Peter Akinola
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The Most Reverend Peter Jasper Akinola (born 1944) is the current Anglican Primate of Nigeria. He is also Bishop of Abuja (Nigeria's capital) and Archbishop of Province III, which covers the northern and central parts of the country.
A very "low church" Evangelical and graduate of the Episcopal Church's Virginia Theological Seminary, Akinola emphasizes the Bible over tradition, and has taken a strong stand against those promoting values he considers to be incompatible with the Bible, with a particular emphasis on homosexuality. He is a hero to many conservatives throughout the Anglican Communion and beyond, while liberals see him as a divisive force. But he lost some conservative supporters over his handling of a letter in November 2005 which was publicly repudiated by three conservative allies mistakenly alleged to have signed it with him.
As of November 2003, Akinola is the President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, an ecumenical body bringing together Protestant, Catholic, and African independent Christians. He is also Chairman of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa, representing an estimated 37 million Anglicans. However, his conservative views about homosexuality are not shared by all African Anglicans, and, notably, not by the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.
In August 2003 he stated that if the openly gay and partnered, but celibate, Dr Jeffrey John was consecrated as Bishop of Reading or the openly gay and partnered Gene Robinson consecrated as Bishop of New Hampshire, the Church of Nigeria would leave the Anglican Communion. A number of dioceses throughout the world, including the Diocese of Sydney, made similar hints. In the face of the controversy, the consecration of Jeffrey John never took place (he was, instead, appointed as Dean of St Albans) but that of Gene Robinson did, precipitating a crisis in the Anglican Communion in which Akinola has been a frequent and vocal participant on the side of those claiming that the Communion should not accommodate those on both sides of the argument and that those opposed to his views should be excluded because their views are incompatible, as he contends, with membership of the Church.
At first, Akinola's fire was concentrated on the Churches of the USA and Canada, and he successfully backed their suspension from the Anglican Consultative Council's meeting in Nottingham in 2005, which he personally attended. In August 2005 he publicly denounced a statement of the Church of England's House of Bishops on civil partnerships and called for the suspension or disciplining of the Church of England within the Anglican Communion. Since the Anglican Communion has historically been defined as those Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, whose Archbishop is head of the Church of England and thus primus inter pares in the Anglican Communion, this led to speculation that Akinola was positioning himself as a possible international leader of a more conservative church than the present Anglican Communion, which would no longer recognise the authority or primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In September 2005, he also fell out with the Church in Brazil over the deposition of an Evangelical bishop and excommunication of over 30 priests [1].
In September 2005, he secured the redefinition of his church's relationship to the Anglican Communion so as to replace all former references to "communion with the See of Canterbury" with "communion with all Anglican Churches, Dioceses and Provinces that hold and maintain the 'Historic Faith, Doctrine, Sacrament and Discipline of the one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church'." (source) On November 12, 2005 Akinola signed a Covenant of Concordat with the Presiding Bishops of the Reformed Episcopal Church and the Anglican Province of America.
He led the list of signatories to a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury on November 15, 2005 describing Europe as "a spiritual desert" and suggesting that the Church of England "gives the appearance of evil". However, three of alleged signatories, President Bishop Clive Handford of Jerusalem and the Middle East, the Primate of the West Indies Archbishop Drexel Gomez, and the Presiding Bishop of the Southern Cone Bishop Gregory Venables subsequently denied signing or approving the letter, describing it as "an act of impatience", "scandalous", and "megaphone diplomacy".
In February 2006, after Muslims rioting over the cartoon controversy targeted Christians and their property, resulting in a reported 43 deaths, 30 burned churches [2] and 250 destroyed shops and houses [3], Akinola issued a statement in his capacity as President of the Christian Association of Nigeria that some interpreted as a veiled threat of violence against Muslims: "May we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation." This was criticised by Bishop Cyril Okorocha of the Owerri diocese in Nigeria as "inflammatory" and "not the view of the whole Church". In the wake of his statement, Christian mobs in Onitsha retaliated against Muslims in the city. They killed at least 80 muslims[4], burned a Muslim district with 100 homes[5], defaced mosques with Christian slogans[6] and burned the corpses of those they had killed in the streets[7]. Hundreds of Muslims were forced to flee the city [8].
Defending Akinola's statement was American evangelical leader Rick Warren. Writing in Time magazine in April, 2006, he said, "[Akinola] has been criticized for recent remarks of frustration that some felt exacerbated Muslim-Christian clashes in his country. But Christians are routinely attacked in parts of Nigeria, and his anger was no more characteristic than Nelson Mandela's apartheid-era statement that 'sooner or later this violence is going to spread to whites.'"[9]
Also in February 2006, Akinola issued a communique on behalf of his Church of Nigeria Standing Committee stating "The Church commends the law-makers for their prompt reaction to outlaw same-sex relationships in Nigeria and calls for the bill to be passed since the idea expressed in the bill is the moral position of Nigerians regarding human sexuality." The bill in question, as well as criminalising same-sex marriage, also proposed to criminalise "Registration of Gay Clubs, Societies and organizations" and "Publicity, procession and public show of same-sex amorous relationship through the electronic or print media physically, directly, indirectly or otherwise", on penalty of up to 5 years imprisonment. The proposed legislation was formally challenged by the United States State Department as a possible breach of Nigeria's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
