start acting with love toward those in the small minority over whom they have canonical power.

...

I cannot listen to what the majority has to say – and I would truly like to – until those who hold the cards just now, in a human sense, give a little. When they give us some real space, then I shall listen to what they have to say concerning our co-religionist Peter Akinola.

It's been a while since this letter was written, and I for one will give Zahl the benefit of the doubt -- he has probably carefully read the offending legislation (pdf), as well as the State Department's condemnation, and the letter written to President Olusegun Obasanjo from Human Rights Watch and 15 other organizations requesting that the President withdraw it, in the intervening period.

Yet, like Zahl's note, most of the responses to Chane's op-ed from conservatives have viewed it as a personal attack on Archbishop Akinola. Few, if any, have bothered to look more deeply at what the legislation actually calls for. To whit, popular orthodox Anglican websites, like VirtueOnline and TitusOneNine, have yet to even acknowledge that their associate in Nigeria, Archbishop Akinola, may have stepped over the line in endorsing legislation that explicitly curtails homosexuals or those advocating on behalf of homosexuals their rights to speech, assembly, press, and religious beliefs. Given recent events, I hope that conservative Christians (not just Anglicans) now would be familiar with the potential effects of denying those rights.

Reuters reports on a two-day extension of the census, announced today. The significance of this census, to all of us, is two fold: (1) it's the first in 15 years in a country that is Africa's most populous nation, but whose population is only very roughly defined (somewhere between 120 and 150 million); (2) questions of tribe and religion have been eliminated from the questionnaire, meaning that no one will no for sure how big a Muslim majority there actually is. Some in Nigeria believe that the size of the Muslim population has been vastly inflated, given the strongly northern-Muslim composition of Nigerian military.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently issued a press release calling for Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to withdraw the legislation he recently presented to the Nigerian Federal Assembly that would ban not only gay marriage but also the right for anyone to publicly advocate or defend homosexuality. The legislation would further ban church groups that celebrate gay marriages or simply support their celebration, and could hamper HIV/AIDS prevention efforts in Nigeria, where over 3% of the population is infected with the virus. See below.

Here are three more press items following on the HRW press release:

Afrol News in Norway (March 24) discusses the content of the legislation and the objections of HRW.

SomaliNet (March 24) presents a very brief summary of the legislation and the HRW press release.

AllAfrica.com (March 24) publishes a short notice by the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) on the possibility that the legislation could hamper HIV/AIDS prevention efforts.

A particularly odious biproduct of the current wrangle in the Anglican Communion over gay priests and bishops is the utter lack of focus within the communion of how purely political maneuvers may be adversely affecting the very subject of their disagreement: homosexuals.

We have seen this clearly in Nigeria over the last two months. President Olusegun Obasanjo presents a law to the Nigerian Federal Assembly which would meaninglessly ban gay marriage but, more importantly, also ban speech, press, and assembly in support or in advocacy of homosexuality and homosexuals. The legislation, which has not yet passed, would have wide-ranging implications, such as barring church groups, like Changing Attitude Nigera, run by Davis Mac-Iyalla, a gay Anglican Nigerian, from operating within the country.

The Primate of the Anglican Nigerian Church, Archbishop Peter Akinola, has endorsed this legislation. The Church has disavowed Davis Mac-Iyalla, claiming that he was never an Anglican, and that his activities and organization are an attempt to defraud foreign Anglicans wishing to support homosexuality in Nigeria.

Despite the obvious human rights violations implied in the legislation, despite the condemnation of the US State Department, and despite the protest of various international human rights organizations who have called for President Obasanjo to withdraw the legislation, conservative Anglicans in the United States, with whom Akinola is aligned both by doctrine and organizational commitment, have remained silent.

True, several conservative American Anglican leaders have mentioned the legislation. Alan Wisdom was the first (March 3). Speaking to the Washington Blade, this non-Anglican former interim director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (recently replaced by Dr. James Tonkowich, the managing editor of BreakingPoint with Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship, as the permanent director) said that there was a "legitimate concern about the Nigerian law relating to sexual expression ... we would oppose a law like that."

Yet, just a week later (March 9), the director of IRD's Religious Liberty program -- ironic name, huh? -- Faith McDonnell, said, "the proposed federal legislation is onerous to us ... but our society is not yet living in constant fear of the rule of Islamism." In other words, we "would" oppose a law like that, but we're not going to. Why? Because of Islamism. What we're left with, then, is Christianism versus Islamism. I've blogged on Faith McDonnell's IRD letter, and her similar letter to the Times Union of Albany, below. Both letters have led me to question whether the word "Democracy" really belongs in the IRD's moniker.

In the interim (March 4), the Rev Canon Martyn Minns of Fairfax, Virginia, and a member of the Anglican American Council's board (the Episcopal organization with strong historical ties to the Institute on Religion and Democracy), wrote a letter posted on TitusOneNine, that said that "while I find some of the language of the proposed Nigerian law too harsh and unacceptable in our context, sadly there are many other situations that I find even more unacceptable. For example, in Saudi Arabia there are death penalties for women convicted of adultery or for any citizen who converts to Christianity." He further said about Nigeria, "There is a precarious balancing act between those regions that are under Muslim influence -- where Sharia law calls for the stoning of homosexuals -- and those that have a majority Christian population. The situation is volatile as demonstrated by the repercussions from the Danish cartoon saga that have already led to hundreds of Christian and Muslim deaths. Keeping the lid on this situation is a formidable task." Minns argues, in essence, that the threat of Islam is great enough to justify sacrificing democratic principles. Intepreted more broadly, in the context of the recent incarceration and possible release of Abdul Rahman, what he is actually saying is that democratic principles matter more in some cases than in others; that is, only when Democracy protects interests of Christians.

On March 7, Washington-based trustees of the American Anglican Council wrote an open letter, embarrassing themselves by claiming that they could find no evidence that Archbishop Akinola had made any public claim of support for the legislation. Of course, he had. The letter goes on to claim that Chane's op-ed to the Washington Post was nothing more than a personal attack against Archbishop Akinola. They make no mention of whether they would support or condemn the Nigerian legislation. I blogged on this letter here.

On March 15, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh, and the moderator of the Anglican Communion Network (the only Anglican organization in the US with which Akinola will associate), published a letter on VirtueOnline, publicly defending Archbishop Akinola against Bishop Chane's op-ed. In it, he made the same kernel of an argument advanced by Rev. Minns and the IRD staff -- Akinola is facing a grave threat from Nigerian Islamists and the only way to stop their advance is to appease them. Duncan makes no mention of his endorsement or condemnation of the legislation. I blogged on Duncan's letter here.

The problem, of course, is that conservative American Anglicans find themselves unable to publicly condemn the Nigerian legislation. Even if they found it "onerous," they would be hard pressed to avoid criticism of a man who is, for all intents and purposes, a political ally in Africa, a man who represents a movement within Anglicanism that gives theirs far greater legitimacy than if they were alone.

Meanwhile, conservative American Anglicans who happen to agree with the spirit of the Nigerian legislation banning speech on behalf of homosexuality, such as readers of VirtueOnline (David Virtue is called the Rush Limbaugh of American Anglicans), can fight any mention of the "human rights" dimension of the legislation by saying that Chane's op-ed was just a personal attack against Archbishop Akinola.

Liberal Anglicans, of course, can do nothing substantive.

In the meantime, people like me (a non-Anglican) start to think that conservative American Anglicans are the devil. Fr. Jake echos that concern, when he says, "we also have to pay closer attention to the perspective of those who are outside the Church, who do not always trust our words, because our actions, our witness, is often viewed as being contrary to the message we claim to profess."

It has occurred to me, given what appears to be an imminent schism within the Anglican Communion, that that very same schism might, in fact, be the way forward. Freed from the political dimension of having to defend Akinola against liberal criticism, the civil libertarians among conservative American Anglicans (if there are any) would be able to cajole and pressure Akinola to withdraw his endorsement. Akinola will only listen to those within his "communion," anyway.

But let's be realistic. By the time conservative Anglicans find their conscience, the legislation will already have passed. And will they ever find their conscience, or will they just remain on the wrong side of a human rights debate?

Condi Rice has been on the case:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has contacted Afghan President Hamid Karzai by telephone and spoken in person with Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah to discuss legal proceedings against an Afghan citizen who converted to Christianity 16 years ago.

"She raised it in the strongest possible terms and she urged President Karzai's government to seek a favorable resolution to this case at the earliest possible moment. She underlined the fact that the United States stands forthrightly for principles of freedom of worship, freedom of expression and that these are bedrock principles of democracy around the world," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

... and now it looks like Abdul Rahman will be released:

An Afghan man possibly facing execution for converting from Islam to Christianity is expected "to be released in the coming days," a source with detailed knowledge of the case said Friday.

Word of Abdul Rahman's release comes after days of international pressure and the day before the Afghan Cabinet was scheduled to discuss the case of the 41-year-old father of two. On Thursday, top Afghan clerics urged Muslims to kill Rahman if the government freed him.

...

The U.S. government has stressed to Karzai the importance of freedom of religion in a democracy, Rice said, adding that Afghanistan now has a constitution that embraces democracy rather than the autocratic mandates of the Taliban.

Readers of TitusOneNine will be relieved. I'm sure they'll also be relieved when Secretary Rice makes a similar call to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, perhaps when he visits (can anyone confirm this rumor that Obasanjo is coming to the US shortly?).

A conversation between Bush and Obasanjo that I think is particularly relevant here is the one they had during Bush's visit to Abuja, Nigeria, on July 12, 2003. Here's Bush:

... Mr. President, I appreciate your honesty and openness and forthrightness when it comes to battling the pandemic of AIDS. You're truly an international leader on this issue. And the United States of America, when Congress acts, will stand side-by-side with leaders such as yourself to fight the pandemic of AIDS to save lives.

It's that same commitment to AIDS prevention that Rice can invoke when she asks him why his government is worrying about further denying civil rights (and I'm talking about speech, press, and assembly) to an already repressed and closeted minority, when over 3 million of his citizens suffer from HIV/AIDS. Human Rights Watch (and those 15 other organizations) are concerned that:

While the prevailing pattern of HIV transmission in Nigeria, as elsewhere in the continent, is overwhelmingly heterosexual, the government will only damage its own prevention efforts by driving populations already suffering stigma for their sexual conduct still further underground—not only making it more difficult for outreach and education efforts to reach them, but potentially criminalizing civil society groups engaged in that vital work. Nigeria’s AIDS prevention programs have already been distinguished by their neglect of the particular risks facing men who have sex with men (MSM). This bill would put major barriers in the path of effective prevention efforts.

I would add that if HIV/AIDS is perceived as a gay disease in Nigeria (which it is -- broadly), outside organizations that fight HIV/AIDS could be specifically targeted as "involved in the registration of gay clubs, societies and organizations, sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private," and thus subject to 5 years' imprisonment.

Too bad Abdul Rahman isn't also a gay Anglican Nigerian.

I can only reiterate what others have said. This is not a book for Democrats on how to retool their message; it's a book on how to generate innovation and stay close to the base. I highly recommend it.

I'm now starting a book on the oil conflict in the Niger Delta, called "The Next Gulf". (Yes, I shamelessly pirated the title for a recent blog post.) It's currently only available in the UK. So far, it's a great read, and indispensible for an outsider to Nigeria, such as myself. The book is convincing me that every problem in Nigeria ultimately comes down to oil and the (mal-)distribution of the wealth it brings to the various parts and classes of Nigerian society.

From the Voice of America (March 24):

Oil Minister Edmund Daukoru, says Nigeria had lost about $1 billion since February when militants in the Niger Delta launched attacks on oil facilities and workers.

Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer had benefited tremendously from recent high crude oil prices. Its oil revenue reached a record $15 billion in 2005 and estimates for 2006 were even higher.

Daukuro says projected revenue for this year would be adversely affected by problems in the delta. It is estimated Nigeria had earned more than $400 billion since production commenced about 40 years ago.

But most Nigerians live on less than $1 a day and the people of the delta are some of the most impoverished.

Wunmi Bewaji, an opposition member of the House of Representatives, says corrupt officials benefit most from Nigeria's oil revenue and therefore any shortfall will not make a difference to ordinary Nigerians.

Expect a serious crackdown really soon. Or Western military involvement.

There's something that doesn't quite make sense about some recent comments by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in defense of Nigerian Primate Peter Akinola in his potentially inciting role in Christian violence against Muslims in the southern Nigerian city of Onitsha. Comments by Williams were reported on today (March 24) by the Church Times.

Archbishop Williams' comments came from a long interview he gave to the Guardian Unlimited. I posted briefly on that interview here. Williams:

[What Archbishop Akinola said] was taken by some as, you know, open provocation, encouragement, a threat. I think I know him well enough to - to take his good faith on that, what he meant. He did not mean to stir up the violence that happened. He's a man who will speak very directly and immediately into crises. I think he meant to issue a warning, which certainly has been taken as a threat, an act of provocation. Others in the Nigerian church have, I think, found other ways of saying that which have been more measured.

Think what you like about Williams' language, I don't think it's a stretch to surmise that Williams does not feel like now is the time to be criticizing Akinola, given the impending schism in the Anglican Communion.

But why should he criticize, anyway? Hasn't the Anglican Church of Nigeria, in cooperation with its Catholic sister, called for a two-day period of mourning for those who died in the violence in late February?

The problem is that nowhere in any press release or story about the violence or the two-day period of mourning does anyone mention the retaliatory violence by Christians against Muslims in Onitsha.

William: "I think I know him well enough to - to take his good faith on that, what he meant." Then why hasn't Akinola included those who died in Onitsha as worthy of mourning?

The first census in Nigeria in 15 years is currently in its fourth day and it has brought the country to a halt. Given what's a stake in this massively corrupt and ethnically divided country, this is not surprising.

African News Dimenion writes (and I need to quote somewhat extensively given that the link will go behind a subscription firewall shortly):

Cities and towns across the west African giant fell silent as Nigeria's population -- estimated between 120 and 150 million citizens -- observed a national holiday coupled with a stay-at-home order to be counted.

...

President Olusegun Obasanjo has made counting the citizenry a priority and the five-day exercise is due to end on Saturday, but those involved want more time.

Obasanjo has insisted an accurate census is a vital tool in any development strategy for a nation where most people live in abject poverty despite the state's vast oil revenues.

But the exercise has led to street violence of a kind of clashes that has already seen 20,000 killed over the past seven years when its religious and ethnic fissures became very divisive.

Nine people -- three policemen and six vigilantes -- were killed in a shootout Monday in the southern market town of Nnewi when security forces tried to search a house for suspected 'Biafran' separatists, according to police.

A senior officer in nearby Onitsha blamed the clash on market vigilantes, but Information Minister Frank Nweke linked it to a campaign against the census by a separatist group seeking to recreate the breakaway "Republic of Biafra".

A secessionist attempt by ethnic Igbos in southeast to form a Republic of Biafra in 1967 plunged the nation into a 30-month long civil war in which more than one million people died.

Suspected separatists were also fingered for hacking a young census officer to death with machetes in the nearby market city of Onitsha and wounding five others by spraying them with acid.

In a separate incident Friday five people were injured after a boundry dispute on the borders of southwestern Edo and Ondo states while a census official was attacked, apparently by a disturbed man in Ondo state capital Akure.

Despite positive assessments by National Population Commission chief Samu'ila Danko Makama, in many places census officials are yet to get going.

The mammoth exercise has been hampered by the anti-census attacks, a lack of paperwork, census officials protesting over salaries and general logistical hiccups.

...

"I don't think we can finish this job by Saturday because there are a lot of areas we are yet to cover," census counter Abdulazeez Ahmed told AFP.

"I believe we will need at least three more days to count everyone," he said.

So much for Archbishop Akinola's call for a two-day period of mourning for the Christians who died in February's violence. (See here for Living Church article on the two-day mourning.)

Further stories on the census: here, here, and here.

Here's a round up of the news in reaction to the letter from Human Rights Watch (HRW), and 15 other human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, to President Olusegun Obasanjo, asking him to withdraw the anti-gay marriage legislation currently before the Nigerian Federal Assembly. Given the broad public support in Nigeria, the bill will likely pass. Obasanjo plans a visit to the US shorty, where he plans to meet with President Bush.

Archbishop Peter Akinola, head of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, has endorsed the law.

So far, complete silence from conservative Anglicans.

AllAfrica.com (March 23) posts HRW's letter.

365Gay.com (March 23) reports on HRW's press release.

The Episcopal Diocese of Washington's blog (March 23) has commentary. Quote:

So to restate a recurring theme: It is okay for the Anglican Church of Nigeria, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola, to support what a bevy of human rights organizations call a "draconian measure" that "will only intensify prejudice and discrimination based on sexual orientation." As long as they don’t consecrate any gay bishops, their membership in the Anglican Communion is apparently safe. Because, you see, there is "consensus" within the Communion that gay bishops are a dodgy initiative that must be resisted until an overwhelming majority of the Communion is on board. Whereas advocating the imprisonment of gay people who kiss in public is not sufficient cause for reexamining the nature of that consensus.

South Africa's Independent Online (March 24) draws attention to the bill in a short piece, emphasizing HRW's claim that the legislation could impede efforts to treat HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. They don't get it quite right when they say that the legislation (pdf) bans homosexual sex. That act is already banned in the Nigerian Penal Code, as indicated in HRW's letter, and is punishible by 14 years' imprisonment.

The Times of India (March 24) writes a nearly verbatim article to that in the Independent Online.

PinkNews (March 24) covers the basics. But then they publish another article that gets some facts wrong (though I have to credit them for the picture of Bush and Obasanjo above). The Nigerian legislation will not ban homosexual acts (that's already illegal and punishible by 14 years' imprisonment), but gay marriage and advocacy on behalf of homosexuality and homosexuals.

ThinkingAnglicans (March 24) posts their own roundup on the basics.

Gay.com (March 24) posts HRW's press release.

It stands to reason that I should not feel welcome in any "club" that would argue about the legitimacy of my membership. The Church of England Newspaper has a brief report today on the spiritual hunger of homosexuals in the UK.

It's true. 'Cause Pat Robertson says so.

Today, Human Rights Watch issued a press release for a letter calling for Nigerian President Olusegun to withdraw his legislation (pdf) banning not only gay marriage in Nigeria (even purely religious marriage ceremonies), but also the right to speak and assemble on behalf of homosexuality or homosexuals:

As Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo prepares to visit the United States, he should reaffirm his commitment to the human rights of all Nigerians and withdraw proposed legislation to introduce criminal penalties for same-sex relationships and marriage ceremonies, as well as for public advocacy or associations supporting the rights of lesbian and gay people.

In a letter to President Obasanjo, a coalition of 16 human rights organizations urged him to disavow the bill, which contravenes international law and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights that ensure rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly. The bill also undermines Nigeria’s struggle to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, said the 16 groups which work in Nigeria and abroad.

"This draconian measure will only intensify prejudice and discrimination based on sexual orientation," said Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "The bill criminalizes public expressions of love and any defense of lesbian and gay rights, denying fundamental freedoms that should be enjoyed by all Nigerians." [emphasis mine]

The press release mentions the fact that the bill bans gay marriage, but it places far greater emphasis on the limitations the legislation would place on basic civil rights and freedoms.

The letter itself is important reading:

The broad and sweeping provisions of this proposed legislation could lead to the imprisonment of individuals solely for their actual or imputed sexual orientation in a number of ways, including for consensual sexual relations in private, advocacy of lesbian and gay rights, or public expression of their sexual identity. Anyone imprisoned under this law would be a prisoner of conscience. We urge you to disavow this proposal which contradicts fundamental freedoms under the Nigerian Constitution, international human rights law and standards, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

...

Laws criminalizing homosexuality can also act as a licence to torture and ill treatment. By institutionalizing discrimination, they can act as an official incitement to violence against lesbians and gay men in the community as a whole, whether in custody, in prison, on the street or in the home. By stripping a sector of the population of their full rights, they also deprive lesbian and gay victims of human rights violations of access to redress while the abusers are allowed to continue abusing others with impunity.

The physical threat to homosexuals in Nigeria is real. Davis Mac-Iyalla, the director of Changing Attitude Nigeria, a Nigerian Anglican LGBT organization, was arrested in October 2005 and held for two days, after publishing in article in Nigeria's Daily Sun bringing attention to gay Anglicans. Mac-Iyalla and eight of his colleagues had just attended a meeting of Changing Attitude when they were stopped in their car, brought to the Wuse district prison, beaten, and forced to bribe their way out:

At the station they searched Davis’s pocket and discovered his identity card for Changing Attitude. They wanted to know if he was the author of the story in the previous week’s paper. He said that he was. They didn’t comment but took the nine to an open cell, beat Davis again, but never gave a reason.

None of them was allow to communicate with anyone, including members of their families. No one knew where they were and there a lot of confusion outside. They were kept without food and water.

My guess is that Mac-Iyalla and his colleagues would be considered lucky for being held for only two days if the same were to happen today.

Perhaps the possibility of violence against threatened minorities will draw conservative Anglicans in the US (dare I hope that the IRD, AAC, and Anglican Communion Network would join them?) to the right side of the debate. Perhaps they will stop shuffling their feet with Archbishop Akinola, stop complaining about the threat of Shar'iya, and start ending their complicity in overt discrimination. Or perhaps discrimination against Christian converts in Afghanistan is of far greater importance.

None of this is really very new, but it's important to keep it all in perspective. Nigeria provides 8% of US oil imports (it's the United States' 5th largest supplier) and is the largest oil producing nation in the Gulf of Guinea. Yet Nigeria's relationship to oil production rapidly careens toward disaster.

The Ogoni people of the Niger Delta, where virtually all of Nigeria's oil production is concentrated, have been in a long-term struggle with the oil companies (particularly Shell and it's Nigerian subsidiary) and with Nigeria's military and civilian governments to exert control over their ancestral land. Their demands have been relatively simple: ecosystem and mineral rights.

This struggle has become increasingly violent -- and sophisticated -- with a very large proportion of Nigeria's oil production lost either in spills or to bunkering (the siphoning of oil from pipelines for sale on the black market -- bunkering is a capital-intensive endeavor that would require the assistance of local and state government officials).

This Monday, the Italian oil group Agip confirmed an attack on its pipeline, leading to the loss of between 65,000 to 75,000 barrels per day. Forbes reports:

"Nigerian Agip Oil Company, a subsidiary of Italy's ENI in Nigeria, confirms that during the night of March 17, 2006 an act of sabotage occurred on the Tebidaba-Brass pipeline in the vicinity of Brass in the Niger Delta," the company said in an official statement.

"Production was immediately shut and the affected pipeline isolated. The situation is under control and operations have commenced to define the extent of the pipeline damage and contain any associated pollution," the text said.

World oil market prices climbed Monday on the news of the incident, but fell later as the markets sought to balance it against high crude stockpiles in the US.

The latest break in production will further dampen Nigeria's oil output, which has already seen a 20 pct slump since attacks started by Nigerian separatist rebels in the restive southern Delta, the country's oil producing heartland.

As of today (March 22), UPI was reporting the following:

Ongoing unrest in Nigeria's Delta State has slashed oil production there by 26 percent.

In 2005 the CIA ranked Nigeria as the world's 12th largest oil producer, pumping 2,451,000 barrels per day and with estimated reserves of 25 billion barrels.

Last weekend an explosion on the Tebidaba-Brass pipeline, owned by Italian multinational Nigeria Agip Oil Company, reduced the country's export capacity by 631,000 barrels a day.

The government subsequently deployed a number of gunboats to the Escravos naval base in Warri, Delta State. A multi-billion dollar Chevron Texaco natural gas project is situated in Escravos, along with a number of oil platforms and wells.

26% is a lot. And it's dangerous to US interests, given that it takes 3 weeks for Nigerian crude to ship to the US, and 8 weeks for it to ship from Saudi Arabia. Perhaps that's why I wasn't surprised to see this in Business in Africa Online:

The visiting Commander of the US Naval Forces in Europe, Admiral Henry "Harry" Ulrich, has pledged more "activity and visibility" by the US Navy in the Gulf of Guinea as a way of firming co-operation between America and nations of the region.

Admiral Ulrich arrived in Nigeria on Monday from Ghana, where he attended a conference between the Gulf of Guinea nations and the US on ways of securing the region, at the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Institute in Accra.

...

"We aim to co-operate with the Gulf of Guinea nations on security. We have thousands of ships from the Gulf of Guinea to the US each year. We have interest in what they have and what they carry," Ulrich said.

"Also, a couple of thousands of ships come from the US to the Gulf of Guinea, and across to the Far East. So, all nations have vested interest in knowing the history of ships plying the region and what they carry. We have to work together to share information. We are looking forward to recommendations on the way forward," he added.

Admiral Ulrich also confirmed that the US has two ships in the region - one in Accra, Ghana and the other in Congo - to help the region's navies in "terrorism training". [emphasis mine]

Neither was I surprised when I saw that John Negroponte, the US Intelligence czar, had this to say about President Olusegun Obasanjo's efforts to insert the possibility of a 3rd term in the current round of constitutional reforms (Economist, February 25):

Oil firms and western governments, including the Americans, are watching nervously. This month John Negroponte, the overall head of America's intelligence services, said that if Mr Obasanjo stayed on he might "unleash major turmoil and conflict" that could lead to a "disruption of oil supply, secessionist moves by regional governments, major refugee flows, and instability elsewhere in west Africa". Mr Obasanjo likes to parade himself abroad as a peace-loving democrat and yearns to inherit the mantle of Africa's leading elder statesman, Nelson Mandela. If so, he should promise not to run again.

Authoritarian government, single commodity economy, US dependence on oil, massive local poverty, and the threat of religious extremism. Sounds promising.

(update below)

I found this article delightful. Quote:

For the society, the presence of the homosexuals -- some of whom are reportedly high profile citizens -- is a continued threat to moral rectitude and social re-engineering. It is also an enhancement to gross moral depravity on whose throe, our society has tottered for too long.

In fact if the odd reports that homosexuals planned to constitute an association to protest against stigmatisation and denunciation, is anything to go by, then Nigeria is into another dimension of moral bankruptcy.

We seem to live in a society where unpredictable moral ills thrive succinctly in tandem with the spirit of free society, an euphemism for a bestial human setting, there is therefore a premonition of trouble that this monster, the so called "free society" has created could wax stronger in Nigeria. [emphasis mine]

The article, by Igbiki Benibo, is utterly bereft of the trappings of evidence, and fatally burdened with erroneous stereotypes. But I don't point out the article to make fun -- Benibo here refers to the relatively new Changing Attitude Nigeria, run by Davis Mac-Iyalla, an Anglican LGBT organization advocating the legitimacy of homosexuality both in the church and in society. This organization is an implicit target of the new "anti-speech" gay marriage legislation in Nigeria, legislation that has been endorsed by the head of the Anglican Church in Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola.

Akinola's allies in America have failed to denounce the legislation, or call for Akinola to withdraw his endorsement, despite the clear human rights and civil rights violations that legislation would generate. American Anglicans more concerned with the worldwide rift in the Anglican community over homosexuality, have lost sight of what their actions (or lack thereof) imply. Should someone like Davis Mac-Iyall, whose story I will write about shortly, be harmed as a result of a nexus of homophobic press, Church and State endorsement, and Western acquiescence, then there would be plenty of shame (and sin, if you like) to go around.

UPDATE: 3/22/2006, 3:25 pm. Igbiki Benibo is a reporter for the Tide. I have no evidence of any kind that he is associated with the Anglican Church in an official capacity.

On February 21, Archbishop Akinola released a statement to the Nigerian people in response to northern Muslim violence against Christians, which said, in part, "may we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation" and that "[Christian Association of Nigeria] may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue."

Talking to the Living Church, Canon AkinTunde Popoola, the Archbishop's spokesperson and communications director, is backpedaling on that highly threatening language:

A spokesman for Archbishop Akinola repudiated suggestions the Archbishop’s earlier call for restraint was a coded message of violence.

"The Church does not believe any true worshipper can go on to kill or maim another human being out of anger. It is a pity" that some in the West "are seeing incitement," Canon AkinTunde Popoola told The Living Church. The charge of inciting religious violence "has not been mentioned in Nigeria," he said.

Church leaders in Nigeria shape public attitudes and debate, Canon Popoola said, asserting that Archbishop Akinola "has to sound tough as it was becoming increasingly difficult to tell the youths to turn the other ear while they see him on TV smiling and talking with the Muslim leadership. The question on the streets was, 'are the Christians been sold out by their leadership'?" [emphasis mine]

First off, I have to agree that I have not seen much in the Nigerian press condemning Akinola's choice of words -- but I have also failed to see much in the press to mention the fact that more Muslims died in the south in response to the deaths of Christians in the north than actually died in the north. Indeed, Akinola's call for two days of national mourning makes no mention of the 80-100 deaths in Onitsha.

Second, is Popoola really suggesting that the language in the statement was just PR intended to harden his image among Christian youths, while at the same time claiming that that same language had nothing to do with the violence?

The Southern Voice published a list last Friday, following on the US State Department's recently released 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, on the ten worst places to live if your gay. Among them were Nigeria and Uganda, two strongholds of African and conservative American Anglican cooperation.

I commented extensively on the letter posted by Faith McDonnell of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in an earlier post. She's written again, this time to Episcopalians in the Albany, New York, area, whom she believes are being specifically targeted by Chane's Washington Post op-ed.

The new letter, published in the Times Union of Albany, is similar. It's not worthwhile to go over it all again, but it is helpful to review two important points. First, McDonnell emphasizes IRD's role in "mobilizing church members across the country to speak for international human rights and religious freedom." However, we are still waiting for the IRD to take a clear stance on human rights and religious freedoms for those outside the church. Thus far, it's a Christian-only club, or at worst a club for non-gay Anglicans -- so much for democracy.

Second, it is patently ridiculous to argue that Akinola's "duel challenge of rebutting such accusations [that Christians support Western immorality] while opposing Shari'a" has somehow forced him into the position of supporting legislation that would limit speach, assembly, religion, and the press. Such legislation would, in fact, lay the groundwork for granting Shar'iya greater legitimacy. Furthermore, it clearly indicates to Islamist extremists that democracy is a pushover. Good job, Institute on Religion and Democracy!

If the IRD were truly a serious player -- and it clearly isn't -- it would go much further than Faith McDonnell's statement that "IRD does not favor restrictions on free speech," and both condemn the Nigerian legislation and Akinola's support of it. Or do political alliances count more than principle? Or, worse, are some principles more important than others?

In which case, I wonder with Bishop Chane, whether "what we see in Nigeria today may well be on the agenda of the Christian right tomorrow."

The UN does not grant gays and lesbians minority status. Some are pushing the UN to do so. I doubt Nigeria will hurry to sign on.

(updated below)

This is what the Guardian Unlimited said today of Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams:

Dr Williams also criticised Archbishop Peter Akinola, leader of the largest single national church in the Anglican communion, in Nigeria, who has been accused of encouraging violence against Muslims during recent rioting by warning that Christian youth could retaliate against them. Dr Williams claimed the African primate had not made himself sufficiently clear: "He did not mean to stir up the violence ... I think he meant to issue a warning which certainly has been taken as a threat, an act of provocation."

Since when is an excuse for behavior called "criticism"? I don't know how the Guardian managed to squeeze "criticism" of Akinola out of Williams' interview, but from what I can tell, the Archbishop is actually covering for Akinola:

AR [Alan Rusbridger]: And what about Akinola and his troubling statements about Muslims (not being allowed to bear arms) which was followed by 80 people being macheted to death?

AC [Archbishop of Canterbury]: Hmmm. I think that what he - what he meant as, so to speak, an abstract warning, you know, "don't be provocative because in an unstable situation it's as likely the Christians will resort to violence as Muslims will." It was taken by some as, you know, open provocation, encouragement, a threat. I think I know him well enough to - to take his good faith on that, what he meant. He did not mean to stir up the violence that happened. He's a man who will speak very directly and immediately into crises. I think he meant to issue a warning, which certainly has been taken as a threat, an act of provocation. Others in the Nigerian church have, I think, found other ways of saying that which have been more measured.

Well, it couldn't be more measured than Williams' own words. Don't expect censure of Akinola -- on any count -- from any meaningful figure anytime soon. That'll have to wait until after the split, and when it does it will have to come from Western conservatives.

UPDATE: 3/22/2006, 10:33 am. Some UK gay and lesbian activists are unsurprisingly outraged by ABC Williams' failure to react to Archbishop Akinola's endorsement of anti-gay legislation in Nigeria. They call Williams spineless. I tend to agree. But I reiterate: don't expect anything until the split is over. Even then, criticism of Akinola will have to come from Western conservatives.

The Anglican Communion has been behaving badly, and now it's headed for what looks to be an inevitable divorce. Says David Steinmetz for the Orlando Sentinel:

Although the argument in Anglicanism centers on matters of principle, the atmosphere in which it has been conducted has been toxic from the start. Liberals and conservatives have all too often been eager to believe the worst about each other. They have frequently parodied and mocked each other's deeply held convictions, shown scant respect for consciences that differ from their own, and even attempted to impose unacceptable solutions from the top down on unwilling parishioners.

As an outsider, I have no skin in the game, but as an American citizen, watching the actions of my compatriots, I do. This is because a split in the communion would not absolve American Anglicans, soon to be associated solely with far more conservative diocese in Africa, South America, and elsewhere, of their moral obligation to support and uphold civil rights in whichever diocese they find themselves.

The stance taken by many conservative Americans on homosexuality puts them in a peculiar position. They believe that the behavior is sinful. But, by leaving ECUSA, are they unknowingly legitimizing discrimination -- even violence -- against Africans who practice that "sin"?

African Anglican bishops are against even the whiff of homosexuality among their ranks, as the Lake Malawi drama eloquently shows. But Archbishop Akinola's endorsement of the anti-speech, gay-marriage legislation goes further by banning non-Anglican religious organizations from celebrating gay marriage -- even if those ceremonies are performed outside the context of civil law.

Conservative American Anglicans: Isn't that a bridge too far?

It goes without saying that where there's poverty, there's strife. The latest issue (April 2006) of the Atlantic Monthly contains a short article on Nigeria, entitled "Worse than Iraq?", by Jeffrey Tayler, that lays out the situation nicely. Too bad it's behind a firewall. Quote:

As the journalist Karl Maier, whose This House Has Fallen stands as the authoritative work on modern Nigeria, has put it, Nigeria is a "criminally mismanaged corporation where the bosses are armed and have barricaded themselves inside the company safe." Nigeria's similarities to Saudi Arabia are manifold: corruption, oil wealth, a burgeoning Muslim population, and value to the United States as an energy supplier. Osama bin Laden has called Nigeria "ripe for liberation."

The "ripening" began soon after what seemed the dawn of a new era: the sudden death, in 1998, of the military dictator Sani Abacha and the subsequent election to the presidency of the retired general Olusegun Obasanjo. Now sixty-nine and in his second term, Obasanjo had been imprisoned by Abacha in 1995 for allegedly plotting a coup; he emerged from prison in 1998 a national hero.

In a country where ethnicity trumps citizenship, religion trumps ethnicity, and power trumps religion, Obasanjo seemed the ideal compromise candidate. As a Yoruba, he would placate the most prominent and progressive ethnic group in the southwest. As a Christian, he would appeal to 40 percent of Nigerians (also largely in the south). As a professional soldier, he had clout in the north as well, and would be able to restrain the military and forestall any uprisings by out-of-power generals. And as a democrat of international repute (he is a former candidate for United Nations secretary-general and a friend of Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter), he would convert Nigeria from the pariah state left behind by Abacha into an internationally respected regional power.

Sixty-two percent of Nigerians voted for Obasanjo in 1999, giving him a hefty mandate and showing that he had indeed won support outside his own ethnic and religious groups. He immediately set about undoing, or appearing to undo, the legacy of nearly three decades of mostly military rule. Announcing that he was "fully committed to using all appropriate means and resources to ensure that every man, woman, and child will perceive and reap the benefits of democracy," he established a commission to investigate allegations of corruption. However, nothing substantive has resulted—except that the commission has accused Obasanjo himself of taking bribes.

And:

During his first term, Obasanjo established a development commission to distribute oil revenues among the country's indigenous peoples, but its efforts have come to naught; most of the windfall oil profits of the last few years have gone toward refurbishing mansions for the elite. Oil spills and gas flares blight the delta, ruining farmland and poisoning fishing grounds. Owing to the abysmal state of its few refineries, Nigeria remains an importer of gasoline. Officials divert gas from the pumps and sell it on the black market. Fuel shortages are endemic.

Obasanjo still talks of improving the lot of his people, but his rhetoric hardly sounds over the din of mayhem and rage. Nigeria appears to be de-developing, its hastily erected facade of modernity disintegrating and leaving city dwellers in particular struggling to survive in near-apocalyptic desolation. A drive across Lagos—the country's commercial capital and, with 13 million people, Africa's largest metropolis—reveals unmitigated chaos. The government has left roads to decay indefinitely. Thugs clear away the broken asphalt and then extract payments from drivers, using chunks of rubble to enforce their demands. Residents dig up the pavement to lay cables that tap illegally into state power lines. Armed robbers emerge from the slums to pillage cars stuck in gridlocks (aptly named "hold-ups" in regional slang) so impenetrable that the fourteen-mile trip from the airport to the city center can take four hours. Electricity blackouts of six to twelve hours a day are common. "Area boys" in loosely affiliated gangs dominate most of the city, extorting money from drivers and shop owners. Those who fail to pay up may be beaten or given a knife jab in the shoulder.

The U.N. Human Development Index ranks Nigeria as having one of the worst standards of living, below both Haiti and Bangladesh. For all its oil wealth, and after seven years of governance by one of Africa's most highly touted democrats, Nigeria has become the largest failed state on earth.

Just to show what a late-comer I am, I'm linking to an early post (February 15) on ThinkingAnglicans responding to the "anti-speech, anti-assembly" Nigerian legislation.

The post includes a link to the respones of Changing Attitude Nigera, a gay and lesbian Anglican group in Nigeria, as well a couple of interesting articles in the Nigerian press. The comments to the post are interesting, as well.

My suspicion is that it is because of groups like Changing Attitude Nigeria that the Archbishop Akinola has lent his "prestige and resources" to the legislation. These groups have foreign support and are therefore considered to be outsiders -- it is because of Changing Attitude that words like "colonialism" are thrown about. I think it is because of Mobil Oil that the word "colonialism" should be used, but that's just me.

BTW, there is another press release from Changing Attitude Nigeria that is worth the read, written in response to a letter by the Rt. Rev. David Onuoha on the Church of Nigeria web site.

I'm gone for the weekend, and probably won't be in touch to blog until Tuesday (though you never know).

After getting off my flight, I caught wind of three new posts that are worth reading:

(1) The Episcopal Diocese of Washington has posted a response to the many challenges to Bishop Chane's op-ed on its blog.

(2) The Living Church has now written a piece on the Minns and Duncan letters (which I discussed here and here, respectively).

(3) The EDOW post links to a letter to Chane from three priests at All Saints' Chevy Chase. The EDOW blog, I think, handles the letter well. I would add only that I continue to be astonished that American citizens are willing to cast aside civil liberties so blithely -- it must be that they take these liberties for granted. They make distinctions of "public" versus "private" homosexual advocacy in the Nigerian legislation's text in order to defend it, and then compare that distinction to the one made in the US Military's don't-ask-don't-tell policy. This is a ludicrous analogy -- its application would have the effect of shutting down an important element of the democratic process. As for the rest of the letter, its contents are sufficiently similar to those of other letters that I will rely on my previous posts as rebuttals.

(update below)

Adding to a growing string of apologies (here, here, and here) for Archbishop Akinola's endorsement of the wolf-in-sheep's-clothing, anti-speech, anti-assembly legislation (pdf) before the Nigerian Federal Assembly, the Rt. Rev. Robert Duncan, Bishop of Pittsburgh and moderator of the Anglican Communion Network (ACN), just released a statement, available at VirtueOnline, dated today (March 15).

I'm reposting Bishop Duncan's release here, in its entirety:

Bishop Chane's comments betray a profound lack of empathy or understanding for the position that Archbishop Akinola and all Christians in Nigeria find themselves in. During the last few weeks in Nigeria, an archdeacon has been murdered and two bishops have survived assassination attempts.

All were attacked by what appear to be Islamic extremists. During the same time, Islamic violence ignited by the publishing of Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed have claimed the lives of scores of lay Christians and seen numerous churches destroyed in Nigeria.

Further, it should be noted that while the proposed law sounds harsh to American ears, the penalty for homosexual activities in those parts of Africa under Islamic Sharia law (such as the Sudan and portions of Northern Nigeria for that matter) is death. It is precisely the imposition of these much harsher Sharia laws that Archbishop Akinola and other Anglican leaders in Africa have resisted so strongly for many years with little publicity or support from the West.

It is jarring, to say the least, to see church leaders, who claim to champion the primacy of local understanding and culture, demanding that foreign sister churches give up their own local understanding and culture and be judged by an American understanding of individual rights. There is a word for the one-way imposition of values - colonialism.

This release is astonishing. First -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- the primary criticism of Akinola's endorsement of the Nigerian legislation is that it curtails basic press, speech, assembly, and religious freedoms. I have written about this ad nauseum before, so I won't go into it any further here. Suffice it to say that everyone who has thus far offered support for Akinola on this point has failed to raise the issue of civil liberties, and instead chosen to focus on the issue of gay marriage. Yet gay marriage is moot since homosexuality is already illegal. I beg someone in the conservative Anglican community to please speak to this issue.

Second, Christian-Muslim violence is not a recent problem -- it has been going on for a long time and at a much greater intensity than what happened between February 18 and 24 of this year. A buried article from September 11, 2001, by Dan Isaacs for the Daily Telegraph, London (available on LexisNexis), suggests just how bad it was only a few years ago. He says:

CLASHES between Christian and Muslim youths in Nigeria have left at least 165 dead and about 1,000 injured, the Red Cross said yesterday.

Buildings have been razed throughout the city of Jos in the centre of the country and hundreds of burnt-out cars littered the streets after three days of rioting. Thousands have fled the mobs and witnesses indicated that the numbers of dead could go much higher.

Last night, violence had subsided after heavily armed troops were deployed but the clashes were reported to have spread to the northern city of Kano, where a 5,000-strong Muslim mob was reported to have attacked and burned a church.

Phillip Macham, a Red Cross official, said the streets in Jos were still littered with bodies. "This figure [of 165 dead] includes those that were brought by the police and other organisations. We are overstretched," he added.

Terrified Jos residents described gangs setting up roadblocks and pulling people out of vehicles to kill them, and house-to-house searches by youths armed with machetes, clubs and guns. By last night, more than 6,000 people had sought refuge in the compound of the central police station.

Most of those under threat appeared to be Muslims, but many Christians have been caught up in the violence.

Violence by Nigerian Muslims against Christians is not new -- neither is violence by Christians against Muslims. Isaacs goes on:

The initial cause of the violence was a minor altercation outside a mosque after Friday prayers but there has been simmering tension for weeks.

Christians have been complaining about the appointment of a Muslim to head the state's poverty alleviation programme.

After decades of corrupt military rule which has reduced oil-rich Nigeria to penury, such jobs are seen as providing access to government funds for the supporters of those appointed.

I could be full of it, but my growing sense is that the problem of Christian-Muslim violence in Nigeria is broadly political, rather than narrowly religious, or simply "caused" by the Danish cartoons of the Prophet. At the very least, Duncan should recognize that the violence is two-sided -- for every instance of Muslims unilaterally attacking defenseless Christians, there's an example of Christians doing the same to Muslims. It is in this context that Akinola's statement to the nation, saying "may we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation," is so callow and contentious.

Third, the West has actually been very interested in the problem of Shar'iya in Nigeria. Perhaps the bishop will recall the case of Safiya Huseini, a Muslim Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning by a Shar'iya court. Again, Dan Isaacs is on the case, in an article for the Observer dated December 9, 2001 (LexisNexis):

Her daughter Adama, 11 months old, is both her greatest joy and a symbol of her predicament. The judge decreed that, because Huseini had conceived a child outside marriage, she was guilty of adultery. She is divorced, but under Islamic or sharia law the crime is the same as if she were still married. The lesser charge of fornication, punishable by 100 or so lashes, applies only to virgins.

The man Huseini names as the father of her child comes from the same village of Tungar Tudu in the north west of Nigeria. Yakubu Abubakar has two wives, and although he admitted to the relationship with Huseini he refused to marry her or contribute to the upkeep of the child.

Traditional family disputes such as this have been resolved in the sharia courts for decades, according to a judicial system operating within Nigeria's majority-Muslim northern states. It is only in the past two years that the harsh criminal punishments of stoning (for adultery), amputation (for theft), and lashing (for such crimes as drinking alcohol and fornication) have been introduced.

The recent extension of the laws to include harsh sharia punishments, guided more by political than religious interests, has served to exacerbate tensions between Muslims and the minority of Christians living in the north. Over two years, 4,000 people have lost their lives in clashes between the two communities.

When Huseini's case came to court, Abubakar retracted his confession, denying he had ever met Huseini, and the judge acquitted him of any charges. Under Islamic law, if a man does not make a confession in court the only way he can be convicted of adultery is for four men - not women - to have witnessed the adulterous act.

Isaacs spoke directly to Huseini, now for the Daily Telegraph (London) on March 25, 2002, the day before she was acquitted by an Islamic appeals court, writing (LexisNexis):

There has been widespread international pressure on the Nigerian government to pardon Huseini. But the federal authorities are powerless to intervene directly. The country's devolved system of government gives the majority-Muslim northern states the power to introduce their own legal codes.

This has not stopped the federal justice minister, Kanu Agapi, from trying to exert influence.

In a letter to all the governors of all northern states last week, he said strict Islamic punishments were discriminatory because they applied only to Muslims and therefore unconstitutional, and that "the federal government could not keep quiet whilst members of the international community upbraid the country for imposing these discriminatory punishments on a section of the populace".

The northern states have made it clear that they consider this statement an attack on Nigeria's Muslims and have said they intend to ignore it.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, a devout Christian, has been placed in an awkward position. Although he is clearly uncomfortable with these strict Islamic punishments, he is aware that to challenge the validity of sharia law would be seen as anti-Muslim.

In a country with a recent history of communal and religious violence, such a confrontation could have a dangerously destabilising effect.

This story was all over the Western media in the months following September 11, and it drew serious attention to the practice of Shar'iya in northern Nigeria. It was, in fact, the story that first brought my attention to the fact that harsher forms of Shar'iya are still practiced anywhere. The response to the story was strong enough to compel Betty McCollum (D-Minn) to bring a resolution before Congress to condemn death by stoning. Bishop Duncan might find this response too weak for his tastes, but it is utterly false to suggest that the West does not care about the encroachment of Shar'iya in northern Nigeria.

Furthermore, as I have argued in a previous post, the threat of Shar'iya is not sufficiently compelling to endorse discarding basic democratic institutions and processes, as this legislation would do.

Fourth, Bishop Duncan's final paragraph contains an argument that can be easily turned against him. For the moment, let's leave aside the fact that the primary objection to this legislation is not that it bans gay marriage (though that's bad enough from the point of view of many) but that it curtails speech, assembly, the press, and religious expression (i.e., it doesn't just ban gay marriage -- READ IT!!!). Duncan cries hypocrisy when his liberal colleagues squawk over Akinola's support of the legislation. He says that the same people who had before demanded local autonomy in the elevation of gay priests and bishops now claim that local Nigerian customs must bow to Western values -- he calls this "colonialism." But I must ask Bishop Duncan if he is not practicing a kind of moral relativism, declaring that what is good for us as Americans is not good for Nigerians.

In his support of Akinola's endorsement, Duncan is asking Nigerians to abandon entirely their fragile democratic institutions in the fear that a few gay Nigerians will organize meetings in protest of Nigeria's anti-sodomy law. He is supporting Akinola's "one-way imposition of values" at the cost of free speech, free assembly, free expression of religion, and a free press.

In fact, by arguing that struggles between religions require curtailment of civil liberties, Duncan is unknowingly providing the logical groundwork for the imposition of Shar'iya on all Nigerians.

UPDATE: 3/16/2006, 7:33 PM. Göran, in the comments, has pointed out something that was in the back of my head when I posted this entry but that I couldn't quite spit out at the time. Basically, he argues that if North-South Network bishops claim that ECUSA bishops are not allowed local choice with respect to their "culture, laws and circumstances," then the global communion ought to be able to censure Akinola for his endorsement of legislation that denies narrowly defined Nigerian groups basic civil rights. Ultimately, the "local custom" argument is hogwash, since it appears that it is applied only when convenient.

Things have been a bit slow on the news front, but that's ok -- I've been writing a mile a minute for the last week and a half.

For those of you that are new to the proposed "anti-gay-marriage" legislation in Nigeria, or to the fact that all the legislation does that's new is ban speech advocating or defending gay marriage and homosexuality, or to the fact that the Anglican Primate of Nigeria endorsed that legislation, or to the fact that the same Primate appears to have had a role in instigating violence in the southeastern city of Onitsha in late February (or at least has suffered from selective amnesia regarding Christian involvement in that violence), please rest assured that I am new to it, as well. I've been learning as I go along, pulling information out of my now rather antiquated relationship with the Episcopal Church, or following my gut on the one issue in all of this that I feel we should all be agreeing on.

Human rights must be protected -- it serves everyone's interests.

I have deliberately tried to stay out of the Anglican Communion's debate regarding the Episcopal Church's strong advocacy of homosexual relationships. This is because I think that the issue that should be of greatest concern to us all -- an issue that extends beyond the bounds of the day-to-day decisions of the clergy in their ministrations to their flocks, and into the secular world -- is the fact that conservative American Anglicans' have given carte blanche support to Archbishop Akinola's endorsement of the legislation that would actively limit the democratic participation of a small part of the Nigerian population.

Their most prominent argument in their support of Akinola is the most dangerous: the Church in Nigeria is under threat from Islam; Akinola must appease Muslims while protecting his flock in order to prevent further violence. This sounds reasonable at first glance, but it is simply not legitimate to blackmail our best intentions with threats of violence from unfriendly "outsiders." In fact, I am becoming convinced, slowly, that there is no real threat to Nigerian Christians from Nigerian Islam per se, but rather that this "threat" is a convenient scapegoat, used by politicians in control of huge government contracts, for the far more difficult social and political milieu of land and power conflicts that still wracks this oil-rich nation almost eight years after the military government stepped down in 1999.

I'll let you make up your mind on this issue.

Right now, I'm spending my time getting up-to-date on recent Nigerian political struggles. Pretty much anything by Dan Isaacs of the BBC is helpful. Here are excerpts from his May, 2004, analysis:

Some of the violence has pitched Muslims against Christians, but all of them have fallen across different tribal and cultural divides. ... The broad characterisation of a Muslim Hausa-speaking north, and a Christian south made up of two dominant tribes - the Yoruba in the southwest and the Ibo in the southeast - is a vast over-simplification. ... [The conflict] most often boils down to competition between those that see themselves as the true 'indigens' of an area, and those that are considered to be more recent 'settlers'. Whatever the historical justifications, the conflict is always and everywhere about access to scarce resources. This might be farmland, or employment, or access to political power. It could even be jealousy over the provision of water or electricity to one village but not its neighbour. ... At their root, these differences are not cultural or religious. They are economic. [emphasis mine]

Read it all, and also read Isaacs' profile of Olusegun Obasanjo as he ran for his second term as president.

With a name like Institute on Religion and Democracy, you would think that, as an advocacy group, they would be committed to both. In fact, as their mission statement suggests, it's a bit more complicated:

The Institute on Religion and Democracy is an ecumenical alliance of U.S. Christians working to reform their churches’ social witness, in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings, thereby contributing to the renewal of democratic society at home and abroad.

First comes Christian renewal, then comes social renewal and democracy. They go on:

The IRD believes that the Christian tradition has great resources for the building of a just society. Among the basic teachings with profound political implications are these: God alone is sovereign and worthy of worship. All persons are created in the image of God. Endowed with inalienable rights, persons have the responsibility to love their neighbors. A church that faithfully proclaims and demonstrates these teachings will do much to sustain and spread democracy.

The IRD makes a further judgment that Western representative democracy is, on balance, a good worthy of advancing. Among political systems of our time, democracy holds the most promise for a relatively just ordering of society. It best provides the freedom for the Church to carry out its mission. We are convinced that the Church best serves democracy by simply being the Church, true to its own calling in Christ.

Thus, the IRD advances two goals: the proliferation of sound Christian teachings in the hopes of advancing democracy, and the advancement of democracy as the safest haven for Christianity. In other words, "we promote democracy to advances Christianity, and vice versa" (my paraphrase).

On that basis, one might think that the IRD is at all times vigilant in the protection of basic civil rights -- it stands to reason that wherever speech is protected, Christianity should thrive unfettered. Indeed, the IRD's Religious Liberty program, directed by Faith McDonnell, had this to say about one of their overseas missions:

Christians are treated as second-class citizens in Pakistan. They are poor and powerless, have little opportunity for education and jobs, and are excluded from politics by a system of "separate electorates" -- a religious apartheid. According to Pakistan's "Blasphemy Law," anyone who defiles the name of Mohammed must be punished by death. This gives unscrupulous people a great opportunity to cause trouble for Christians. Many believers have been falsely accused and, even if acquitted, some have been killed by Muslim extremists and live under constant fear of death threats. Now Islamic Law has become the supreme law of the land in Pakistan.

Pakistani Christians had renewed hope for an end to their unjust situation with the takeover of General Pervaiz Musharraf in October 1999. President Musharraf had taken some admirable first steps towards amending the infamous Blasphemy Law, and other laws that oppress religious minorities, and in recent months he had announced plans to abolish the separate electoral system that marginalizes Christians and other minorities in Pakistan, but he has been under intense pressure and even threats from powerful Islamic factions. Christians continue to be arrested on trumped-up Blasphemy charges. And since the war against terrorism began, Christians in Pakistan have been especially vulnerable to radical groups.

Aside from the religio-xenophobia of Christians v. Muslims, this is all very noble. But how easily those high-minded principles are discarded!

Over the weekend, Faith McDonnell, the director of the Religious Liberties Program, published a letter on the IRD website that defended the IRD from the criticisms of Bishop Chane's recent Washington Post Op-Ed. (Please read both the Op-Ed and the letter by McDonnell again, if you haven't looked recently at either.) As a reminder, Chane criticized conservative elements with the American Anglican Communion for their association by proxy with a very un-democratic piece of legislation before the federal assembly in Nigeria that would bar gay marriage, with penalties of up to 5 years' imprisonment. I've written about this extensively on this blog.

The stated purpose of the legislaiton is clearly at odds with its obvious inevitable effect. Homosexual sex is already illegal in Nigeria and punishable by up to 14 years' imprisonment. The new legislation would bar gay marriage, but what's the point of banning gay marriage if the sex is already illegal? In fact, the only novel prohibition in the new legislation is its ban on any form of speech in support of gay marriage or homosexuality. The Nigerian people, through their elected representatives, are about to pass a law that would limit the speech of a minority of Nigerians on an issue that is of great importance to them. Speech, press, assembly, even freedom of religion would all be affected.

The Anglican Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, recently lent his support to the legislation, saying, "The Church commends the law-makers for their prompt reaction to outlaw same-sex relationships in Nigeria and calls for the bill to be passed since the idea expressed in the bill is the moral position of Nigerians regarding human sexuality."

Is the "moral position" of Nigerians to limit free speech, assembly, press, and religious practice and belief? Faith McDonnell seems to think so, but indirectly. She wants to have it both ways: either the Nigerian Christians are under threat from Islamic extremists, and they should be allowed to do whatever they want to protect themselves from Islam, or the legislation, as proposed, is "onerous to us". Here's what she said:

The "Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act" before the Nigerian Federal Assembly would instead charge violators with penalties of up to five years in prison. The proposed federal legislation is onerous to us. But our society is not yet living in constant fear of the rule of Islamism.

Islamists often accuse Christians in the Islamic world of supporting Western immorality. The policies of liberal-led churches in the West, such as the U.S. Episcopal Church, often feed this accusation. Christians who live under or along-side Islam face the duel challenge of rebutting the charge while also opposing the imposition of shari'a. Archbishop Akinola and others walk a tightrope.

I see, the ban on gay marriage is Islam's fault, not to mention the fault of ECUSA. That's right. In some countries Islam must be countered with democracy to promote Christianity, while in others the threat of Islam can only be countered by limiting the democratic process.

This stance by the IRD reflects two rather ignoble predispositions on their part: (1) they aren't really committed to democracy in and of itself, but only insofar as it assists the spread or protection of Christianity; and (2) they want to argue that a ban on gay marriage is necessary to PROTECT us from the demands of Islamic extremists.

The former indicates that they are not serious players in the arena of transformative democracy, while the latter indicates something truly dangerous. Does the IRD really mean to say that it is because of our FEAR of Islamic terror that we should change the way we live our lives? Isn't this exactly backwards? Yechhh. (That was the sound of wretching.)

What makes this particularly bad, as I've said before, is that homosexual sex is already illegal in Nigeria. Whatever you feel about that, it means that this legislation is not about gay marriage at all, but about its other provisions, which limit a variety of civil liberties if exercised with the aim of defending homosexuality. In other words, despite the Nigerian Muslim community's support of the legislation, this can't really be about appeasing Muslims. In fact, I've begun to think that this is more about limiting the growth of pro-gay religious movements within Nigeria than about anything else.

(Note: Faith McDonnell says she and her colleagues have seen Chane's opinion piece republished only in markets where prominent Network bishops reside -- I would like to add the following markets to their list: Decatur, Salt Lake City, and Pakistan.)

(update below)

Nigeria's The Daily Sun reports that the Christian Association of Nigeria, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola, has called for a strict two-day period of mourning (March 27 and 28) in response to February's religious violence.

"We call on the faithful, who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus the Christ, Christians of all denominations, of all ages – young, old, men, women, clergy, lay to observe a two-day national mourning for the fallen brethren thoughout the country on March 27 and 28. During this period of mourning, no Christian shall go to work, no shop, market or office is to be opened. In other words, there shall be no business transactions," he stated.

He said that CAN watched with sadness and utter dismay the recent crisis in which many Christians were killed and churches and other property destroyed by people hiding under the guise of religion.

Akinola, who is also the primate of the Church of God, Anglican Communion, said a meeting of the Governors Forum should urgently be convened to discuss and agree on step to be taken to stop anti-Christian posture. He said that Nigerians should know that the country belongs to all Nigerians, that Nigerian Christians have no other country but Nigeria and that there should be mutual respect, tolerance and peaceful co-existence among all Nigerians in all the states of the federation.

There is, strangely, no mention of the violence handed down on Nigerian Muslims, by Christians, in the southeastern town of Onitsha, nor the potential culpability of the Archbishop in inciting that violence with his February 21 press release, declaring to northern Muslims, "may we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation" and that "C.A.N. [Christian Association of Nigeria] may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue."

Is this a press hiccup? Why is there no mention of Onitsha? Is The Daily Sun sympathetic to Akinola? What's going on?

Catholic bishops in Nigeria have issued a similar directive for two days of prayer on the same dates. However, they, in contrast to the Anglican Church, released a far more conciliatory note of calm during the southern Christian violence against Muslims, that called upon Christians to stay their hands and seek peace with their neighbors.

I honestly find it difficult to understand why Akinola couldn't mention the scores that died in Onitsha by Christian hands. Maybe his office will release something in the next few days to clarify his position on that tragedy, as well.

UPDATE: 3/13/2006, 9:02 AM. Nigeria's Daily Independent also reports on this story, but again there is no mention of the violence in Onitsha, let alone any reconciliation.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) on Sunday directed all Christians to stay at home and observe a two-day national mourning for the “fallen brethren” in the cartoon riots throughout the country on March 27 and 28.

The umbrella Christians body also requested the law enforcement agencies and the judiciary not to treat those arrested in connection with the recent wanton destruction with kid gloves, adding that they must be treated for who they are: criminals, murderers and arsonists.

President of CAN, Most Rev. Peter Akinola, read a statement entitled: “A Call To National Mourning” at the inauguration of the League of Anglican Media Practitioners (LAMP) in Abuja.

He said CAN watched with sadness and utter dismay the recent crises in some states in the North where many Christians were ruthlessly killed and churches and other property wantonly destroyed by some criminals, murderers and arsonists hiding under the guise of religion and therefore resolved to set aside the two days for national mourning and sober reflection. It is also to declare that Nigerian Christians have no other place they can call their own, except Nigeria.

What in the world is the "League of Anglican Media Practitioners?" All I've managed to find is a short press release from the Church itself on changes in the League's officers, and some indication elsewhere that the organization is intended to promote the Anglican Church in the media. No wonder there hasn't yet been any mention in the press of violence in Onitsha.

By the way, the American Anglican Council gives an unannotated mention of the article in the Daily Independent on their website. I guess the AAC has no problem with the violence in Onitsha, either. Probably best not to mention it.

In what appears to have been an afterthought to a blog post on the Islamic response to Western tolerance of homosexuals, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

By the way, how long before religious right leaders urge a ban on gay marriage because it is inflaming Islamist terrorism? Or will Mickey [Kaus] get there first?

Good question. And if I might humbly ask, "... or will the Anglicans get there first?"

It may already have happened. The Rev Canon Martyn Minns', in his letter to his parish in Northern Virginia defending Archbishop Akinola's support of Nigeria's proposed gay-marriage ban (legislation that is really just an effort to limit speech and assembly), says:

There is a precarious balancing act between those regions that are under Muslim influence – where Sharia law calls for the stoning of homosexuals – and those that have a majority Christian population. The situation is volatile as demonstrated by the repercussions from the Danish cartoon saga that have already led to hundreds of Christian and Muslim deaths. Keeping the lid on this situation is a formidable task. In recent months homosexual activism sponsored in part by organizations from the UK and South Africa has threatened to add further instability. In response the President of Nigeria has proposed legislation that would restrict such activities. [emphasis mine]

Other conservative Anglicans with whom I have corresponded directly have said much the same thing: the new law is meant to appease Muslims in the north of Nigeria. (I agree, not because it prevents terrorism, but because it provides cover for Obasanjo's bid for a third term. I'm also beginning to suspect that it's intended to keep gay-friendly church organizations out of Nigeria.)

Why should this matter to American Anglicans? This is what Archbishop Akinola had to say in his Pastoral Letter to the Church (2/25/2006):

These times are perilous for our Communion world-wide, resulting from the continuing obstinate revisionist agenda, master-minded by ECUSA [Episcopal Church USA] and her allies. We must intensify our prayers for the truth of the word of God to be the guiding light for the Church. We will also do more by ensuring that we do not associate with ECUSA in any official capacity. We have already taken a decision to train our clergy and church staff within our own environment and in partnership only with those who hold similar biblical views of God and human sexuality with us. The emergence of Church of Nigeria Mission to America, known and called, 'Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA)', registered Charity Trust in U.S.A., is a serious step to put into action our bible-based convictions. [emphasis mine]

For more on this "Seventh" Convocation (from a man with a severely conservative -- can I call Republicans "conservative" anymore? -- bent), see here.

As Bishop Chane of the Diocese of Washington said in his Washington Post Op-Ed, "what we see in Nigeria today may well be on the agenda of the Christian right tomorrow." I'd say that it's on the agenda now. It could be years before the cultural standards of the Nigerian Church come to America en masse, if ever. But with the confluence of an effort to stifle the civil rights of Nigerian gay and lesbian citizens alongside the stated desire of the Nigerian polity to contain Muslim-versus-the-West cultural struggles and violence, Andrew Sullivan's question appears already to have been answered.

Stay tuned.

From ReliefWeb (March 9, 2006):

Nigeria: thousands displaced by religious cartoon riots

As many as 50,000 people were displaced and about 150 killed in a wave of sectarian violence across various Nigerian states at the end of February, sparked by protests over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, according to the Nigerian Red Cross. The majority of deaths occurred in the mainly Christian southeast city of Onitsha, where groups of armed youths attacked Muslim Hausa-speakers from the north in revenge for Christian Igbos killed some days earlier in the north of the country. Spiralling violence spread across at least six states, with thousands of IDPs taking refuge mainly in police and army barracks or churches -- although many later returned to their homes. Widespread destruction of property took place, with numerous churches, mosques and houses burned down. State governments in the affected areas dispatched police and army reinforcements and imposed curfews in an attempt to contain the situation. The Nigerian Red Cross provided principally emergency medical care to the IDPs. Nigeria has a multitude of religious, ethnic and political fault lines that periodically erupt into communal violence, creating a sizeable, albeit fluctuating internally displaced population -- particularly since the return of democracy in 1999. But while the introduction of Islamic Sharia law in a total of 12 of Nigeria's 36 states in recent years has caused tensions, conflict has been less over religion or ethnicity than over unequal access to land and other resources, especially between people considered indigenous to an area, and those regarded as settlers. [emphasis mine]

This report and others suggest caution in blaming the explosive violence in late February on traditional East-West culture struggles, and perhaps least of all on the cartoons. History is replete with tales of local land and power disputes transforming themselves into struggles over "religion."

Indeed, it leads me to wonder. Why would President Obasanjo propose legislation to ban gay marriage when it's already illegal to be gay?

Another excellent post at Thinking Anglicans by Stephen Bates of the Guardian (March 3, Church of England Newspaper). Quote:

Scarcely a week seems to pass without some new scandal, some outrageous statement or appalling behaviour coming out not of sundry [African] regimes, militias, or armed factions, but from an institution that is fast becoming equally corrupt, the Anglican Church itself.

These are not just any old Anglicans but bishops and archbishops, with scarcely a peep coming out of anyone, least of all their allies in the evangelical constituency, with only a few honourable exceptions. For the rest it is almost as if embarrassment, political correctness and maybe even the fear of upsetting those on the same side in the gay row causes a reticence that is close to cowardice.

Indeed.

Thanks to Thinking Anglicans for pointing out this link, which I saw yesterday on the Church of Nigeria website but didn't bother to explore. It looks like the Primate of All Nigeria, Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, in his official capacity, has, indeed, made a public and unambiguous endorsement of the Nigerian anti-gay-marriage legislation.

The Standing Committee of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), presided over by Akinola, just released their February 25 "Letter to the Nation", signed by Akinola, which contained the following message regarding the legislation:

The Church commends the law-makers for their prompt reaction to outlaw same-sex relationships in Nigeria and calls for the bill to be passed since the idea expressed in the bill is the moral position of Nigerians regarding human sexuality.

Of course, the legislation does much more than ban gay marriage. While "homosexual practices" are already illegal and punishable by up to 14 years in prison (according to the US State Department's 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices section on Nigeria), which makes the issue of gay marriage moot, the new legislation goes much further by banning any speech, assembly or press supporting or defending gay marriage, or "homosexual practices" of any kind.

On March 7, an AAC (Washington DC) letter claimed that the AAC could find no public statement by Akinola endorsing the legislation. On February 27, Rev Akintunde Popoola, Akinola's Director of Communications in Nigeria, speaking to The Living Church, claimed that Akinola made no statement regarding the legislation: "Archbishop Peter to my knowledge is yet to comment [publicly] on the bill."

They are now referred to the recently released "Letter to the Nation", signed by Archbishop Peter Akinola on the Church of Nigeria website.

A minimal compromise could be struck that would diffuse this crisis, a compromise that Akinola could probably endorse.

(If he can't, and if the AAC and other conservative Anglican groups retain their support for Akinola's endorsement of this far-overreaching legislation, then these American groups will have seriously compromised their principles as conservatives, Americans, and good citizens.)

Here's my suggestion for compromise, based on the original Nigerian legislation, and expanded from my post below:

• Limit the legislation to a ban on gay marriage. I hate to admit it, but there is probably overwhelming public support for such a ban, even if it's ridiculous, and like it or not we have to respect their democratic process (such as it is), especially in light of Articles 18-22 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (UN-CCPR).
  
• While Section 6 of the legislation would represent a clear infringement upon the right to religious expression as protected in the Nigerian Federal Constitution of 1999 (and a flagrant violation of Article 18 of the UN-CCPR), I would say that, in the interest of compromise, this should remain untouched, so that ...
  
• Section 7 can (and should) be entirely removed. Any limitation of the speech of an aggrieved minority is completely unacceptable, as it damages the legitimacy of not only the majority but of the government itself.

Finally, speaking to those Anglicans in the US (and I've heard from some of you already) who think that banning speech is within the rights of the Nigerian government because homosexuality is a sin against God, please keep in mind that protection of speech exists not only to promote stability, but also so to guarantee that the potentially correct views of a minority are not utterly quashed.

Examples of commonly accepted American values that are universally accepted today but which were once represented by only a minority of voters:

• A woman's right to vote
• Equal protection for all citizens
• Recognition of the weekend as days off
• That slavery is an evil institution

Now, I'm not in a position to argue to conservative Anglicans about whether there is moral equivalence between repression of homosexuality and the institution of slavery -- but I can say unambiguously, as a concerned American interested in the health of our civil society, that the repression of minority views by means of law, no matter how repulsive the repressed views might be, is a sign of illegitimacy.

A ban on gay marriage, if perceived to be necessary by the Nigerian public, must be accompanied by the retention of the legal means for others to openly oppose it, even leaving open the possibility of its reversal.

See my post below for more.

The following press release from the US State Department (2/1/2006), regarding the proposed anti-gay-marriage legislation (pdf) in Nigeria, has just come to my attention:

Nigerian Legislation Threatens to Limit Rights of Sexual Minorities

The United States is concerned by reports of legislation in Nigeria that would restrict or prohibit citizens from assembling, organizing, holding events or rallies, and participating in ceremonies of religious union, based upon sexual orientation and gender identity. This proposed legislation has not been adopted.

The freedoms of speech, association, expression, assembly, and religion are long-standing international commitments and are universally recognized. Nigeria, as a State Party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has assumed important obligations on these matters. We expect the Government of Nigeria to act in a manner consistent with those obligations.

As I said yesterday, these rights are the rules we live by -- violate them, and lose legitimacy.

I didn't become involved in this issue because of personal religious beliefs. I didn't get involved because of a personal stake in the advancement of gay rights. I got into it because every debate must have "rules," and because the Church, which was once persecuted, should know that viscerally.

We protect the rules because twisting them, even at a temporary advantage, fashions the very weapon that would one day take us down. The "rules" are simple. Tell the truth. Don't lie. Don't change the subject unless the premise is demonstrably flawed. But most imporant, accept beforehand that you may never change the other's mind, and don't incarcerate, hurt, or kill them if you can't. The party that breaks these rules for temporary gain will or ought to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

It is because these rules are broken on a daily basis in politics that we don't look to Congress or the White House for real debate. "Debate" in government is about power and the shrewd application of short-term advantage toward the attainment of long-term goals. Politics avoids the normal bcklash that comes from breaking the rules because of the near infinity of means available to politicians to avoid blame -- mostly by changing the subject, but most importantly by hiding behind public opinion. If a politician is popular and supported by a clear majority, he or she can do nearly anything they like.

I must confess that my objection to the Nigerian legislation that would ban speech in defense of homosexuality was not because of its the human rights violations it contains. I feel guilty about that. We should be standing up for those rights everywhere -- not just here in the United States.

No, what got my attention was that that the Anglican Church of Nigeria lent its endorsement to the legislation. And because American conservative Anglicans have failed to voice any kind of dismay at that endorsement. Also, I was and continue to be very disturbed by the involvement of Archbishop Akinola in the incitement of violence in the Nigerian south by Christians against Muslims (see here and here).

But really this is about is breaking the rules.

John, writing about the Martyn Minns letter at TitusOneNine, made the following arguments for why the Archbishop is justified in his support of the Nigerian legislation (read the whole thing there). I'll answer parts of John's comment a bit at a time (I hope he doesn't mind -- I picked his comments because I believed them to be both representative and fair):

Bishop Chane goes on to say, "[The Nigerian law] reads in part: 'Publicity, procession and public show of same sex amorous relationship through the electronic or print media physically, directly, indirectly or otherwise are prohibited in Nigeria.'" I am sure the good Bishop is well aware that in certain societies "public show" of not just "same sex amorous relationships" but even "heterosexual amorous relationships" are not encouraged. In such societies, what is the good Bishop suggesting the church do?

Simple, don't endorse those laws. Akinola has the right to stand up for a belief that is central to his position as a spiritual leader in the Anglican Communion -- conversely, his dissenters have the right to voice their beliefs, and neither Akinola nor the government should have the power to give that right or take it away.

Besides, heterosexual Nigerian couples are not legally barred from public shows of affection, so what happens in other countries is beside the point. Respectfully, John is "breaking the rules" by changing the subject without first addressing the question at hand. John goes on:

The supporters of the law see homosexual behavior as a decadence of the West (like the excesses of the Roman empire) rather than something to be emulated. They support the law because of its "moral" component, which the link (UN) Matt posted, clearly recognizes. The UN covenant also does not recognize or condone same sex marriage or civil unions nor does it provide for homosexuals as a "minority."

And yet the detractors see it as an infringement of their basic freedoms. If the law is enacted, those detractors will never again be able to legally voice their opinions. Remember, the law is not just about banning gay marriage, but about denying the right to defend it, if one so chooses.

As far as the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (UN-CCPR) is concerned, I have to agree with John that while Nigeria is a signatory, and is bound by that covenant, its articles on speech contain a "public order and morals" exception, much like that found in the constitutions of countries in continental Europe. In fact, the UN-CCPR was based largely on those constitutions in order to guarantee, for example, the right to assemble, but not the right to disturb public order. My attorney wife tells me this is one of the critical ways in which continental European civil rights differ from those of the United States or the United Kingdom.

However, while John focuses on the "public morals" clause of the Articles, I would like to draw attention to another important clause, which provides for assembly only insofar as it protects "the fundamental rights and freedoms of others." In other words, rights can be abridged when public morals are at stake, but only insofar as the political speech of the limited party is not affected, or so my attorney wife tells me.

John is right that the UN Covenant does not recognize same-sex unions, not does it claim homosexuals to be a recognized minority. However, the spirit of the Covenant (and all similar documents) is to protect the rights of individuals against governments. As soon as governments become involved in limiting the right to speech, it loses legitimacy. I strongly recommend the recent short essay by Ronald Dworkin in the New York Review of Books on the "Right to Ridicule." Money quote:

Freedom of speech is not just a special and distinctive emblem of Western culture that might be generously abridged or qualified as a measure of respect for other cultures that reject it, the way a crescent or menorah might be added to a Christian religious display. Free speech is a condition of legitimate government. Laws and policies are not legitimate unless they have been adopted through a democratic process, and a process is not democratic if government has prevented anyone from expressing his convictions about what those laws and policies should be. [emphasis mine]

John goes on:

The law itself is clearly better than a Shari'ah law which would have homosexuals and homosexual acts punishable by death. I think [Archbishop] Akinola did very well, considering the circumstances; he supports democratic legislation that the people of Nigeria want, preserves the Nigerian culture, and removes the temptation for homosexual tendencies, while providing an orthodox Christian alternative to homosexuality. In a nation where about half the population is Muslim, not establishing a Shari'ah law for homosexuality is a big victory.

A big victory for whom? President Obasanjo, who introduced the legislation? A big victory for Christians? A big victory for Muslims? A big victory for the Church of Nigeria or Akinola? A big victory for homosexuals living in Nigeria who will now no longer have the "temptation" to be homosexual (that's an assumption about the nature of homosexuality that I don't want to get in an argument about)?

I don't yet understand who wins and how they win. The only political scenario I can think of -- and it's pretty cynical even for an Oyinbo like me -- is that Obasanjo, a Christian, has presented the legislation in order to shore up support among moderate Muslims in the north. Why would he do that? After all, he's constitutionally term limited to two four-year terms as President, which he will complete in March of 2007. It turns out that Obasanjo has for some time now been testing the waters for a change in the constitution (as part of the currently ongoing constitutional review process) that would grant him the possibility of a third term. Muslims are largely dead-set against it. Even John Negroponte thinks its a bad idea.

Besides, I don't think you're going to get an argument from me that Shari'ah is a good thing for Nigeria. But is it likely that Shari'ah is going to become the law of the land? By enacting this legislation (and by the way -- sodomy is already illegal in Nigeria and punishable by 14 years' imprisonment) they are doing nothing but limiting speech. John goes on:

If the state and church are to be separate why does the church keep insisting that it fight social battles? After all, social issues are political and in a democracy, the people (all people) must decide what laws they want. Shouldn't the people of Nigeria have the freedom to make their decisions without being held to some ambiguous "Western" standard and without interference from religious bodies especially those far removed from the Nigerian culture? And weren't sodomy laws in some colonies brought by the European powers in the name of "civilizing the heathen"?

Again, this ain't about sodomy -- which is already illegal -- it's about speech. But by using the word "democracy," John is making my argument for me. Like Dworkin says, "Freedom of speech is not just a special and distinctive emblem of Western culture." Although I don't like it, I'm not going to argue with the Church's endorsement of a law that would ban gay marriage, especially if public support for the law is massive. But I will not sit by and watch the Church endorse the curtailment of that law's dissenters' right to disagree.

Church/state issues in the US revolve predominantly around the 1st Ammendment, and whether the government should be allowed to establish a state religion. The "establishment clause" of the 1st amendment, however, does not bar religious people from voicing their opinions and influencing their government. The views and practices of an aggrieved minority might even be threatened by what the government then does -- but under no circumstance (in the US, the UK, France, or just about anywhere) is that minority's speech limited, nor should it be.

Let the Church fight social battles! But let's not allow the Church to quell speech.

And in the interest of being constructive:

How about this compromise: Akinola endorses the law, but with the provision that it places no limit on speech, assembly or the press? Perhaps, knowing that sodomy is already illegal, he could ask that the proposed punishment for participating in a same-sex marriage be reduced to one year's imprisonment.

I'm sure the majority of Nigerians will publicly support the new law, but can't they handle dissent without putting the dissenters in jail?

Washington-based trustees of the American Anglican Council have delivered a letter to Bishop Chane regarding his Feb 26 op-ed in the Washington Post.

Far from answering substance with substance, and thus laying any issues of policy to rest, the AAC has decided -- as have many others -- to treat Chane's op-ed as an ill-behaved personal attack on Archbishop Akinola.

A copy of Chane's op-ed can still be found here. Below, the AAC letter to Chane, as published on VirtueOnline (so far, the only source of the letter):

March 7, 2006

An Open Letter in response to your op-ed piece titled "A Gospel of Intolerance"

Dear Bishop Chane:

In response to your op-ed piece titled "A Gospel of Intolerance" that appeared in The Washington Post on Sunday, February 26, the American Anglican Council of Washington views your comments as a deliberate and unwarranted attack on Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, and an attempt to discredit him for his supporting a new law in Nigeria that criminalizes same-sex marriage.

We find no evidence of any sort of a public statement by Archbishop Akinola in regards to these proposed laws. Nigerian Justice Minister Bayo Ojo announced the draft law last week, saying it is in response to President Olusegun Obasanjo's concern over homosexual relations and same-sex marriage encroaching on Africa's most populous nation. An on-line article from the newspaper Nigeria First said, "This progressive legislation is expected to put a check on homosexuality and lesbianism, a deviant social behaviour fast gaining acceptance in Western countries."

This is not the first occasion that you have attacked the recognized leader of the traditional Anglican movement, who is not seeking to victimize or diminish anyone.

Rather than speaking to the substance of statements and principled positions actually taken by Archbishop Akinola on homosexuality, your op-ed piece distorts and belittles his message and his standing as a Godly bishop. And, instead of seeking ways to find unity over the extremely serious issues that divide the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church, your public criticism of a respected Godly Christian leader is one of intolerance on your part and a deaf ear and blind eye to what Archbishop Akinola is saying to the decadent Western Anglican churches.

As members of this diocese, we look to our bishop to find unity in the body of Christ on the difficult issues that divide the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. We pray you will amend the situation by making direct contact with Archbishop Akinola.

Faithfully,

The Trustees of the American Anglican Council of Washington, Inc.

Bradley Hutt, Wes Courtney, William Boniface, Rufus Peckham, James Brown, Robert England, John McKendrew, Emily Volz, David Bickel, Nancy Virts

What is particularly frustrating about this letter is that the claims made by Chane in his op-ed were factually correct. What's worse is that the AAC letter seems to suggest that the Nigerian Primate of the Church of Nigeria has no position on the legislation -- this is either factually incorrect, or, like the Kremlinologists who worked to decipher the inner workings of the Soviet Communist Party, we should take every statement coming out of the Archbishop's office with a grain of salt.

Before anything, I think it's important to address some misleading information in the AAC letter. First, a draft of the Nigerian legislation (pdf) was available on January 19, not "last week." Second, sodomy is already illegal and subject to a 14 year prison sentence. This raises questions as to the necessity of the legislation. Third, while the legislation would ban gay marriage and would imprison for five years anyone who engaged in or attended such a celebration, it further bans the advocacy of gay marriage, as well as the advocacy of homosexuality. In other words, it's not simply an empty ban on gay marriage; it also significantly abridges freedom of speech, assembly, and religion, all unambiguously protected by the 1999 Nigerian constitution.

Most important, to suggest that no public statement of the Church of Nigeria's stand on the new legislation can be found is a weasel of the highest order. The Voice of America on January 19, 2006, had this to say:

The spokesman for the Anglican church in Nigeria, Reverend Tunde Popoola [Director of Communications], says the proposed ban is appropriate. The Anglican community in Nigeria has long waged a vigorous campaign against homosexuals, as Reverend Popoola explains.

And Popoola, speaking to the Living Church, said the following on February 27, 2006:

A spokesman for the Church of Nigeria, Canon Akintunde Popoola, disputed this characterization, arguing Bishop Chane misconstrued the text of the bill and Archbishop Akinola’s role in the legislative process. "Archbishop Peter to my knowledge is yet to comment [publicly] on the bill. I have said we welcome it because we view homosexuality as 'against the norm'."

Let's be clear -- they feel the legislation is "appropriate" and they "welcome" it.

To claim that this is not an endorsement would be to suggest that Akinola is not in charge of his own Director of Communications, or that he has no idea of what comes out of his office. Popoola was the one who made the announcement that the Primate believed the legislation to be “appropriate”. He spoke on behalf of the Church of Nigeria, which, by proxy, includes his boss, Archbishop Peter Akinola. By analogy, Scott McClellan speaks before the White House press corps on behalf of the President. No one questions McClellan's credentials. Why would we question whether Popoola speaks for Akinola?

The problem for the AAC is that Chane's op-ed is factually correct, and in reality not objectively inflammatory. I know that Chane has not always been fair in his criticism, and that conservative Anglicans have a legitimate beef with liberal Anglicans over their near unilateral decision to permit blessings of gay marriages and the ordinations and consecrations of openly gay, non-celibate priests and bishops. For this reason, I understand why the AAC letter strongly responded to what they believed to be a personal affront to Archbishop Akinola.

However, the following facts in Chane's letter remain indisputable (a couple are at worst arguable):

1. The Anglican Communion is in a bitter struggle.
2. The February 2005 Lambeth Conference uanimously agreed to the following statement: "The victimization or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us." I leave it to the reader to decide what "victimization" means in this case, but I would tend to think that 5 years' imprisonment for defending gay marriage or one's own homosexuality is victimization, especially if endorsed by the Church.
3. Archbishop Akinola, a man of considerable resources and prestige, supported the legislation, which limits the power of the people to petition their government regarding homosexuality and which would curtail press freedoms should the press ever defend homosexuality in any way (the Vanguard online newspaper in Nigeria would become illegal).
4. With respect to (3), Akinola's endorsement of the new legislation amounts to a state-sponsored restriction of speech and various other freedoms.
   
5. Akinola has publicly stated his belief that the Anglican Communion will split, and that this split is largely over the issue of homosexuality (sadly, other issues of orthodoxy, such as the integrity of the Gospel message, is rarely mentioned).
6. Akinola's endorsement crosses the church-state barrier.
7. Thus, outsiders to the Anglican Communion (such as myself) should take notice, especially civil libertarians.
8. The IRD, with donations from prominent conservatives, supports renewal movements in the Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran Churches, as well as in the United Church of Christ.
9. It is frightening (to Chane) to consider that if these renewal movements are successful here in the US, similar decisions could be made here that would curtail civil liberties at home. For instance. (NO MENTION OF FUNDING BY THE IRD OR THE AAC OF THE CHURCH OF NIGERIA .)
10. There is disagreement about homosexuality throughout the world. Reasonable people can debate it.
11. The Nigerian legislation crosses the line by curtailing speech, the press, and the right to assembly.
12. The Archbishop's support of the law violates numerous Anglican Communion documents calling for a listening process (I'll let Anglicans debate this point -- I don't much care).
13. The legislation violates Articles 18-20 of the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights (true, it does, but the UN-UDHR is non-binding -- see here for other relevant human rights provisions).
14. Liberals in the Episcopal Church, as well as conservatives, have been silent about the legislation.
15. Supporters (high-profile or otherwise) have not dissociated themselves from the legislation and Akinola's support for it.

In its incautious wording, the AAC letter essentially endorses Akinola's support of the Nigerian anti-gay legislation, while only once addressing the substance of Chane's letter. What was that one instance? -- when they claimed that Akinola never publicly stated his support for the new legislation. This lame argument not only flies in the face of all available evidence, but worse it suggests that even if Akinola were to support the legislation, which they never once discuss in a substantive manner, they would support him.

I Just read an older blog entry on the Washington Post's website that shows just how many factors lead to the Muslim violence against Christians in the north, and Christian violence against Muslims in the south. Jefferson Morley, who covers the international online media for the Post, had this roundup. For instance:

The Daily Champion says the attacks in the city of Onitsha that killed 22 people today and in Bauchi on Monday were "separate religious crises" and does not link either to the Danish cartoon controversy.

"The Bauchi crisis erupted Monday over the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran by a female teacher in a public secondary school in the state," the Lagos-based news site said. "The attack in Onitsha was reportedly in response to violence against the Igbo in some parts of Northern states."

Morley goes on:

For the Nigerian online media, the cause of the latest outbursts is less the Danish cartoons than the legacy of Muslim-Christian tensions that began long before the European cartoonists caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.

The complexity of the Nigeria violence wasn't lost on one Reuters correspondent filing from Abuja who noted, "Cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, rumours of a Koran desecration and opposition to constitutional change provided the catalysts for four days of fighting between Muslims and Christians in predominantly Muslim northern cities. Then there were revenge attacks in one mainly Christian southern city. But in Africa's most populous country the underlying causes of sectarian clashes are often political and observers say this round of violence is no exception."

Some in the Nigerian press claim that leaders of the Nigerian Federal and State Governments wish to spin the violence as a predominantly religious conflict without reference to 3rd-term politics of President Obasanjo. Today the Daily Independent (Nigeria) posted a press release (no date, but before 2/23) from the Lagos State Government, who took it a step further to blame the specifically religious conflict on the "unscrupulous and unpatriotic elements" that were instigating it.

From our vantage, it looks as though the Federal Government is more than happy to let people think that it was the Cartoons that caused the violence, and not the deep-seated sectarian tension that has been brewing for a very long time.

It seems to be working. This column from The Tide Online (Nigeria, 3/7/2006) blames the violence entirely on the Cartoons, calls for the Government to find the "masterminds" behind the plot, and neglects to mention the far more violent reprisals in the Christian south.

The slow-motion interpretive dance of "Matt Dillon" reaching up "Thandie Newton's" dress. It was so wrong on so many levels and for so many reasons -- the Three 6 Mafia interpretive dance didn't even hold a candle.

Blogger.com has indicated that there was a brief outage during the 11 AM and 12 PM hours this morning and early afternoon. If you recieved a "forbidden" message, please note that this message was not of my doing.

Andrew Sullivan in Time, finally taking some responsibility on behalf of the typewriter-class for leading us into the war:

The specter of Iraq teetering closer to civil war and disintegration has forced a reckoning. ... In retrospect, neoconservatives (and I fully include myself) made three huge errors. The first was to overestimate the competence of government, especially in very tricky areas like WMD intelligence. ... The second error was narcissism. America's power blinded many of us to the resentments that hegemony always provokes. ... The final error was not taking culture seriously enough. There is a large discrepancy between neoconservatism's skepticism of government's ability to change culture at home and its naiveté when it comes to complex, tribal, sectarian cultures abroad.

It is an unbelievable relief to see this in print from Andrew. I have tremendous respect for him, but that respect has always been tempered by his unrealistic belief that democracy can be brought by war, or the far more naive sentiment that regional Middle Eastern democracies will simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps once Iraq is firmly established down that road, like an absurdly strong (and thus virtually infinitely improbable) fit of Brownian motion of the sort necessary to cause dominos to fall in reverse.

Democracies are not stable. They require constant vigiliance, both against those who wish to consolidate power in just a few hands, and against those who wish to stifle the participation of others. To prop up a democracy, by the actions of a few and without the broad support or undersanding of the people, is like balancing a broom on your nose ... or wrapping a plastic bag around your head.

In contrast, non-agressive authoritarian regimes, if left unchecked, are more stable, not less. Had the National Socialist Party in Germany sat on its laurels after coming to power in the 1930s, had they restrained their flaunting of Versailles to just the Rhineland, and had they felt that a policy of "living space" (Lebensraum) was unnecessary for the recovery of German national pride, would the Allies have stepped in to stop them, even if a smaller, no less horrific Jewish Holocaust had ensued? No, authoritarian governments are the most likely to impose domestic order, the most likely to draw investment and speculation, and they constitute the "strange attractor" towards which all other governments tend.

It is for this that I still find some of Andrew's words frustrating:

What we do know is that for all our mistakes, free elections have been held in a largely Arab Muslim country. We know that the Kurds in the north enjoy freedoms and a nascent civil society that is a huge improvement on the past. We know that the culture of the marsh Arabs in the south is beginning to revive. We know that we have given Iraqis a chance to decide their own destiny through politics rather than murder and that civil war is still avoidable.

Don't get me wrong; I too wish to be optimistic. But I have and have had serious reasons to doubt that the Iraq War will ever lead to a systemic, regional, political makeover.

The Kurds now "enjoy freedoms and a nascent civil society that is a huge improvement on the past"; meanwhile, Sunnis look to be locked out of any meaningful control over regional oil revenues, and it looks as if the biggest benificiary of our war will be Iran. Has there been a net benefit? Can there be a net benefit? Will Maxwell's daemon, or some absurdly strong fit of Brownian motion, do the impossible?

(A Christian writing pro-Christian and anti-Muslim slogans in Onitsha, photo credit BBC)

Andrew Sullivan, on the Christian violence against Muslims in Nigeria:

In the West, the theocratic tendencies of the religious right have very rarely tipped into violence; and there is no equivalence with the terror of Islamists. But in the developing world, that may not be the case any more. Nigeria is Ground Zero for the new wars of religion.

I think we really have to dig through the dregs of 20th C history to find an instance where Christian-Muslim grass-roots violence has erupted on this scale, and in the midst of international crises over oil supply and civil liberties (I'm not counting all-out wars). But it is the first instance that I have ever read of closely that involved Christian rioters, armed with machetes, clubs, and knives, spraypainting "Jesus is Lord" on the walls of their victims' mosque.

The Rev Fleming Rutledge, one of the first women to be ordained to the Episcopal priesthood, speaks out on the "genuine theological emergency" this represents:

The use of the earliest Christian confession, Kurios Iesous (Jesus is Lord) in such a context simply staggers the imagination. Issues about sexuality are very important indeed but must be set aside in this genuine theological emergency. This is not about barbarous, primitive Africans. This is about the universal human capacity to move rapidly from relatively peaceful co-existence with others to murderous mob action in a matter of days when certain conditions are present, and to appropriate even the most sacred religious beliefs for lethal purposes. The 20th century is full of examples -- the Afrikaners in South Africa, Gentiles all over Europe in the Nazi era, segregationists in the American South, Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, the Hutu in Rwanda who murdered Tutsis in their churches with frequent cooperation from the clergy.

Even so, there is something particularly horrifying about this example from Nigeria. The use of the name of Jesus Christ to celebrate destruction and murder is beyond sickening. This is the Name of the One who voluntarily gave himself up to a tortured death to show us how to forgive our enemies and not to seek vengeance. Bishop Tutu of South Africa led his people in non-violence for more than thirty years under conditions of utmost provocation. Let us fervently pray that Archbishop Akinola is made of similar metal -- for the sake of Nigeria, for the sake of the Anglican Communion, for the sake of the Gospel around the world, for the sake of the Name of the Crucified One.

...

A friend has sent this link to a statement by Abp. Peter Akinola. I find it profoundly disappointing. ... I look in vain in this statement for any sign of a transforming cruciform theology. It has a truculent sound, as if he were saying: if you're going to beat us up, we're going to let loose our young men to beat you up. This is not encouraging. I am comparing it in my mind with something that any of the recent Popes might have written, for instance. I think of Lech Walesa in his great early days, Martin Luther King -- not to mention Desmond Tutu. There was no doubt about these leaders' strength and determination, but it was clear to everyone that they intended to rein in their troops. They were enabled to exhibit dauntlessness while at the same time still teaching us about what a distinctively Christian witness looks like. When a Christian leader speaks truth to power, it should have that unmistakable note of trust in an invincible unseen Power that arms its servants with alternative weapons. [her emphasis]

There you have it: a genuine theological emergency on top of a clear violation of human rights. The conservative Anglican communion needs to wake up to the fact that recents actions by the Archbishop of Nigeria represent a problem far beyond the distinctly American or northern struggles over orthodoxy.

In comments I've seen from conservative American Anglicans, I've been disappointed by the nearly complete lack of sensitivity to what Rutledge called the "invincible unseen Power that arms its servants with alternative weapons." If you've ever seen it in action, it gives you goosebumps, bristling with the power of actual righteousness, not the righteousness of mere orthodoxy. Romans 12 (and Proverbs 25):

²⁰On the contrary: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." ²¹Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

An excellent and balanced article from the Church of England Newspaper (Andrew Carey) on the link between violence, religious tensions, political instability, a coming census in the context of heated tribal struggles, and the statement of Archbishop Akinola that preceded Christian violence against Muslims in Onitsha. Money quote:

After several days of violence burned and charred bodies could be seen in the streets and over 30 were said to have died. "This cannot be Nigeria today. We have been living side-by-side with our Muslim brothers for so long. Why should a cartoon bring us to civil war?" asked one shocked pastor.

One thing I learned from the article that I did know before was that the Christian violence in Onitsha was prompted when "a busload of the bodies of Ibo victims killed in the north were returned home."

I think it's important to spell out the nature of the international and domestic civil rights obligations that Nigeria must meet. It is in the context of these obligations, and according to our sensibilities as human beings, that we must judge the ethical or moral rightness of the decision of the Primate of the Church of Nigeria to support legislation that would ban public declarations or statements advocating homosexuality. Let me be very clear about this: Akinola can make whatever statements he wishes to his Church -- he has every right to declare the sinfulness of homosexuality. But to support what would amount to imprisonment for anyone who disagreed with him (let alone engaged in homosexual intercourse or same-sex marriage) might "shock the conscience" of anyone with eyes to see.

First, I wish to clarify one aspect of Bishop Chane's op-ed to the Washington Post. The United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR, 1948) is not binding, as there are no signatories. It is not a treaty or convention in any traditional sense -- it is simply a statement of purpose on the part of the United Nations to direct attention to the need for protection against potential human rights violations, and Nigeria is under no obligation to follow it. Here are Articles 18-20 of the UDHR, just for reference (I don't think anyone's actually quoted these yet -- nor do I think that anyone will fundamentally disagree with the spirit of these provisions, as they apply to both Akinola and his Nigerian detractors):

Article 18

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

These are non-controversial -- they're like a Unitarian sermon; no reasonable person could disagree. In a post-WWII and Cold War-dominated world, this declaration was critical to developing a much needed sense of political "right" and "wrong." They also enumerate international rights that are consonant with our own American sense of what is and isn't acceptable in a civil society.

As I said above, the UDHR is non-binding -- but the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR, 1976) is, and Nigeria joined the Covenant on July 29, 1993. However, while the CCPR establishes a similarly worded, and even expanded, set of rights, as listed here in Articles 18-22 (sorry for the length, but it's worth reading), it lacks teeth. Specifically, as I've highlighted (bold) below, it protects a nation's right to limit certain enumerated rights "to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others." In other words, a nation may deem the rights of a group to be null if that group's activities endanger public morals. On the other hand, nations are further permitted to limit the rights of certain groups if the actions of those groups are perceived to endanger of the "fundamental rights and freedoms" of others. I don't know the history of the "public morals" clause and why it was included, and I don't know any of the legal opinion on how these two competing demands, but this qualification is ultimately a disappointment for those seeking unequivocal protection of all forms of speech, assembly, and otherwise, from the UN. I'll let you decide:

Article 18

1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.
2. No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.
3. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.
4. The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.

Article 19

1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.
2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.
3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:
1. For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
2. For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

Article 20

1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Article 21

The right of peaceful assembly shall be recognized. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those imposed in conformity with the law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order (ordre public), the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

Article 22

1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
2. No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this right other than those which are prescribed by law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order (ordre public), the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. This article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on members of the armed forces and of the police in their exercise of this right.
3. Nothing in this article shall authorize States Parties to the International Labour Organisation Convention of 1948 concerning Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize to take legislative measures which would prejudice, or to apply the law in such a manner as to prejudice, the guarantees provided for in that Convention.

What of the Nigerian Constitution? I've talked about the 1st Amendment of the US constitution in other posts, but that's ultimately irrelevant to Nigerian law, as many have pointed out. But Sections 38-40 of the Nigerian Constitution enumerate the same protections as our 1st Amendment with no mention of the need occasionally abridge those rights to protect "public morals":

Section 38

1. Every person shall be entitled to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, including freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom (either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private) to manifest and propagate his religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
2. No person attending any place of education shall be required to receive religious instruction or to take part in or attend any religious ceremony or observance if such instruction ceremony or observance relates to a religion other than his own, or religion not approved by his parent or guardian.
3. No religious community or denomination shall be prevented from providing religious instruction for pupils of that community or denomination in any place of education maintained wholly by that community or denomination.
4. Nothing in this section shall entitle any person to form, take part in the activity or be a member of a secret society.

Section 39

1. Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.
2. Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1) of this section, every person shall be entitled to own, establish and operate any medium for the dissemination of information, ideas and opinions: Provided that no person, other than the Government of the Federation or of a State or any other person or body authorised by the President on the fulfilment of conditions laid down by an Act of the National Assembly, shall own, establish or operate a television or wireless broadcasting station for, any purpose whatsoever.
3. Nothing in this section shall invalidate any law that is reasonably justifiable in a democratic society:
   
1. for the purpose of preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, maintaining the authority and independence of courts or regulating telephony, wireless broadcasting, television or the exhibition of cinematograph films; or
2. imposing restrictions upon persons holding office under the Government of the Federation or of a State, members of the armed forces of the Federation or members of the Nigeria Police Force or other Government security services or agencies established by law.

Section 40

Every person shall be entitled to assemble freely and associate with other persons, and in particular he may form or belong to any political party, trade union or any other association for the protection of his interests: Provided that the provisions of this section shall not derogate from the powers conferred by this Constitution on the Independent National Electoral Commission with respect to political parties to which that Commission does not accord recognition.

This is the constitutional law in Nigeria as it stands.

According to the Nigerian Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act 2006 (pdf), the following would become illegal:

1. Same sex marriage (well, homosexual intercourse is already illegal, so the whole purpose of this legislation appears clouded, until I read the following set of prohibitions)...
2. The performance of private same-sex marriages in any place of worship, no matter the denomination.
3. The public or private establishment of gay organizations (Spokesman Popoola said that the law does not prevent private clubs -- he was factually incorrect).
4. Advocacy in print and electronic media.

All of this is subject to 5 years' imprisonment if those accused of these acts are found guilty. And let's not forget the law that sentences offenders to 14 years' imprisonment for "sodomy."

The Ethics and Morals I'll leave to you, but I would hope, at least, that most would state unequivocally that the rights of disagreeing parties to advocate their respective positions must not be abridged, especially with a prison sentence. It is that protection that allows to have this debate in the first place -- we must allow that debate to occur freely elsewhere, lest we make a mockery of our own principles.

Some conservative Anglicans I've conversed with since I started blogging on Nigeria have felt that the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights, let alone our own 1st Amendment, is irrelevant to any obligation we may have to protect the civil rights of homosexual Nigerians. (I should note that even a non-homosexual advocate of their rights, such as myself, would be put in prison for five years if he or she spoke out while visiting the country.) Some, such as the Rev. Martyn Minns (and here), couch their support of Archbishop Akinola's endorsement of the new Nigerian legislation in terms of the different civil rights "contexts" that Nigerians and Americans find themselves. When I object to that kind of moral relativism, others accuse me of hypocrisy (even though I've never had any position other than that human rights should always be protected) simply because those same conservatives have accused many in the Episcopal Church of moral relativism for supporting the ordination and consecration of non-celibate gay priests and bishops. (I should point out that this final argument regarding hypocrisy is exactly backwards -- if conservative Anglicans have historically argued against moral relativism, then they should maintain that argument in all cases.)

Enough! We are not having the right debate. The Nigerian legislation exceeds the bounds of this long-running and highly contentious struggle over orthodoxy. Now it has become a debate on the very nature of civil society, and whether that society can be made to support peace rather than strife.

The Rev Canon Martyn Minns of Fairfax, VA, and a member of the AAC's board, has just posted a letter to the orthodox Anglican blog TitusOneNine discussing the Chane letter.

The tone of some of the letter struck me as a bit off:

While I find some of the language of the proposed Nigerian law too harsh and unacceptable in our context, sadly there are many other situations that I find even more unacceptable. For example, in Saudi Arabia there are death penalties for women convicted of adultery or for any citizen who converts to Christianity. I suspect that all of us could add to the list of laws that we would deem deplorable – the good news is that in the United States we have the freedom not only to deplore them but to change them. Many in other countries are not permitted either choice.

The difference with the Nigerian legislation (which, by the way, has not yet passed!) and other human rights violations in other countries is that the Church of Nigeria is lending it direct support. There is no doubt that Akinola faces significant pressure -- (1) a restive northern Muslim population that wants control of the presidency, (2) a president (Obasanjo) that he denies is actively seeking to change the constitution to allow for a third four-year term, but who clearly is, and (3) a growing split in the worldwide Anglican community over orthodoxy. But he should speaking out against a law that would deny speech, assembly, etc., not for it.

HOWEVER -- I am really glad to see that there is some movement on this from affiliates of the AAC, and I hope that the dialogue continues. Hopefully, this will lead to pressure on the Church of Nigeria to pull its support. If it doesn't, what would that mean for the integrity of Akinola's American associates?

I am now planning (unless something big comes up) to leave the subject of Nigeria, ECUSA, the AAC, the Network, Archbishop Akinola, Bishop Chane, The Anglican Communion, and others to the far better equipped. But I wanted to finish off (maybe) with a summary of the situation as I see it.

Homosexuality is broadly decried, if not outlawed, in Africa. The Nigerian Federal Government plans to ban not only homosexual sex, behavior, and marriage per se, but now also advocacy for homosexuality -- all with the expressed support of major Nigerian religious organizations, most notably that headed by Archbishop Peter Akinola, the Anglican Church of Nigeria.

Aside from issues of orthodoxy, on which I take no public position given my outsider status, this effort in Nigeria is not only, as Bishop Chane has said, a violation of UN standards to which Nigeria is a signatory, but also a violation of the spirit of American codes of conduct as codified in the Bill of Rights, specifically the 1st Amendment. (Not that Nigerians need to pay attention to our Bill of Rights -- I mean, standards of conduct should be defined relative to prevailing cultural norms, right?)

Alan Wisdom, the interim president at the Institute on Religion and Democracy spoke late this week to the Washington Blade:

The Institute on Religion & Democracy, a conservative Christian group based in Washington, D.C., is one member of the network that Chane decries.

Chane "raises a legitimate concern about the Nigerian law relating to sexual expression," said Alan Wisdom, interim president at the Institute on Religion & Democracy. "We would oppose a law like that."

However, Wisdom said, Chane, "tries to make Archbishop Akinola out to be this intolerant hateful person that we have not found him to be."

It is good to see that someone associated with the conservative Anglican community is willing to take a stand on this issue. Of course, it would be nice if Wisdom had said that he "does oppose a law like that," rather than hide behind "would," hoping that the issue may never come up.

In the end, however, it's not his problem (he runs an umbrella group for Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Methodists). It's the problem of the Anglican Communion, and the Global South's bishops. And here in the United States, it's the problem of the American Anglican Council, and of the Anglican Communion Network.

Wisdom's defense of Akinola -- that Chane "tries to make ... Akinola out to be this intolerant hateful person that we have not found him to be" -- is ultimately irrelevant, because Chane's argument can be discussed outside the context of Akinola's personality. We can all, for the sake of argument, assume that Akinola is a man of great compassion and spirituality, and still say to him that his Church's perceived mission (and the mission of most other religious organizations) of eradicating homosexuality from Nigeria cannot trump the right to free expression.

Chane and others in ECUSA have raised the issue -- it's time for the AAC and the Network to take a stand.

It's also time for the global Anglican Communion to deal with the near-incitement to violence by Akinola's highly publicized (2/21) statement in the wake of anti-Christian violence in northeastern Nigeria, which said, "May we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation" and that "C.A.N. [Christian Association of Nigeria] may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue." That day and the next, at least 80 northern Muslims (and some Christians) were killed in the southern Niger Delta city of Onitsha. Volunteer groups have called for ABpC Rowan to censure Akinola. That's not likely to happen without a serious food fight -- but perhaps the American churches, with which he has made cooperating agreements on doctrinal grounds, could have a say.

(update below)

No, I'm not referring to Muslims. I'm not even referring to Christians -- here the guilty party appears to be all Nigerians, of any faith. I've reported on the Anglican Church of Nigeria's "welcome" of new legislation banning homosexuality in Nigeria with prison sentences of up to 5 years (pdf), but it's not just the Anglicans who are in favor of it: Muslims, Pentecostals, Church of God, Catholics, all of them appear to have put a stick in the fire. A new and extremely poignant article in the Nigerian Vanguard lays it all out. I quote heavily from that article (all emphasis mine), a must read, if only for its description of the recent gay rights movement under Changing Attitude Nigeria.

Dr. Lateef Adegbite, secretary-general of Nigerian Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs (NSCIA):

It [the new law] is a commendable thing to do. But I want to add that passing a legislation is not just good enough. We should be vigilant in monitoring the lifestyles of our people and their relationships to ensure that such practices are exposed in Nigeria and that offenders get their due punishment.

The practice is dirty. It's incredible. It's sinful and a crime against humanity and against God. It depicts the height of animalism in man and such should be tackled immediately so that the practice does not gain ground here in Nigeria.

Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, National President of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, PFN, as well as the General Overseer of World of Life Bible Church, Warri:

We must appeal to the federal lawmakers to expedite action and pass that law speedily because the unholy move by the gang of gays in this country can only drag this noble nation back several hundred years.

It is an ominous sign we can hardly accommodate at this moment of the nation’s development and we must do everything possible to nip it in the bud. The proponents of gay practices in this country know that it is unAfrican but because they are being sponsored from outside this country they will do everything to actualise their dreams.

We know that they are being sponsored from outside this country for obvious reasons.

...

Let’s face it, religion aside, homosexuality and lesbianism are practices that are alien to the African culture. For God’s sake, let us do things that will uplift the image of our families and the nation as a whole and not things that will bring reproach to our parents, families and indeed the nation.

Apostle Hayford, the spiritual leader of Saint Joseph’s Chosen Church of God:

It is a most wonderful thing that has happened in the country in the last couple of months. I have to congratulate the Federal Government for the ideal initiative and urge all Nigerians to pray that they see it to its logical conclusion.

God who created mankind did not ordain any of His creation to be involved in such despicable practice. Any minister of the gospel or even ordinary worshipper who involves himself or herself in such practices simply does not know what the scriptures say about such unholy practices.

...

We are Africans and must behave as Africans and most hold our traditional values high wherever we find ourselves.

Archbishop of Lagos, Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie (Catholic):

All these stories are geared towards destroying the marriage institution. It’s very strange, indeed very absurd. How could a man and a man or woman and woman be in a sexual relationship? It’s crazy. This is a curse. All they (gays and lesbians) want to do is destroy the human race.

It is the same thing that made them to start using the condom. They call it family planning. People now want to have less children. So, they brought in the condom. Actually, there is a company that produces condom that wants to be located in Nigeria. They want to start producing condoms in Nigeria! That is besides the abortions they commit on daily basis.

Haven’t you also heard about people doing sex exchange? Men transform into women and women can become men! These are all targeted at destroying human life.

...

But I thank God for the fastness of this regime to arrest the situation.

Rev. Francis Ekeanyanwu is the General Overseer of Bible Wisdom Ministries International in Egbeda, Lagos

In the light of the foregoing, human rights in Nigeria should be evaluated within the context of public morality and the religious sensibilities of the people and not just the legal considerations alone. If these social bridles of religion and morality are overlooked in the consideration of human rights, then we give free rein to moral anarchy. Since some human rights advocates in Nigeria only echo the pet ideas of their foreign sponsors, most of whom are libertarians, not minding the incongruities of such ideas in our social and cultural milieu, the government should intervene to ensure moral sanity.

When a government panders to the idiosyncrasies of people in the name of human rights, you will begin to see the base passions of men being brought to the fore for social acceptance. Before long we will hear of groups demanding the right to marry their children or sleep with their dogs, right to walk naked or sniff cocaine and such other outlandish, deviant behaviours as their animal instincts may crave. This could as well mark the beginning of the retreat to the Hobbesian state of nature.

This is why President Obasanjo must be highly commended for hurriedly forwarding before the Federal Executive Council a draft bill for an Act prohibiting sexual relations or marriages between persons of the same sex arguing that such practices are inconsistent with our religious beliefs and cultural values. The President was alarmed when a group of persons gathered in Abuja to advocate for same sex relationships in November last year, echoing the gay agitations in the West. So, he acted promptly to checkmate the ugly trend. That is what a responsible government should do.

Last year, the Nigerian Anglican Church severed its ecclesiastical relationship with its American counterpart because of the ordination of a gay bishop. It also threatened to withdraw its traditional loyalty to the British Anglican Church if it follows the example of the American Church.

The Anglican Bishop of Lagos, Dr. Ephraim Adebola Ademowo:

It is crazy, abnormal and is not promoted by any religion known to man. Islam condemns it, Christianity loathes it and there is no known religion that accommodates the practice. If you are asking the position of my church, I think it is very well known all over the world and we have not changed.

As a matter of fact, we commend the Federal Government for the bold step it has taken thus far on the issue and we hope it will go the whole hog to make the National Assembly complete the process by enacting it into law which will be completed to the letter.

It is an unhealthy practice and every normal human being will boldly tell you it is not part of the traditional African culture. But above all, the Bible is very clear on the issue. It described it as an abberation and should not be seen among men who are called of by the name of God.

We've already heard from Anglican Archbishop Akinola and from Bishop Onuoha yesterday.

None of these statements surprises the American ear (e.g., the slippery slope: "Before long we will hear of groups demanding the right to marry their children or sleep with their dogs, right to walk naked or sniff cocaine"). We've heard it all before. But no one here could ever hope to get away with sentencing declared homosexuals to 5 years' imprisonment.

The sense one gets from these excerpts is that prevailing views on homosexuality are African rather than explicitly or solely religious. The sense is also anti-Western. Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor says, "The proponents of gay practices in this country know that it is unAfrican," while Apostle Hayford calls "Africans ... [to] hold our traditional values high wherever we find ourselves." Dr. Ademowo declares, "It is an unhealthy practice and every normal human being will boldly tell you it is not part of the traditional African culture."

UPDATE: 3/4/2006, 11 AM. Something I forgot to say earlier (or in any other post), but which should definitely be made clear, is that homosexual sex is already illegal in Nigeria (according to the Nigerian Penal Code, "any person who has carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature . . . is liable to imprisonment for 14 years"), as it is in much of Africa. The new legislation explicitly bars gay marriage (a bit moot if the sex is already illegal, don't you think?), among other things, but it also explicity denies the right to publicly declare your homosexuality in any way. The legislation (pdf) states quite clearly, "Publicity, procession and public show of same sex amorous relationship through the electronic or print media physically, directly, indirectly or otherwise are prohibited in Nigeria...[and] any person who is involved in the registration of gay clubs, societies and organizations, sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a term of 5 years imprisonment."

The burnt body of a Nigerian caught up in Christian-Muslim violence in the southeastern town of Onitsha.

We don't know if the victim was Christian or Muslim, and we shouldn't care. All we know is that we're looking at the body of someone who died in sectarian violence (as part of a larger political struggle in the run-up to a possible term-limit extension by the Christian President of Nigeria, Obasanjo) following the widely publicized, yet couched, language of Archbishop Akinola's response to Muslim violence against Christians in the North. Is it not true that the Anglican Church has a history of peaceful reconciliation? I'm beginning to wonder if that history is now dwarfed by the fight for "orthodoxy," and polluted by the deep sectarianism of post-colonial Africa. (photo credit Time)

Volunteers working recently in Nigeria have asked Williams to censure Akinola over his charged statement linked to Christian retaliatory violence against Muslims. An exclusive report can be found at The Church Times. Again, hat tip to Thinking Anglicans.

For the record, I do not wish with any post made here to get involved in what a church decides is or is not "orthodox". But when the Church steps over the line into the Magisterium of the State, one has to speak up.

The Church of Nigeria has a new release on the "Absurdity of Same Sex Unions" by the Rt. Rev. David Onuoha. Here's the meat:

There is no doubt that advocates of gay marriage are motivated by the need to preserve the rights of those who are inclined to live perversely. There is nothing wrong in preserving ones right. Human right ensures that man lives as he ought to and not as he likes to.

It is very clear that if everyone is allowed to live as one likes to live, there will be chaos and anarchy. This is why the law is there to guide ones life as one ought to. Man, at creation, has his freewill which guarantees freedom of choice and action. He is free to choose between good and evil, right and wrong etc. [emphasis mine]

In other words, human rights are all well and good, as long as they're legal. It seems that the Church of Nigeria is going into apology mode, working to develop a rationale for its endorsement of recent anti-homosexual legislation (pdf) and its violation of internationally accepted standards of human rights, as well a logical framework for extending the Church's sphere of moral influence into the State. Hat tip to Thinking Anglicans.

A quick thanks to Andrew Sullivan for linking to my post on the compromised relationship that Western Anglican conservatives maintain with the Nigerian Anglican Primate, and on his role in recent violence in that country.

Sullivan believes I was too kind to the Archbishop. Indeed, I was concerned that it would be wrong of me, without more evidence, to make a strong connection between the Archbishop Akinola's statement and the subsequent retaliatory violence.

However, it now seems clear that Akinola's statement received considerable publicity, and that its release just preceded the retaliatory attacks. Despite claims by conservative Christian groups that the Church in Nigeria is under siege, and by the Archbishop himself that "it is no longer a hidden fact that a long standing agenda to make this Nigeria an Islamic nation is being surreptitiously pursued," Akinola owes both his God and his Church an explanation for the instigatory role he had in the violence of 2/21 and 2/22 in Onitsha.

A man of great compassion once said, "If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin."

Danielle and Haley, the nieces, striking turtle-fear in the hearts of all who see them.

A quick look at that polling data should lead anyone to pause the next time they hear pundits talk about week-to-week shifts in the polls. Even last week's 34% figure from CBS should be taken with a grain of salt. It's pretty clear that the 34% number is an outlier with respect to the broader cloud of data that precedes it. But I should add that any new poll that restores Bush's approval rating to near 40% should also be taken with a grain of salt for essentially the same reason: no one poll can indicate trends in public opinion, even if performed by the same outfit. For example, read this and laugh ... a lot.

Bush is polling pretty badly right now. While it is not clear that he won't recover from this near-Nixonian plunge into the political abyss, it is natural to ask what factors might lead to a recovery, and whether those factors are likely to be in play. I am primarily interested in whether a 50% approval rate is now unachievable, even by the 2008 elections.

Bush's numbers rose dramatically after the attacks of 9/11 from between the 50s and 60s, to well into the 80s:

The two other times that Bush's numbers saw significant improvement were coincident with the initiation of the American and British ground assault in March, 2003, and with the capture of Saddam Hussein in December, 2003. Bush's numbers also saw a mild, arching surge prior to the 2004 election, but since Saddam Hussein's capture, his approval numbers have remained at or below 50%.

Since the beginning of 2005, in fact, his numbers have gone from hovering around 50% to hovering around 40%. The conventional wisdom is that this drop is due to the poor showing of his Social Security reform effort, the seemingly inexorable deterioration of the situation in Iraq, the very skeezy attitude of the Administration toward the acceptability of torture as employed by Americans or by our proxies overseas, the Federal Government's lack of preparedness for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita (and the metaphorical significance of that poor showing for their potential response to another major terrorist attack), the sour taste left in the mouths of many Americans by the NSA surveillance program, the Dubai ports deal, the Vice President shooting his friend during a hunting accident (in the face), the continuing scandal over the outing of a now proven undercover CIA operative for political purposes, massive congressional and administration corruption, spiraling national debt and the borrow-and-spend mentality of the Republican congress and administration (replacing the Democrats' earlier "tax-and-spend" addiction), and a growing sense that high gas prices, global change, and our dependence on foreign oil are all somehow related and all the President can do is declare our rather obvious addiction.

I can't help but recall Bill Safire's New Year's Op-Ed (12/30/2005) in the New York Times, entitled "The Office Pool, 2006". His Question 14:

As Bush approval rises, historians will begin to equate his era with that of: (a) Truman; (b) Eisenhower; (c) L.B.J.; (d) Reagan; (e) Clinton.

Well, the assumption has always been that Bush's numbers will in fact rise. But the only major bumps in Bush's numbers were after 9/11, after the invasion of Iraq, after the capture of Saddam Hussein, and during the heavy campaigning of the 2004 election.

My answer to Safire's question: (f) Nixon. Why? Barring the capture of Osama bin Laden (when's that gonna happen, anyway?), a major terrorist attack on US soil is the only event that historically would have any chance of raising his numbers, and yet it is entirely possible that such an attack would instead lead his numbers to plummet, after awakening in the American public the growing sense that this Administration has no idea how to manage our national security.

I hate to be cynical, but if the Administration guesses that terrorists pose a political as well as an economic and physical threat, can we now finally expect them to take national security seriously?

I promise I'll get back to the experiment shortly, but I have some serious work left to do to get the "experiment" where I want it. For a week or so, I'm going to spend some of my spare time blogging on other subjects, such as the recent post on Nigeria.

Nigeria has arrived front and center on two major issues in the last two weeks -- East-West culture wars, as typified by violence between northern Nigerian Muslims and southern Christians (and more broadly the violence inspired by the publications of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed); and the limitation or outright ban of homosexual marriage, behavior, and "speech". The two are related. Sitting near the epicenter of both issues, strangely enough, is the Anglican Church of Nigeria, and its Primate, Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola.

Attention in this country was spasmodically (and ephemerally) drawn to Akinola over the weekend with an Op-Ed in the Washington Post by the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, John Bryson Chane. Chane has been an outspoken (and to some occasionally unfair) critic of the rise of a conservative movement within the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) over various issues within the Church, primarily the evangelical mission of the Church (i.e., its mission to spread the Gospel, versus ECUSA's "gospel of inclusion," as the conservative movement often derisively calls it), but spurred by the consecration of the openly gay Bishop of New Hampshire, V. Gene Robinson. Since that fateful event in 2003, the global Anglican Communion, with which ECUSA is affiliated, has undergone a radical reallignment. Bolstered by the deep social conservatism of the "Global South" (a term in common employ by the United Nations, and the name by which the Anglican Provinces of the southern hemisphere are known) and their rapid rate of growth, some American parishes, long stagnating under the load of ECUSA-malaise, have split from ECUSA to join diocese in Africa. One example, which was close to me personally, was the realignment of three parishes in the Diocese of Los Angeles with the Diocese of Luweero in the Anglican Province of Uganda, a move which inspired this pastoral letter from the Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles, Jon Bruno. Other parishes in the US have left ECUSA to join the Diocese of Bolivia, Recife (Brazil), and Caledonia, among others.

The Anglican Communion is now in crisis mode, struggling to salvage a broad, though loosely affiliated, organization from self-destruction under the pull of two very strong forces. On the one hand, northern Anglicans in the US, Canada, and the UK are broadly committed to moderate stands on homosexuality and abortion, and to a sort of evangelicalism-lite, one that is less likely to make simple declarations of faith as those that are declared canonically in the Gospels. On the other hand, the Global South, and splinter organizations in the North (see the American Anglican Council, or AAC, and the Anglican Communion Network, or Network) are "orthodox" on the issues of homosexuality and abortion, and consider their purpose to be far more missionary than the stated purpose of ECUSA or other Northern Anglicans. The strength of the Global South is lent considerable credence by the fact that churches outside the traditional strongholds of the Northern Church are growing considerably faster. The correlation (to me, debatable) is then made between the rate of church growth in the Global South and the far more conservative positions taken on issues of orthodoxy.

American Christian evangelicalism, in the last several decades, has undergone a significant transformation, aligning itself with conservative American politics, most strongly with the national-defense / tough-on-crime / personal-responsibility politics of the Republican Party. Splintering parishes in the North are no exception, despite their "Mainline Protestant" background in ECUSA. One need only look at posts at the conservative Anglican blog VirtueOnline to see that this is the case. Though Virtue's blog and his readership are by no means representative of the broader American Anglican conservative community (TitusOneNine maintains balanced coverage of events relevant to "orthodox" Anglican readers), words like "liberal" and "conservative" are freely employed, and almost always mean the same thing whether applied to biblical orthodoxy or American politics, such as this apology for New Testament support of the death penalty, or this report on the 500+ scientists publicly proclaiming their doubt about evolutionary biology (never mind the 25,000+ scientists who signed a counter-petition). It is not worth our time to go through the many other websites and news venues that conflate conservative American politics with evangelicalism, because most of these have nothing to do with evangelical Anglicanism as it is practiced in the US or in the Global South.

However, it is important to keep in mind that the organizational roots of conservative Anglicanism in the US are deep inside the Republican Party. The AAC, mentioned above as an umbrella group for American conservative Anglicanism, has historical and present ties with the Institute on Religion and Democracy (or IRD), a conservative political group devoted to supporting evangelical Christianity as part of movement conservatism. The IRD has received considerable support ($4,679,000 between 1985 and 2005) from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Richard Mellon Scaife via the Carthage Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundaiton, and the Scaife Family Foundation, the Randolph Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation (the Coors family), and others.

This is not to say that all AAC members are hard-core conservative Republicans -- they may have no political affiliation at all. However, we must take for granted that the movement is driven (or at least heavily supported by in-kind contributions -- for example, the IRD and AAC websites used to be identically formatted, and their offices were in adjacent suites in an I St. office building in northwest Washington, DC) by a political and social agenda effectively separate from the movement of expanding evangelicalism in the Global South. The IRD board is populated by such conservative luminaries as Mary Ellen Bork, Fred Barnes, author of "Rebel in Chief", Richard J. Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and is advised by conservative radio talk-show host Michael Medved, a group that spends little time evangelizing in Kenya.

The radical conservative agenda of this melding of religion and politics dirties religion immensely. Like Tony Campolo has said,

When government and church begin to mix, you got a problem. It's like mixing ice cream with horse manure: You will not ruin the horse manure, but it will ruin the ice cream. I think to mix the church and state is to, in fact, put the church in a compromising position.

And where it gets really complicated, however innocently, is when the northern conservative Anglican movement, driven by political trends in the US, Canada, and the UK, affiliates itself with diocese in the Global South, which are "conservative" for sometimes completely different reasons. The Op-Ed by Bishop Chane discusses the decision by Archbishop Akinola, the Primate of Nigeria, to support new Nigerian legislation that effectively outlaws homosexuality. The law, which can be found here (pdf), states that "publicity, procession and public show of same sex amorous relationship through the electronic or print media physically, directly, indirectly or otherwise are prohibited in Nigeria," and that "any person who is involved in the registration of gay clubs, societies and organizations, sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a term of 5 years imprisonment."

Here is some of what Bishop Chane said:

It's no secret that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are engaged in a bitter internal struggle over the role of gay and lesbian people within the church. But despite this struggle, the leaders of our global communion of 77 million members have consistently reiterated their pastoral concern for gays and lesbians. Meeting last February, the primates who lead our 38 member provinces issued a unanimous statement that said in part: "The victimization or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us."

We now have reason to doubt those words.

Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, primate of the Church of Nigeria and leader of the conservative wing of the communion, recently threw his prestige and resources behind a new law that criminalizes same-sex marriage in his country and denies gay citizens the freedoms to assemble and petition their government. The law also infringes upon press and religious freedom by authorizing Nigeria's government to prosecute newspapers that publicize same-sex associations and religious organizations that permit same-sex unions.

Were Archbishop Akinola a solitary figure and Nigeria an isolated church, his support for institutionalized bigotry would be significant only within his own country. But the archbishop is perhaps the most powerful member of a global alliance of conservative bishops and theologians, generously supported by foundations and individual donors in the United States, who seek to dominate the Anglican Communion and expel those who oppose them, particularly the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Failing that, the archbishop and his allies have talked of forming their own purified communion -- possibly with Archbishop Akinola at its head.

Because the conflict over homosexuality is not unique to Anglicanism, civil libertarians in this country, and other people as well, should also be aware of the archbishop and his movement. Gifts from such wealthy donors as Howard Ahmanson Jr. and the Bradley, Coors and Scaife families, or their foundations, allow the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy to sponsor so-called "renewal" movements that fight the inclusion of gays and lesbians within the Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches and in the United Church of Christ. Should the institute succeed in "renewing" these churches, what we see in Nigeria today may well be on the agenda of the Christian right tomorrow.

Many countries have laws restricting marriage on any number of grounds. Some of these, such as age, kinship and marital status, for instance, are prudent, while most of us believe other sorts of restrictions, including race and religion, are oppressive and indefensible. Our global community has certainly achieved no consensus on the issue of same-sex marriage or the related issues of civil unions.

But the Nigerian law has crossed the line in several important respects. Its most outrageous provision deals not with marriage but with "same-sex relationships" and prohibits essentially any public or private activity in any way related to homosexuality. It reads in part: "Publicity, procession and public show of same sex amorous relationship through the electronic or print media physically, directly, indirectly or otherwise are prohibited in Nigeria."

Any person involved in the "sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly" is subject to five years' imprisonment.

The archbishop's support for this law violates numerous Anglican Communion documents that call for a "listening process" involving gay Christians and their leaders. But his contempt for international agreements also extends to Articles 18-20 of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which articulates the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, association and assembly.

The response of the Anglican conservative David Virtue (of VirtueOnline) to this Op-Ed was interesting. Far from dealing with the issue of the potential human rights violations that might evolve from the support of the highly influential Akinola, Virtue calls ECUSA's broader interests within the Anglican Communion "homoerotic," relying on the fact that homosexuality is a crime throughout Africa to argue that a complaint against Akinola's support of the legislation by Bishop Chane is somehow a call for increased homosexuality among Africans. Virtue then misleads, alleging that Chane claimed that Akinola is directly funded by the AAC or the IRD, relying on a "close personal friend of Akinola" and board member of the AAC, Rev. Canon Martyn Minns, to attest that "[t]he money thing is absolutely not true -- as far as I know the Church of Nigeria does NOT get funding from any conservative foundations nor do they victimize homosexuals -- they love them and pray for them." I'm sure he's right on both counts. But regardless of whether they love and pray for them, the fundamental character of the Nigerian legislation, is, as Chane says, in violation of Articles 18-20 of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. This legislation, if it were enacted in the United States, would radically abridge 1st Amendment rights to free expression of religion, assembly, and the press, enforcing those bans with a punishment of up to five years in prison. It is one thing for Virtue to argue that the Anglican Church in Nigeria should in no way endorse homosexual relationships, but it is quite another thing if the Anglican Church were to support a criminal (and thus civil) ban on religious/personal behavior.

Not that he reads this blog, but I would certainly challenge David Virtue to reconsider his objection to Chane's words with respect to the potential human rights violations that would be imposed if this legislation were enacted. It's not as if Akinola hasn't come right out and said what Chane claims he said. Voice of America has the meat:

The Anglican Church in Nigeria Thursday said it welcomes government decision to push for legislation to outlaw homosexuality. The government said it will introduce legislation to punish homosexuality by up to five years in jail and ban same-sex marriages. A spokesman for Nigeria's Anglican Church described homosexuality as an abomination.

The spokesman for the Anglican church in Nigeria, Reverend Tunde Popoola, says the proposed ban is appropriate. The Anglican community in Nigeria has long waged a vigorous campaign against homosexuals, as Reverend Popoola explains.

"The Anglican church in Nigeria has been in the forefront of condemning the attitude because the church sees it as an aberration, in other words, we see it as against the norm. We see it as an abomination," he said.

Let's not mince words -- the Nigerian Church wants to outlaw not only gay marriage, but also homosexual behavior, free speech, freedom of assembly, free press, and freedom of religion. Bottom line: Chane is factually correct in his objection. Will Virtue argue from moral relativism to say that standards of conduct (in this case tolerance of those who are different from ourselves) must be allowed to vary on country-by-country basis? I doubt it.

Perhaps more interesting than Virtue's incomplete, and rather non-introspective review of Bishop Chane's OpEd is the response of the Nigerian Church. The Living Church, an Anglican newsletter, ran a news story about the OpEd and the subsequent response on Feb 27th:

A spokesman for the Church of Nigeria, Canon Akintunde Popoola, disputed this characterization, arguing Bishop Chane misconstrued the text of the bill and Archbishop Akinola’s role in the legislative process. "Archbishop Peter to my knowledge is yet to comment [publicly] on the bill. I have said we welcome it because we view homosexuality as 'against the norm'."

While banning 'gay clubs' in "institutions from secondary to the tertiary level or other institutions in particular" and "generally, by government agencies," the proposed law is silent as to the status of private gay clubs.

The proposed law should also be seen in light of the wider conflict between civil law and Shariah law in Nigeria, Canon Popoola said. Under existing "Islamic law" in effect in "some parts of the country," the acts covered by the proposed law currently "stipulate the death penalty," he said.

Here, Canon Popoola claims that Chane mischaracterized Akinola's role: "Archbishop Peter to my knowledge is yet to comment [publicly] on the bill. I have said we welcome it because we view homosexuality as 'against the norm'." Now, I'm not a professional parser, especially with respect to comments made by clerics in the Anglican Communion, but to "welcome it" usually does not indicate that you "deny it" any support. Besides, all Chane said was that "Akinola ... recently threw his prestige and resources behind a new law."

But of far greater interest is the suggestion by Canon Popoola that the Nigerian legislation should be seen in the context of the battle between civil law and Shari'ah. If so, he is providing cover for the legislation by saying, essentially, that, "well, at least the proposed legislation is not as severe as Shari'ah, which demands the death penalty for homosexuality of any kind" (my words).

But I am now quite suspicious of the meaning of the words coming out of the Archbishop's office -- for instance, in response to recent violence following the cartoons depicting the Prophet, and violent and aimless reprisals against Christians and Christian churches, Akinola said in a statement "may we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation" and that "C.A.N. [Christian Association of Nigeria] may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue". That was Tuesday of last week (2/21), just as anti-Christian violence in the north over the previous weekend claimed at least 43 lives (some say at least 50) in the predominantly Muslim cities of Maidugiri and Bauchi. On Tuesday (2/21) and Wednesday (2/22), retaliatory attacks against Muslims in the southeastern Christian city of Onitsha claimed 80 more. (Numbers from ReliefWeb) The situation is ugly, folks (h/t Andrew Sullivan).

Of course, it is unclear from news reports whether the timing of Akinola's statement led directly in any way to the retaliatory attacks on southern Muslims, but the statement certainly offered no effort of reconciliation.

Chane closes his Op-Ed with a request that the "archbishop's many high-profile supporters in this country [ask themselves] why they have not publicly dissociated themselves from his attack on the human rights of a vulnerable population. Is it because they support this sort of legislation, or because the rights of gay men and women are not worth the risk of tangling with an important alliance?"

Good question. But I would also ask this: Can "orthodox" elements of the Anglican Communion afford to develop international affiliations that are for all the world based on violent conflict and discrimination? It is my view that they are putting themselves on the wrong side of a civil rights debate, but far worse they are eagerly seeking a place in the midst of a nasty Christian-Muslim political struggle in the Republic of Nigeria. On both counts, Akinola deserves some form of censure.

UPDATE: Grammatical errors fixed, 3/2/2006, 1 AM

UPDATE II: 3/2/2006, 1 AM. I had left this out before, because it doesn't directly relate to Northern Anglican involvement in Africa, but I think it's worth including if only to highlight the broad instability of the Nigerian government. It is broadly believed that the current Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, wishes to extend his presidency into a third term. Obasanjo is a self-proclaimed born-again Christian in a country whose presidency has traditionally been held, since the country's independence in 1960, by Muslims. A third term would require amending the Nigerian constitution. Such an amendment would lead to considerable unrest, as Muslims who feel their time has come would feel jilted, at best. According to US intelligence chief John Negroponte, the ensuing "chaos could lead to disruption of oil supply, secessionist moves by regional governments, major refugee flows, and instability elsewhere in West Africa."

UPDATE III: 3/2/2006, 7 AM. I fear I may have given the impression that Bishop Chane, of the Diocese of Washington, was the only to raise his voice in protest, or that I am somehow unique in laying this all out. The Rev. Mark Harris, a priest of the Diocese of Delaware, has provided an excellent analysis of the odd roll of Akinola in the Anglican Communion:

The Archbishop of Nigeria, The Most Rev. Peter Akinola, has emerged as a primary spokesperson for the collection of Provincial leaders, diocesan bishops, and other concerned Anglicans who constitute a movement within the Anglican family of churches to “realign” their various bodies into greater conformance with what they understand to be a biblically warranted or based internationally organized church.

On the AAC and the Network, and what Harris believes to be the coming reckoning:

Archbishop Akinola’s various remarks, papers, and official briefings give every indication that he clearly is his own man, save for his obedience to the Word of God as he has received it. It is not at all clear that he is willing to live again in a world where deference is given to a church leader simply because that person is leader of the English church.

Whether or not he is his own man in reality is yet to be seen. He is the chair of CAPA, the Council of Anglican Provinces of Africa, which he acknowledges has been underwritten by western donors to the present time. He is chair of the South to South Encounter which will meet in Egypt this month. Its funding is from its own members, but where they in turn get the funds is less clear. It is unclear how many of his international activities (which are considerable) are funded by Western conservative voices, particularly the AAC and the Network.

The effort to realign the Anglican Communion has given rise to the creation of a wide variety of agencies and organizations, some more a reality than others. All the meetings, travels, lectures, caucuses, consultations and encounters necessary to put this together costs a great deal, and there is considerable lack of clarity as to where the funding comes from.

There is no question that the funding of the AAC or the Network includes major donors whose concerns and objectives are not primarily about the Episcopal Church but about conservative agendas across ecclesial structures. There is also considerable concern that those non-church conservative agendas include paralyzing the ‘mainline’ denominations with such internal dysfunction that they cease to be able to carry out the progressive agendas of their own synods. So the question of AAC and Network engagement with the Archbishop of Nigeria and his agenda involves the question of funding, and the agenda of these outside funding sources.

On the Akinola's conception of homosexuality:

The Archbishop speaks his mind on many occasions, and what he says is often intriguing, sometimes hurtful, sometimes constructive and occasionally destructive.

He has said horrid things about gay persons:

"I cannot think of how a man in his senses would be having a sexual relationship with another man. Even in the world of animals, dogs, cows, lions, we don't hear of such things." (The Atlantic online)

And about gay and lesbian persons:

"God created two persons -- male and female. Now the world of homosexuals has created a third -- a homosexual, neither male nor female, or both male and female -- a strange two-in-one human."

"The acceptance of homosexuality and lesbianism as normal is the triumph of disobedience; the enthronement of human pride over the will of God. This lifestyle is a terrible violation of the harmony of the eco-system of which mankind is a part. As we are rightly concerned by the depletion of the ozone layer, so should we be concerned by the practice of homosexuality." (Both [quotes] from Why I object to Homosexuality and Same-sex Unions)

His arguments – that homosexuals are a "two-in-one human" and that homosexual lifestyle is somehow related to the eco-system -- are amazing in their profound misreading of both homosexuality and humankind’s role in the eco-system. His suggestion that not "even in the world of animals, dogs, cows, lions, we don't hear of such things" turns out not to be completely true, but worse it makes the dreadful hierarchical comparison where, as President Mugabe of Zimbabwe stated, gay people are "worse than dogs..."

I can only repeat the words of AAC boardmember, Rev. Martyn Minns, quoted by David Virtue as saying of the Nigerian Church, "they [don't] victimize homosexuals -- they love them and pray for them."

Those interested in a very important perspective on changes within the Anglican Communion, and for recent news and links on Archbishop Akinola should continue with a reading of Rev. Mark Harris's excellent blog.

UPDATE IV: 3/3/2006, 12:10 PM. I have received word from some in the Anglican community that my characterization of most conservative Anglicans as using language similar to that used by American political conservatives is misleading. I have changed the paragraph starting with "American Christian evangelicalism, in the last several decades..." to reflect the fact that not all conservative Anglicans reflect the conservative political perspective of someone like David Virtue.