Anglicans ALL

TANZANIA: Gay question is ‘not central to faith’ says Tanzanian bishop
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=32751

by Pat Ashworth
The Church Times
2/2/2007


THE Bishop of Central Tanganyika, the Rt Revd Godfrey Mdimi Mhogolo, has dissociated his diocese from the statement issued in December by the House of Bishops of Tanzania, the province where the Primates Meeting is to be held this month.

The Bishops declared a “severely impaired” relationship with the Episcopal Church in the United States (ECUSA), and announced that Tanzania would not knowingly accept any money from dioceses, parishes, bishops, and individuals that “condone homosexual practice or bless same-sex unions”. They described ECUSA’s response to the Windsor report as “a failure to register honest repentance for their actions” (News, 15 December).

In a long and reflective letter to the Anglican Communion, dated 26 January, Bishop Mdimi sets out Tanganyika’s position on matters of faith: “We try to express Jesus Christ in the sufferings and challenges of our communities. We cry with those who cry, and bring hope for a better future to those who suffer.

“We share the sufferings and hurts of the people we serve, and become a prayerful sign before God on behalf of them all. We also work for the hope of glory in trying to transform the lives of our people, regardless of their colour, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and social status.”

The Bishop goes on to list the many friendly governments, secular and Christian organisations, and friends who work with the diocese in health, education, and agriculture, and are partners in trying to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. ECUSA is only a small part of its funding partnership operation, he writes. “Why should we single out ECUSA and treat it differently?”

Bishop Mdimi goes on: “We live in our cultural context where gays and lesbians are regarded as criminals, punishable by long-term imprisonments. We also live in a country where gays and lesbians are violently persecuted, mistreated, hated, and ostracised. . . We as Black Africans know the hurts and permanent damage caused by our past experiences, which still linger on to the present. . . We have gone through that, and we don’t want to go that way again.”

The Bishop concludes that the issue of homosexuality “is not fundamental to the Christian faith, although many try to make it that way”. He also writes that although the House of Bishops’ statement carries weight, it “does not express the will and wishes of the whole Anglican Church of Tanzania”.

His comments became public in the same week as the former Archbishop of Cape Town, Dr Desmond Tutu, berated African Churches for focusing on homosexuality at the expense of the pressing needs of South Africa.

Dr Tutu told a press conference at the World Social Forum in Nairobi: “I am deeply, deeply distressed that in the face of the most horrendous problems - we’ve got poverty, we’ve got conflict and war, we’ve got HIV/AIDS - and what do we concentrate on? We concentrate on what you are doing in bed.”

He recalled the persecution of Africans on racial grounds, and said: “I would find it quite unacceptable to condemn, persecute a minority that had already been persecuted.”

Meanwhile, the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, has told the US Episcopalian magazine The Living Church that she had not taken personally statements by some Global South Primates that they would “refuse to sit with her” at the same table in Tanzania.

The comments were disrespectful of her office, she told the publication, but “I’m a person who lives in hope.”

END