That’s the spirit, Bishop Bigot. Let’s hate everybody

By Rod Liddle

Like many of you, I suspect, I have been wondering who Jesus Christ would have liked least, Africans or homosexuals. Most of the available evidence suggests He would have found it a pretty close call, all things considered. By "available evidence", I mean the most eminently flexible of texts, the Bible.

I had intended to take advice and guidance from the 2008 Lambeth Conference, that convocation of extravagantly bearded men in purple dresses, but it was like soliciting advice from a tub of margarine. When an issue of principle hove into view, the prelates ducked and pretended it hadn't been raised at all. I don't know what our Lord would have made of that. I suspect He would have sniggered and then maybe headed off to the wilderness once again.

Certainly, bits of the Bible seem pretty clear on the issue of homosexuality - smite, smite and smite again until there are no buggers left standing, seems to be the general gist. I refer you to Corinthians and Romans, for starters. This is the view of that upstanding Christian Henry Luke Orombi, the Archbishop of Uganda, who boycotted the conference in case he had to take communion somewhere near a poof, or somewhere near someone who didn't mind poofs. "I do not think there is a debate," said Orombi. "When God gives His word, you either take it or leave it."

Well, quite, a good point well made. The trouble is, God also made his position pretty clear about black people in the curse-of-Ham passage in Genesis. Or, at least, that is what a very large number of Christian church leaders thought back in the 19th century, to the extent that in the Church of the Latter Day Saints, for example, black people were not allowed to be ordained as bishops for many years.

Today the supposed message of the curse of Ham has about as much relevance to the wider world as a meeting of the General Synod and is cleaved to only by a few wacko evangelical bigots storing up their cans of weedkiller in an Oklahoma basement. This, however, is the problem when you follow Orombi's somewhat literal interpretation of what God likes and doesn't like. Orombi has extended his attack from homosexuals to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and indeed the entire edifice of the Anglican church, which he has called a "remnant of British colonialism". A remnant of British civility and decency, might be more to the point.

I cannot see our Lord getting on too well with Orombi, either. This pig-headed and vengeful cleric has conducted a campaign of persecution against the one decent bishop – or former bishop – his country has. Christopher Ssenyonjo, a heterosexual who believes that the church should at least talk to queers, has been vilified, defrocked and even threatened with arrest by Orombi for challenging his diktat.

Meanwhile, the godforsaken branch of the Anglican communion in Nigeria has just thrown its weight behind a government act that outlaws both homosexuality and indeed anyone who has a good word to say about homosexuality. Get caught listening to a Judy Garland CD in downtown Lagos and you could find yourself in prison for five years, with the local Christian church entirely in favour of your punishment.

The Anglican church has accustomed itself lately to worrying far too much about schisms and too little about the notion of what it stands for and what it represents. The bishops gathered in Canterbury might have had their memories tweaked to this effect when, last week, one of the Pope's little minions, one Walter Kasper, sent them the following message: homosexuality is "disordered behaviour that must be condemned". Kasper then chucked in a couple of broadsides about women as well, just in case anyone thought the Catholic church was merely homophobic and not a proud bastion of misogyny, too.

The first schism was no bad thing, the bishops might consider. And a second one might be just as uplifting.

That's the spirit, Bishop Bigot. Let's hate everybody
Times Online, UK