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Sunday, March 30, 2025

Canterbury

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Thinking about persecution in Nigeria: It isn't news (#SIGH), but why is the Vatican so quiet?

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Thinking about persecution in Nigeria: It isn't news (#SIGH), but why is the Vatican so quiet?

Tragically, I could have written a “think piece” post about the following topic during every week over the past few years and it would have been relevant in terms of debates about politics, human rights, religious freedom and the practice of journalism.

I am talking about religious conflict in Nigeria, which often escalates into ISIS-level outbreaks of violence and persecution. But Nigeria is only one example of a wider problem in international news, at the moment. For more background, see the recent Richard Ostling religion-beat Memo with this title: “Buried story of 2022? The persecution of Christians keeps surging around the world.”

But let’s start with this new Reuters headline: “Catholic priest burned to death, another shot in north Nigeria.”

Actually, there is testimony that Father Isaac Achi was already dead, from gunshot wounds, when his attackers set fire to his home. There is some chance, however, that he was burned alive. Here’s the overture of the Reuters piece, which may be the only mainstream media coverage that has been done of this latest hellish vision of religious life in Nigeria:

Gunmen burned a Catholic priest to death and shot and injured his colleague in northwest Nigeria on Sunday, police said, the latest violence raising concerns about security ahead of an election next month.

Nigerians will vote for a new president on Feb. 25 but kidnappings for ransom and killings by armed gangs in the north have lead to fears that polls may not be held in some areas.

The motive for the latest attack was not immediately clear but gunmen have previously targeted priests in the largely Muslim north.

Once again, we see a phenomenon that I have written about many times here at GetReligion.

This kind of international story, in the context of America’s niche-media realities, is now seen as a merely religious, Catholic or even “conservative” story. Click here to see a Google News file illustrating this, in the case of the murder of this particular priest. There are the major, trend-defining newsrooms in this picture? That is, of course, the question.

But you can find more details (#DUH) in Catholic media.


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Great Britain's first Hindu prime minister inherits a prominent role in Anglicanism

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Great Britain's first Hindu prime minister inherits a prominent role in Anglicanism

ry to imagine, say, U.S. President William Howard Taft, who was a Unitarian, involved with choosing bishops who rule the Episcopal Church, or President Joseph Biden, a Catholic, participating in the selection of bishops in the United Methodist Church.

After the historically brief leadership of Britain's Liz Truss, Conservative Party members of Parliament this week agreed on Rishi Sunak to succeed her as prime minister at a moment of severe economic and political turmoil.

Despite sporadic calls for a change in the system, this Hindu believer will have the unique task of proposing each new Church of England bishop for formal action by King Charles III, the church’s Supreme Governour and “Defender of the Faith.” Then again will that be “Defender of Faith” this time around?

The Sunak religious anomaly provides the media a sidebar to the astonishing ascent of this Anglo-Indian as the first “person of color” and first person from ethnic minorities to lead the British government. He’s also the first prime minister who is not at least nominally a Christian.

The Times of India reports Sunak has called himself a “proud Hindu” and regularly attends the temple in his hometown of Southampton. He has sworn his oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita rather than the Bible.

By coincidence, Sunak’s triumph occurred on Diwali, the annual festival of lights celebration when Hindus invoke the goddess Lakshmi for prosperity. The Times article depicts this 42-year-old’s remarkably prosperous corporate career and rapid political rise.


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Memory eternal: The quiet, yet very public faith, of Queen Elizabeth the Great

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Memory eternal: The quiet, yet very public faith, of Queen Elizabeth the Great

Before wearing the Imperial State Crown, Queen Elizabeth II knelt at the Westminster Abbey altar for a moment of silent, private prayer.

The three-hour coronation in 1953 contained myriad oaths and symbols, but the most ancient rite – Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher anointing Elizabeth with holy oil – sought the highest possible blessing on her life's work and eventually her death.

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God," he prayed, "who by his Father was anointed with the oil of gladness … that by the assistance of His heavenly grace you may govern and preserve the people committed to your charge in wealth, peace and godliness; and after a long and glorious course of ruling a temporal kingdom wisely, justly and religiously, you may at last be made partaker of an eternal kingdom."

Televised for the first time, 27 million BBC viewers watched what Oxford don C.S. Lewis called the "tragic splendour" of this drama.

“Over here people did not get that fairy-tale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it," he noted, writing to an American friend.

It was "a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it) – awe – pity -- pathos -- mystery. The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be his vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate."

Few could have imagined that the woman many now call "Elizabeth the Great" would reign for 70 years, striving to lead by example after the suffering of World War II and into an age in which humanity would be united by the Internet, terrorism, pandemics and other challenges.


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Elizabeth the Great: Why do many journalists choose to edit faith out of her Christmas talks?

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Elizabeth the Great: Why do many journalists choose to edit faith out of her Christmas talks?

The Queen is dead. God save the King.

It’s hard to edit the religion content out of that equation. However, when journalists are asked to deal with the death of the queen who was, it can be argued, the most famous woman of the past 100 years, there are plenty of important, “real,” issues to deal with other than the state of her soul and her Christian faith.

I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening watching the BBC Global coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, as opposed to, shall we say, American “telly.” The BBC focused on the death of one of the greatest, if not “the” greatest, monarchs in Great Britain’s history. There were many references to her Christian faith. American television, for the most part, offered discussions of the death of a great celebrity. If I have been too harsh with that judgment, please send me some quality URLs.

How to approach this totally justified tidal wave of coverage? I think the easiest way to search out the religion-beat content is with two specific online searches.

First, search Google News for “Queen Elizabeth” and “Christmas.” Elizabeth the Great was known, of course, for her dignified and timely Christmas addresses — an essential part of the season for Brits and those who love all things British. The vast majority of the mainstream-media obits for the queen contain references to her Christmas talks — sort of.

What did she say in these very personal messages? That’s the key.

This leads to my second Google News search, for “Queen Elizabeth” and “Christian.” This is where the mainstream press — unless I have missed something, somewhere — offer, well, something like this. In the religious press, readers will find many, many pages of content, such as this feature from Premier Christianity, a niche UK religion website: “Queen Elizabeth II served Christ.”

There was, however, this Washington Post feature with a hopeful title: “Queen Elizabeth II, in her own words: Her most memorable remarks.” After all, it did include a section with this title: “Annual Christmas speeches.” These talks were, readers are told, “peppered with words of wisdom, faith and occasionally personal reflections from the nonagenarian.” However, this is what the Post offered:

“In the old days the monarch led his soldiers on the battlefield and his leadership at all times was close and personal. Today things are very different,” she said in her first televised Christmas broadcast in 1957. “I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.”


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Some trends in global Anglican Communion are starting to look rather Black and White

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Some trends in global Anglican Communion are starting to look rather Black and White

There was nothing unusual about Nigerian Archbishop Henry Ndukuba leading the 2021 dedication rites for Holy Trinity Cathedral Church, which was packed with Nigerian Anglicans and a dozen or so bishops.

But this historic service was held in Houston and the cathedral is not part of the Diocese of Texas or the U.S. Episcopal Church. Some clergy at this Church of Nigeria North American Mission event were recognized as Anglicans by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Some were not.

This puzzle became more complicated recently during Lambeth 2022, which Nigeria boycotted, along with the churches of Uganda and Rwanda. Other Global South bishops, during Lambeth standoffs with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby over the status of doctrines on marriage and sex, declined to receive Holy Communion with openly gay and lesbian bishops.

"There is a profound asymmetric quality to the Anglican Communion, where the voice of the bulk of its membership is either absent or muted," said the Rev. David Goodhew of St. Barnabas Church in Middlesborough, England. He is the author of a series of articles about African Anglicanism for Covenant, the weblog of The Living Church, an independent Anglican publication founded in 1878.

"If one adds up the number of bishops who didn't share Holy Communion at Lambeth … that is a very large number," he said. "I have been startled by the number of descriptions that said this Lambeth was a success. I don't know how one makes that claim when it would appear the bulk of the Anglican Communion's bishops couldn't come together to receive Communion. That looks like a disaster."

Bottom line: Global South Anglicans are experiencing a "volcano of growth" and remain "at loggerheads" with the shrinking churches of the United Kingdom, North America and other western nations. While most Global South bishops serve growing flocks – roughly 75% of active worshipers in the 77-million-member Anglican Communion – many western bishops lead what Goodhew called "micro-dioceses" with under 1,000 active members or "mini-dioceses" with fewer than 5,000.

The Church of Nigeria, meanwhile, claims 17 million members and the Center for Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, near Boston, estimates active participants at 22 million. The other churches skipping Lambeth 2022 were Uganda, with 10 million members, and Rwanda, with 1 million members.

The Church of England remains Anglicanism's power hub. It has 26 million members, but 2019 weekly attendance was about 679,000 – before the COVID-19 crisis.


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At Lambeth 2022, many Anglican bishops could not 'walk together' to the altar

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At Lambeth 2022, many Anglican bishops could not 'walk together' to the altar

While Canterbury is urging Anglicans to keep "walking together," the 2022 Lambeth Conference demonstrated that many of the Anglican Communion's bishops can no longer even receive the Eucharist together.

Doctrinal conflicts over biblical authority and sexuality have raged for decades, with growing churches in the Global South clashing with the shrinking, but wealthy, churches in England, America and other Western regions. During this 12-day conference, which ended Sunday (August 8), conservatives from Africa, Asia and elsewhere declined to receive Holy Communion with openly gay and lesbian bishops. Several provinces – including the massive Church of Nigeria – boycotted Lambeth 2022 altogether.

"For the large majority of the Anglican Communion the traditional understanding of marriage is something that is understood, accepted, and without question, not only by bishops but their entire church," said Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, in a mid-conference address. "To question this teaching is unthinkable, and in many countries would make the church a victim of derision, contempt and even attack."

Bishops in the Anglican minority, he added, "have not arrived lightly at their ideas. … They are not careless about Scripture. They do not reject Christ. But they have come to a different view on sexuality after long prayer, deep study and reflection on understandings of human nature. For them, to question this different teaching is unthinkable."

Throughout Lambeth 2022, the Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches – representing about 75% of Anglican church attendance – pushed to reaffirm a 1998 Lambeth resolution that "homosexual practice" is "incompatible with Scripture," while also urging Anglicans to "oppose homophobia." It stressed centuries of doctrine that "sexuality is intended by God to find its rightful and full expression between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage, established by God in creation, and affirmed by our Lord Jesus Christ." That earlier resolution passed with 526 votes in favor, 70 opposed and 45 abstentions.

Writing to Lambeth participants, Welby said the "validity" of that resolution "is not in doubt" and that the "whole resolution is still in existence."

However, the archbishop did not allow a vote on the issue and he said he would not, as requested by Anglican primates in the past, discipline the unorthodox.


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Podcast: Anglicans in liberal West and conservative Global South face broken communion -- again

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Podcast: Anglicans in liberal West and conservative Global South face broken communion -- again

This week’s “Crossroads” podcast was recorded (live on radio and then edited) this past Wednesday afternoon and it is already a bit out of date (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

You see, this episode was intended as a kind of “walk-up” feature about press issues at the 15th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops from around the world (July 26-Aug. 8) in Canterbury. At that point, there wasn’t much coverage to critique, other than some reports the Guardian, as in: “Justin Welby forced to allow Anglican bishops to reject statement on sexuality.” Since then, Religion News Service has released this: “Same-sex marriage sparks divisive debate at twice-delayed Lambeth Conference.”

As you can see, the coverage — so far — has been shaped by a familiar template in which decades of Anglican warfare is reduced to a rather political fight over homosexuality, as opposed to church doctrines about biblical authority and sex outside of traditional marriage.

The twist in this old, old story is that most of the heroes in the press coverage are White progressives from rich First World nations and the villains are People of Color from the Global South (think Africa and Asia). Does that framework sound familiar to many news consumers? Hold that thought.

The podcast argued that sexuality is the popular news hook for the Anglican wars, but that the doctrinal issues at stake run much deeper. Thus, I would like to place the unfolding Lambeth 2022 drama in the context of what your GetReligionistas have long called “Anglican timeline disease.”

With that in mind, let’s flash back to 1992 — that’s three decades, for those keeping score. Here is the top of the 1999 “On Religion” column I wrote about this behind-the-scenes event: “The time for broken communion?” This is long, but essential:

It's been seven years since Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison faced the fact that some of his fellow bishops worship a different god than he does.

The symbolic moment came during an Episcopal House of Bishops meeting in Kanuga, N.C., as members met in small groups to discuss graceful ways to settle their differences on the Bible, worship and sex. The question for the day was: "Why are we dysfunctional?"

"I said the answer was simple — apostasy," said Allison, a dignified South Carolinian who has a doctorate in Anglican history from Oxford University. "Some of the other bishops looked at me and said, 'What are you talking about?'"


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Old, nagging conflicts will continue to dominate religion news in the coming year

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Old, nagging conflicts will continue to dominate religion news in the coming year

Yes, there will be a hotly contested U.S. election in 2022. And pretty much every secular and religious faction is keyed up awaiting the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on whether to revise or revoke its rulings that legalized abortion.

Big decisions like this typically land in late June.

Other lingering disputes on the news coverage agenda include the following.

* As the U.S. Senate struggles with a rewrite of the Catholic President Joe Biden's elephantine social-spending bill, the Catholic bishops' conference vehemently opposes any inclusion of abortion funding.

The bishops, along with Orthodox Judaism's synagogue union, also fear (.pdf here) this law will cripple funding for widespread religious preschools. In yet another church-state debate, Biden hopes to end religious exemption from anti-discrimination rules, which went into effect in January.

* Inside the world of Mainline Protestantism, the unending dispute over the Bible and LGBTQ+ issues may produce the biggest U.S. church split since the Civil War at the United Methodist Church's General Conference. Early in 2022, a commission must decide whether the twice-postponed conference, now scheduled for August 29-September 6 in Minneapolis, can finally occur despite two years of COVID-related snarls and, some say, stalling by the UMC establishment.

* The T in LGBTQ won new Methodist attention as just-retired Pennsylvania Bishop Peggy Johnson and her husband, a Methodist pastor, publicized the latter's gender transition while identifying publicly as a "cisgender" male.

Last March, a sizable body of U.S. conservatives announced plans to leave the denomination and unite with former mission churches overseas — primarily in Africa and Asia — to form the "Global Methodist Church," led temporarily by Virginia Pastor Keith Boyette (540-898-4960).


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Got news? It is significant that an Anglican bishop's same-sex wedding was not big news?

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I’m sorry, but it’s time to share the “lighthouse parable,” once again.

Why? We are dealing with another very interesting news story that, well, didn’t seem to attract any attention from the mainstream press in North America. The fact that this news story was not considered a news story — except in niche publications on the left and right — is another commentary on religion-news reporting in this digital day and age.

Once again, silence is important. So, once upon a time there was a man who worked in a lighthouse on the foggy Atlantic Ocean.

As the story goes, this lighthouse had a gun that sounded a warning every hour. The keeper tended the beacon and kept enough shells in the gun so it could keep firing. After decades, he could sleep right through the now-routine blasts. Then the inevitable happened. He forgot to load extra shells and, in the dead of night, the gun did not fire.

This rare silence awoke the keeper, who leapt from bed shouting, "What was that sound?"

So what was the Anglican news a few weeks ago in Canada that drew mainstream silence? Here is the double-decker headline at GayStarNews.com:

Canadian gay bishop marries in Toronto cathedral

Marriage of bishop attended by Anglican Archbishop of Toronto

This event was not private, in any way, shape or form. As this story noted, the Diocese of Toronto posted a press notice online.

Clearly, this was a business-as-usual event for Canadian Anglicans, even though — in terms of liturgy and church law — official same-sex marriage rites remain very, very new. Hold that thought.

The bottom line: Many Anglicans around the world — left and right — would consider the same-sex marriage of a bishop, a rite held in a cathedral just after Christmas, to be a newsworthy event.

Was this news? Apparently not. This is interesting, a decade or so after the years in which every move by the openly gay Episcopal Bishop Vicky Gene Robinson drew intense coverage, if not cheers, from mainstream journalists.


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