Anglicans 'obsessed' by gay
issue
27 May 2007-
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called on Africa's Anglican church to
overcome its "obsession" with the issue of gay priests and same-sex
marriages.
He said they should spend time on
more pressing issues in the region.
Speaking to the BBC World Service,
the South African bishop said Zimbabwe, HIV/Aids and the crisis in
Darfur were not getting sufficient attention.
Zimbabwe's Anglican church also
lacked courage to stand up to President Robert Mugabe's regime, he said.
This was the 76-year-old Nobel peace
laureate touching raw nerves for the Anglican church in Africa on very
sensitive subjects.
In his usual forthright manner,
Archbishop Tutu told the BBC that the Anglican communion was spending
too much of its time and energy on debating differences over gay priests
and same sex marriages - a subject, he said, that had now become "an
extraordinary obsession".
He said: "We've, it seems to me, been
fiddling whilst as it were our Rome was burning. At a time when our
continent has been groaning under the burden of HIV/Aids, of corruption.
"There are so many issues crying out
for concern and application by the church of its resources, and here we
are, I mean, with this kind of extraordinary obsession."
For Archbishop Tutu, the crisis in
Zimbabwe was one such issue that had been eclipsed by the sexuality
debate.
He said he was saddened by the muted
response other African governments had shown to the Mugabe regime.
But he also said that leaders of his
own Anglican Church in Zimbabwe had failed to show more courage in
dealing with the Zimbabwean president.
"One seems to have to say they have
kow-towed to President Mugabe. Certainly there's not been anything like
the same kind of standing up to the evil and exercising the prophetic
ministry that one would have expected from the church, and that has been
very distressing."
There are growing tensions within the
worldwide Anglican communion - pitching liberals against conservatives -
mainly over the issue of sexuality.
But as Archbishop Tutu recognised,
there are other points of contention that need to be resolved and other
issues that the church, especially in Africa, needs to turn its
attention to.
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