Investigation exposes influence of [American] Religious Right on homophobia in Africa

[harry_pothead]

Source: Ekklesia

Sexual minorities in Africa have become 'collateral damage' in church conflicts as US conservative evangelicals and those opposing gay priests, ministers and bishops within mainline Protestant denominations woo Africans, a groundbreaking investigation by Political Research Associates (PRA) has suggested.

Globalising the Culture Wars: US Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia, a new report by PRA Project Director Reverend Kapya Kaoma, examines the US Right’s promotion of an agenda in Africa which aims to criminalise homosexuality and infringe upon the human rights of LGBT people while also mobilising African clerics in US 'culture war' battles.

The report comes as Christian church leaders in the UK are also being criticised for not speaking out about a proposed new law in Uganda which would introduce the death penalty for certain homosexual activity between consenting adults.

US social conservatives, who are in the minority in mainline churches, depend on African religious leaders to legitimise their positions as their growing numbers make African Christians more influential globally. The report says these partnerships have succeeded in slowing the mainline Protestant churches’ recognition of the full equality of LGBT people.

Read more: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10634

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Fucking ridiculous.

[KakistocracyHater]

1. they are also the source for the growing witch hysteria in Africa

they are "killing witches" in Africa, really socially vulnerable individuals: older women, odd children(maybe autistic or simply artistic), orphans. See Talk2action.org, see also witchvox.com

[BennyD]

2. Evangelicals are sending a lot of money into church ministries in Africa. n/t

[Blue_Tires]

4. and they are pulling even more out...

check out Pat Robertson's business connection with the diamond industry

[Tsar_Bomba]

3. I don't know who to hate more, the clergy or

the missionaries. Here is a group of people that cannot stop sticking their nose into other peoples private matters. Even living in another country won't keep these worthless religious nuts from prying in. When will it stop?

[BennyD]

7. Try not "hating" either. It will only eat you up inside. n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Rick Warren has been playing that vicious game for years

which was yet another reason he should not have been honored by Obama. I note in the article, Warren has been asked to but has not spoken out against the Ugandan law.

[fascisthunter]

6. the Religious Right is a Sick and Perverted Cult

that represents the evil they claim to be against.

I think the globe should not just deal with Muslim religious extremists but all of them, including christian extremists.

[Overseas]

9. I agree. Depressing to see too much deference to Christian extremists.

Depressing that funding a woman's right to control her own body can be taken out of health care "reform" so easily.

Yet funding for a government practicing torture and reckless war profiteering in our name was doled out without thunderous protests from the "Pro Life" community.

[Overseas]

8. I'd imagine The Family's "Jesus Plus Nothing" crusading is at work in this.

"The Family," who sometimes refer to themselves as The Christian Mafia, have been meddling internationally for decades, I've learned. Here below is a clip from Jeff Sharlet's 2003 Harpers article about them. http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525

In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides' eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa's postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century's most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. “We work with power where we can,” the Family's leader, Doug Coe, says, “build new power where we can't.”
...
...
There {at The Cedars, their retreat} they forge “relationships” beyond the din of vox populi (the Family's leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride) and “throw away religion” in favor of the truths of the Family. Declaring God's covenant with the Jews broken, the group's core members call themselves “the new chosen.”