Church failing on poverty amid homosexuality debate, says Tutu
by Jennifer Gold
Posted: Sunday, September 7, 2008, 8:18 (BST)
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has expressed anger at the Anglican church for putting the row over homosexuality before the need to tackle world poverty.
Speaking at a Tearfund conference of church leaders in London this weekend, Archbishop Tutu said that the church's central position in communities in the UK and overseas meant it was well placed to respond to global poverty, reports the BBC.
He added, however, that he felt ashamed of Anglicans for continuing their "obsession" with homosexuality whilst 30,000 people die each day because of poverty.
"We really will not be able to win wars against so-called terror as long as there are conditions that make people desperate, and poverty, disease and ignorance are amongst the chief culprits," he told church leaders, according to the BBC.
"We seem to be engaging in this kind of, almost, past-time [while] there's poverty, hunger, disease, corruption. I must imagine that God is weeping, and the world quite rightly should dismiss the Church in those cases as being totally irrelevant."
Archbishop Tutu denied the claim of traditionalists that homosexuality is a choice and suggested that the best way to deal with the crisis in the Anglican Communion was to shelve the debate.
"It will be good for us obviously, to resolve our differences on this, and maybe accept that we agree to differ," he said.
He also accused traditionalists of treating homosexual people in an un-Christlike manner by "persecuting the already persecuted".
At the recent Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams said that the Anglican Communion's official position on homosexuality had not changed since the 1998 resolution Lambeth 1.10 rejected homosexuality as incompatible with Scripture.
Bishops at the conference agreed an immediate halt to the consecration of homosexual clergy as bishops, the blessing of same-sex unions and cross-border interventions, although The Episcopal Church in the USA, the church at the heart of the row, indicated that it would allow local churches to make the final decision regarding implementation.
The Conference saw more than 600 bishops march through central London in a call to the Government to do more to ensure the fulfilment of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The march was in collaboration with Micah Challenge, a worldwide movement of Christians who are lobbying their governments to reach the MDGs, set by world leaders in 2000 with the aim of halving extreme global poverty.
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The comments below are readers' personal opinions and are in no way intended to reflect the editorial opinion of Christian Today.
Added: Tuesday, September 9, 2008, 12:11 (BST)
First of all, there is a need to see the difference between the TEMPTATION by, and the ACTUALISATION of, homosexuality. We are all tempted, as we all know, but there is a difference between being tempted and actually doing the deed - whatever that deed might be! Of course, this does not condone the practice of (that) sin, certainly not in God's eyes. Remember what sin is - rejection of God's Word, in the first instance, in spirit, mind and body.
Paul did not differentiate between homosexuality and adultery (the actualisation of them), for instance, describing them as 'sexual immorality', but DID specifically list the OUTCOME of pursuing the sin of homosexuality. It is here that, I believe, lies the dichotomy and confusion in today's Christian outlook, in clearly deliniating between the temptaton and the action - not helped by the current trend of psychologists and geneticists apologising and looking for neurological and genetic reasons for homosexual behaviour.
We humans are, by and large, naturally morbidly fascinated and repulsed by abnormal behaviour - as Big Brother viewers may, or would, attest to - and the more abnormal the behaviour, the greater our reaction. As Christians, we have an advantage, as we can tap into the power of God, in the Name of Yeshua, to overcome our normal reactions and ask Him to minister to people through us.
We, ourselves, do not easily look beyond the sin, though I realise that it can be very hard to do so, through to the person themselves. Only a few rare individuals can naturally do that, the rest of us need to cry out to the Holy Spirit to help us to do so through the eyes and heart of Jesus (I repeat myself to emphasise the case!). I know I have to, despite my own predilictions.
It is the Spirit who has the job of conviction of sin, NOT US! We need to only accept the person in Yeshua's name, showing His Love. His Love will address the need and spiritual poverty of the individual and begin the work of being saved (accepting Christ is ONLY the beginning - check out what Paul writes in Romans), and bring deliverance.
Leaving the Holy Spirit to do His job, we can then do ours - if we are right in Christ ourselves (planks and motes, people!!) - and address the work of dealing with the other issues - of widows and orphans, the poor, lonely, the ailing, prisoners and everyone and -thing else Yeshua wants us to address, in our local areas and then further out into the world.
As Yeshua said, when He returns to this world, will He find faith, or just a bunch of bickering Christians? Only HE knows who His TRUE Church is - not denominations or sects - and take them. And there will be a few surprises, you can be sure of that!
In the meantime, our relevancy in the world, as Christ's Church, will only grow when the world looks at us and asks, as they did of the growing Church in Jerusalem (Acts 2 v 43-47), "What have they got that we haven't? We want it!" (paraphrased). We are redeemed people, not perfect people, and it is this that we offer the world, and will change the world, and the individual, homosexual or not.
Chris Maguire, Ventnor, IoW
Added: Tuesday, September 9, 2008, 0:07 (BST)
Thanks dear Bishop. For you have been a champion on the war on ills that confront man. But the spiritual moral war facing anglicanism is not like the poverty war. It is deeper and goes far into our very identity as christians and why we claim the right to speak or fight the physical and material poverty. We have a spirtual poverty that so evident in the West. things are now different. May be now is the time to finish first the war on spiritual poverty to give Anglicans the moral right to fight the physical poverty.
Chaplain Duku, Melbourne Australia
Added: Monday, September 8, 2008, 4:13 (BST)
I'm grateful for Archbishop's Tutu's stating truth to the church that continues to demonize people as other and chooses not to honestly look at the issues at hand. But there will always be men and women who need to have something or someone to criticize and judge. It is indeed interesting that after the demise of USSR and the cold war that "the gays" became the next target to exploit and claim that they are out to destroy the church or Christian culture. Well as we can see in Scripture not much has really changed for those caught up in religion.
Jeff, Edmonds WA USA
