The Royal Lambda Council of Churches today issued their final communique and reply to the Manhattan Declaration". A copy of the reply follows:
" The Manhattan Declaration is the predictable alliance between the German Catholic pope and the Nigerian Anglican primate giving gravitas to old names in the American right wing theocratic movement.
These voices are proof positive that " politics make for strange bedfellows." Outside a theological proscription against abortion and homosexuality for their own Church believers, these " Harbingers of Hate" have decided to engage in hardball civil politics to merge canon and civil law with an exclusion of all liberal and progressive religious voices and those wholly secular voices who want an absolute divorcement between Church and State.
No list of these malevolent theocrats is necessary. A quick perusal provides one with a long list of veteran advocates of intolerance and HATE INC activism. They are joined by the largest Christian denomination on the planet, and its most internationally successful Reformation schism, the worldwide Anglican Communion, presently in the throes of schism, picked apart by both Catholics and Protestants seeking their clergy and their flocks. The strength of their numbers in the United Kingdom and the old Dominions have decreased, but the subsharan African British Empire yields vibrant branches of the Canterbury Confession.
Subsaharan Africa is a "tale of two countries". It is also the opposing witnesses of two men. Both men are African. Both men are Anglican archbishops. Both men are heterosexual and married. Both men led the Anglican Church in their separate nations.
No list of these malevolent theocrats is necessary. A quick perusal provides one with a long list of veteran advocates of intolerance and HATE INC activism. They are joined by the largest Christian denomination on the planet, and its most internationally successful Reformation schism, the worldwide Anglican Communion, presently in the throes of schism, picked apart by both Catholics and Protestants seeking their clergy and their flocks. The strength of their numbers in the United Kingdom and the old Dominions have decreased, but the subsharan African British Empire yields vibrant branches of the Canterbury Confession.
Subsaharan Africa is a "tale of two countries". It is also the opposing witnesses of two men. Both men are African. Both men are Anglican archbishops. Both men are heterosexual and married. Both men led the Anglican Church in their separate nations.
Dr. Peter Akinola, of Lagos, Nigeria is the current primate of Nigeria. In contravention of Anglican canon law, Akinola has given "episcopal oversight" to dioceses and parishes worldwide who oppose same-sex marriage and GLBT equality on the civil level. Far beyond Anglican theology and canon law, Akinola has sought to create a second Canterbury, and forced a centrist, powerless and ineffective honourary world primate to support his coup d'etat, or face the loss of the largest Church in the communion.
Nigeria is a nation with a divided theistic allegiance and simultaneously, a fascist right wing totalitarian state. Nigeria is divided among Christians and Muslims. The fight for flocks are fierce. Nigeria is an oil-rich nation with the stark presence and absence of wealth and abject poverty. Nigerian criminals operate scams and schemes known the world over. Shari'a law in Nigeria wants the legalised murder of gays and lesbians. Dr. Akinola believes in a "humane "alternative of life imprisonment as well as blessing the Muslim GLBT holocaust. The ineffectiveness of the Archbishop of Canterbury is worse when the "first among equals" has been usurped by this Christian fakir. His views, or more his " prayerful winks" on cultural polygamy is a matter of record beyond conjecture.
The subsaharan African nations once colonies of France, Belgium and Portugal have a Roman Catholic majority presence. Whereas observance is low in Europe, these former colonies boast a vibrant uberconservative Catholicism in full agreement with the German fuhrerpapen. Like their Anglican and former British colonies, the Muslim majority or minority is significant, and Shari'a law informs the process there as well.
The exception is the Union of South Africa, and the minority but significant Anglican Church, once led by now retired primate, Dr. Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Johannesburg, and Nobel Prize laureate. Both he and former President Nelson Mandela advocated for FULL marriage equality for same-sex couples. Dr. Tutu stands in compassionate contrast to the malefactor, Dr. Akinola.
There is nothing new in the Manhattan Declaration but a regurgitation of conclusions emanating from Catholic Scholasticism, Natural Law, and their pseudo-scientific definition of "objective disorder" they proclaimed. Not since the Galileo and Copernican adjudications has the Roman Catholic Church engaged in faux science in opposition to the world psychiatric and psychological societies. Moreover, no pope since Pius IX lost the Papal States in 1870, or in 1918 when WWI proclaimed the death of the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire or in 1974 when Franco's death ushered in the end of Roman Catholic monopolistic theocracy in Fascist Spain, has the Vatican pseudo political state engaged in international civil hardball politics..
Both as pope now, and cardinal inquisitor then, Josef Ratzinger has decided to blame the paedophile scandals on gay brother cardinals, archbishops, bishops, monsignori, priests, deacons, monks and nuns. The bait and switch scapegoating explains the strategy. The carrot and stick hardball politics is the result of two millennia of theocratic history in Western civilisation.
The Manhattan Declaration's purpose is to both confound the critics and condemn the innocent. It is an all-out assault against the loud secular voices and the silent liberal and progressive religious voices from both within and from without these organisational monoliths. These marketers of malevolence smell blood in the water. They seek secular defeats by spiritual forces. They hold the "moral high ground" and have transformed it into the "moral imperative." Progressive religious voices fear and tremble as they remain silent or worse, silenced by secular leaders antithetical to any spiritual leadership in the moral crusade of the century.
I have sadly kept the final betrayal for last. The African American civil rights struggle was won by spiritual forces after a century of secular political machinations by friends and foes alike. Dr. King was helped by leading closeted and open gay voices whom he and his widow acknowledged. All their surviving children have embraced the legitimate passage of the mantel of justice and equality to GLBT persons regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religious belief or absence of same.
All, that is, but the eldest and only surviving daughter, the Reverend Bernice King, the new president of the SCLC. Unlike her parents and surviving siblings, Ms. King has joined forces with Akinola, Ratzinger, Dobbs, and countless AA conservative clergy who openly oppose marriage equality despite protections for church and conscience objections. These men and some women are right wing theocrats.
These are the spiritual waters that are competing for the souls of the First Family in the White House. In return, President and Mrs. Obama have visited their major sanctuaries as they continue to play the role of "undecided suitors." What is evident is that liberal and progressive AA voices, from the Episcopal National Cathedral to storefront churches, need not apply.
The Manhattan Declaration is nothing but old wine in new bottles.....old heresies voiced in modern terms.....and a marriage of oppositional organisational and theological forces allied against perceived common enemies. Abortionists and Queers is the new "atheistic Communist" and "liberal Christians" are considered apostate.
It is necessary to tell the old Gospel with a renewed and invigorated voice. It is time to advocate truth over deceit. It is time to call " a white sepulchre" the same way that Christ Himself defined them. These white sheets have grown pointed hoods, and now, it seems, it is impossible to discern Klan Kaps from Episcopal Mitres.
Nigeria is a nation with a divided theistic allegiance and simultaneously, a fascist right wing totalitarian state. Nigeria is divided among Christians and Muslims. The fight for flocks are fierce. Nigeria is an oil-rich nation with the stark presence and absence of wealth and abject poverty. Nigerian criminals operate scams and schemes known the world over. Shari'a law in Nigeria wants the legalised murder of gays and lesbians. Dr. Akinola believes in a "humane "alternative of life imprisonment as well as blessing the Muslim GLBT holocaust. The ineffectiveness of the Archbishop of Canterbury is worse when the "first among equals" has been usurped by this Christian fakir. His views, or more his " prayerful winks" on cultural polygamy is a matter of record beyond conjecture.
The subsaharan African nations once colonies of France, Belgium and Portugal have a Roman Catholic majority presence. Whereas observance is low in Europe, these former colonies boast a vibrant uberconservative Catholicism in full agreement with the German fuhrerpapen. Like their Anglican and former British colonies, the Muslim majority or minority is significant, and Shari'a law informs the process there as well.
The exception is the Union of South Africa, and the minority but significant Anglican Church, once led by now retired primate, Dr. Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Johannesburg, and Nobel Prize laureate. Both he and former President Nelson Mandela advocated for FULL marriage equality for same-sex couples. Dr. Tutu stands in compassionate contrast to the malefactor, Dr. Akinola.
There is nothing new in the Manhattan Declaration but a regurgitation of conclusions emanating from Catholic Scholasticism, Natural Law, and their pseudo-scientific definition of "objective disorder" they proclaimed. Not since the Galileo and Copernican adjudications has the Roman Catholic Church engaged in faux science in opposition to the world psychiatric and psychological societies. Moreover, no pope since Pius IX lost the Papal States in 1870, or in 1918 when WWI proclaimed the death of the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire or in 1974 when Franco's death ushered in the end of Roman Catholic monopolistic theocracy in Fascist Spain, has the Vatican pseudo political state engaged in international civil hardball politics..
Both as pope now, and cardinal inquisitor then, Josef Ratzinger has decided to blame the paedophile scandals on gay brother cardinals, archbishops, bishops, monsignori, priests, deacons, monks and nuns. The bait and switch scapegoating explains the strategy. The carrot and stick hardball politics is the result of two millennia of theocratic history in Western civilisation.
The Manhattan Declaration's purpose is to both confound the critics and condemn the innocent. It is an all-out assault against the loud secular voices and the silent liberal and progressive religious voices from both within and from without these organisational monoliths. These marketers of malevolence smell blood in the water. They seek secular defeats by spiritual forces. They hold the "moral high ground" and have transformed it into the "moral imperative." Progressive religious voices fear and tremble as they remain silent or worse, silenced by secular leaders antithetical to any spiritual leadership in the moral crusade of the century.
I have sadly kept the final betrayal for last. The African American civil rights struggle was won by spiritual forces after a century of secular political machinations by friends and foes alike. Dr. King was helped by leading closeted and open gay voices whom he and his widow acknowledged. All their surviving children have embraced the legitimate passage of the mantel of justice and equality to GLBT persons regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religious belief or absence of same.
All, that is, but the eldest and only surviving daughter, the Reverend Bernice King, the new president of the SCLC. Unlike her parents and surviving siblings, Ms. King has joined forces with Akinola, Ratzinger, Dobbs, and countless AA conservative clergy who openly oppose marriage equality despite protections for church and conscience objections. These men and some women are right wing theocrats.
These are the spiritual waters that are competing for the souls of the First Family in the White House. In return, President and Mrs. Obama have visited their major sanctuaries as they continue to play the role of "undecided suitors." What is evident is that liberal and progressive AA voices, from the Episcopal National Cathedral to storefront churches, need not apply.
The Manhattan Declaration is nothing but old wine in new bottles.....old heresies voiced in modern terms.....and a marriage of oppositional organisational and theological forces allied against perceived common enemies. Abortionists and Queers is the new "atheistic Communist" and "liberal Christians" are considered apostate.
It is necessary to tell the old Gospel with a renewed and invigorated voice. It is time to advocate truth over deceit. It is time to call " a white sepulchre" the same way that Christ Himself defined them. These white sheets have grown pointed hoods, and now, it seems, it is impossible to discern Klan Kaps from Episcopal Mitres.
As a brief comment, I would just like to state that we all must be on our guard to prevent any fascist tendencies from infringing on all of the rights we hold so dear here in our beloved land. GG.
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