Given how homophobic society is there, quoting it couldn’t possibly do much damage to the Bishop’s reputation. So why would a reporter make it up? Or which part of the quote did he get wrong and which part is correct?

According to Reporter’s sans Frontières:

Nigerian journalists yet again lived through an appalling year in 2006. They have had to face police brutality, arrests in certain cases for the least article that annoyed local authorities…They are also routinely the punch bags for the powerful, military figures, governors, ministers and businessmen, who enjoy complete impunity and have no respect for the right to news and information…

It’s pretty easy to envisage why a reporter would retract a story that made the church and nation look bad. It’s a bit harder to envisage why he would post it in the first place.

It is however new and disturbing to see an entire mainstream church movement move in this direction.

The truth is that the self-proclaimed “orthodox Anglicans” at Standing Firm, etc, who are affiliating (and providing resources and talking points to) the African churches are not mainstream. In fact virtually all Episcopalians have not been receptive to the calls from these fringe groups to leave our Church. The so-called “orthodox” (who in reality are quite un-Anglican and un-orthodox) are heavily funded from outside the church by a group called the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD). They are loud but not mainstream in any sense.

In my opinion the real goal of IRD’s activism is to weaken the Episcopal Church (and the United Methodists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans, who all are under attack by IRD-funded “reformers”) so they no longer are able to raise those pesky questions about war and economic justice.

The “orthodoxy’s” struggle (which depends on painting rich white straight folk as a persecuted minority) has less to do with the role of women and GLBT folk and more to do with power. GLBT people especially are being used to scare good people with the spectre of change to distract people from the “conservative’s” real, essentially political, agenda.

Fortunately they have been losing in court, and in the pews, as people as their goals, and tactics, have become more well known. And also, that those threatening GLBT folk aren’t really that scary, as we find out that, in fact, they are co-workers, nephews, aunts, and sons, and daughters.

Unfortunately, they have had much more success sowing discord overseas in the worldwide Anglican Communion, which is a terrible shame because it is distracting everyone from the the real problems of war, severe economic injustice, food security, and educational and special health challenges around the world.

I’ve also noticed how segments of America are identifying with the frightening homophobia in Nigeria.

I just posted an update. The UPI retracted it, but not based on anything the reporter did. Bottom line, we only have Akinola’s spokesman’s word for it that the reporter apologized and that Bishop Orama denied making the statement. We haven’t heard from the reporter himself.

Given Popoola’s past distortions, I’m not willing to give much credence to his statements.

Lynn David,

Virtue Online — those would be the same people who find Paul Cameron’s word credible, no? ;-)

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams denounced as unchristian the statement demonizing gays and lesbians by the African bishop. In a statement released by the Anglican Consultative Council’s press office, the archbishop expressed “deep shock” at the remarks made by Bishop Orama.

The Nigerian bishop has denied making the remarks attributed to him. A spokesman for the Church of Nigeria, Archdeacon Akintunde Popoola, said the quote attributed to the bishop was false.

The News Agency of Nigeria reporter has “apologized for the misrepresentation and promised a retraction,” Archdeacon Popoola told the “Living Church”.

That doesn’t excuse the rest of it by Popoola et.al. though.