Would You Take Holy Communion From A Gay Bishop?
- Category: Faith
- Date 11-08-2021
- 410 views
People suspected of being homosexuals or lesbians and their sympathisers will soon be endangered to live in Uganda. The draft law that parliament might approve before long partly recommends death for identified gays and long jail terms for parents, teachers, and other authorities who fail to report the alleged sexual behaviour of their subsidiaries. This state of affairs well fits the words of a 19th century American poet, Robert Frost, “Let him that is without a stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.”
While government here attempted to stamp gay tendencies out of the secular public, a packed religious assembly in the United States of America appointed a self-confessed lesbian to become a bishop. Clergy and lay leaders in the diocese of Los Angeles, at their annual convention, popularly elected the Reverend Canon Mary D. Glasspool to become their assistant bishop.
The electoral contest attracted two other contestants but Glasspool garnered 153 votes from fellow clergy plus 203 votes from lay delegates. The 55-year-old bishop-elect has been in a committed sexual relationship with another woman for the last 21 years (since 1988), and was not the only gay contender for that post. The Rev. John L. Kirkley of San Francisco is an openly homosexual churchman and only withdrew from the race at the eleventh hour.
For all intents and purposes, none of the antagonistic positions above evoke an iota of positive feeling in The Comrade. They are equally despicable. Homosexuality and lesbianism are a bedroom affair and, unless the people involved tell us, we can never know that so-and-so is doing such-and-such. The proposed jail sentence for Uganda’s gay sympathisers is plainly thoughtless and weird.
Christians need not demand for the heads of gay people. They need prayers, not lashes, to revert to ‘normal sexuality’. It is understandably bizarre that the gay are increasingly gaining ascendancy to the Anglican Church leadership, moreover assuming that the voters are usually of ‘normal’ sexual orientation. It is a clear sign of a church in anarchy. Many say that this trend in the Anglican Communion signals the triumph of evil over morality whereupon Satan is taking the battle into God’s territory and gradually annexing part of it. The latest elevation of another lesbian to the office of a bishop is a slap in the face of those who wanted us to forget the first case of such a bishop in the diocese of New Hampshire.
People have come up with new but often strange ideas of how to practice their faith and subsequently broken ranks with their mainstream establishment. Why the gays have decided to do their thing from within is another matter. When King Henry VIII wanted to wed a second wife, he broke ranks with the Catholic Church and started the Anglican one that is now riddled with all manner misdemeanours, including gay bishops: better known as ‘openly gay’ because there are supposedly others in hiding within and outside the Anglican circles.
A simple soul like The Comrade wonders why a gay bishop should be the best candidate for the high office of a church bishop. Part of the reason is that the electors have many other considerations, and the sexual orientation of the candidate may not be among. Yet a person who serves for decades in the hierarchy of the church and rises to the rank of a bishop is not one to treat with the contempt that anti-gay campaigners display.
The selection is done by a soberly enlightened college in a democratic and transparent process; and only one is chosen from a multitude of eligible reverends. In condemning the choice of a gay bishop, there is no allegation of fraudulent electoral process, nor evidence of poor performance on the part of the candidate, nor failure to inspire the congregation to attend to church business. It is also possible that the Electoral College may be dominated by ‘silent gays’; and one have ever served you Holy Communion.
By Venansio Ahabwe
Source: The Comrade, The Guardian on Sunday