THE SALVATION ARMY - Clarification; Position on Homosexuality VII Will God Craft a New Policy

With globalisation, religions are becoming less regional” - and “they are also becoming less hierarchal as lay leadership and initiative flourish. In so doing many are becoming less dogmatic and more practical. “Religious people today are more interested in ethical guidelines and spiritual disciplines than in doctrines.”

Harvey Cox, The Future of Faith

Uganda -

Simon Lokodo, Ethics and Integrity minister in Uganda, a former Catholic priest, set out why he believes the state should interfere in the choices of consenting adults in private. "Homosexuality is unnatural, abnormal and strange to our cultures," he said. "It has no output whatsoever; it only does damage and destruction. You cannot have a right to be a sick human being. There is no right in homosexuality. It must be cured." Lokodo championed the country's anti-homosexuality bill, which became law under President Yoweri Museveni’s, until a last minute temporary halt, ‘pending scientific advice’.

Museveni had placed the bill on hold to give scientists a chance to prove that homosexuality could be triggered by genes and was not a "lifestyle choice". However, they found no such evidence. Simon Lokodo argues that the most important conclusion is that there is no definitive gene for homosexuality. "It is a social style of life that is acquired. They chose to be homosexual and are trying to recruit others."

The delay was though, at best, a small victory for activists dismayed when Museveni insisted that he would approve the legislation. That news prompted Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, to tweet: "In name of Africa culture Uganda Pres will sign anti-gay law pushed by US evangelists toughening British colonial ban."

The president signed a law defying protests from rights groups, criticism from Western donors and a U.S. warning that it will complicate relations.

Ugandan officials broke into loud applause as President Yoweri Museveni put his signature to the document in front of foreign journalists at his State House outside the capital. A Ugandan government spokesman said Museveni had taken the unusual step of signing the bill in public to "demonstrate Uganda's independence in the face of Western pressure".

Homosexuality had earlier been categorized as a mental disorder and, by extension, a condition demanding or at least requiring medical treatment. In Western cultures, any suggestion that being gay or lesbian is anything but normal has long been refuted.

 “The concept of mental disorder: an African perspective”

‘The concept of mental disorder is determined by many factors, including the historical context, cultural influence, level of scientific knowledge and capacity to carry out scientific enquiry, level of education in certain circumstances, as well as many others.’ The Official Journal of the Psychiatric Association (WPA) World Psychiatry. Oct 2007; 6(3): 166–167. Frank Njenga

The majority of Africans still view gay and lesbian people as "mentally sick", because their sexual orientation is against the order of nature. In this regard, one could view the Africans as "uncivilized" or as holding a cultural belief that may or may not change in the course of time. Lokodo said; “They are beasts of the forest.”

SPIRAL OF SILENCE

In Africa, India, Pakistan and elsewhere there is a “spiral of silence” in which minority opinions are marginalized quickly because people, and Christians in particular, are afraid of alienation and punishment from the majority.

It’s the reverse of what Chuck Colson claimed the gay rights advocates achieved in the USA - The LGBT advocates |(rights’ movement) are “controlling the conversation” even though they are a “tiny minority - it is time for Christians to break the spiral of silence, to speak out, to point out unrighteousness.” “It hasn’t taken very many gays in our society to change this society’s attitudes towards something which we would have said is sexually deviant and is, but it doesn’t take much,” Colson said. “We’re the sleeping giant”.

The gay rights movement is a tiny minority in America, so what you get is a passionate movement of 10 percent of the general population…. and they control what the rest of us think because the rest of us are intimidated into silence. “Folks, brothers and sisters, I tell you I believe in the depths of my being that the most important thing we can do today in obedience to Christ is to break the spiral of silence, to speak out, to point out unrighteousness.”

“We have forty percent of the country saying they are born again, my goodness how is it that Christian values are in retreat everywhere? It’s because we’re not organizing ourselves properly into a movement. So I want nothing more, nothing that I want more fervently right now that I’m giving my life to morning, noon and night than building a movement across this country that will restore what we believe will be the sanity and reasonableness of the Christian worldview.”

CHANGING GLOBAL ATTITUDES –

There is a Chinese curse that says "May he live in interesting times." These are indeed interesting times, troubling times, creative times and times requiring energy given to changing times.

In 126 countries we sing, “I believe in the Word of God” and “I’m a Child of the King” claiming the bible as a corner stone and human kind as the touchstone of value as expounded in God’s holy Word. And all society, groups; public and private, the state, the church all exist for man’s benefit. Therefore, the enlargement of all personal liberty for individual human beings must be our supreme goal and the church’s abiding purpose. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do in accordance with God’s dictates.
        

We who to Him belong ought to see no national boundaries, no oceans or high mountains dividing God’s people from other God’s people. The Salvation Army employs new technology and communications bringing soldiers and territories ever closer together. And, the concerns of one, or of a few differing with others, inevitably become the concerns of all. They are only illusions of difference because at the root is our joint seeking for the end to injustice, discrimination and hate.

In Africa the Army in concert with others could play a pivotal role in that effort. In our corps, schools, headquarters and institutions are hundreds of thousands of men and women who could transform the lives of millions for all time to come.
But the help and the leadership of offered by the SA cannot be accepted if we, within our own countries and commands, in our relations with others deny individual integrity, human dignity, and equality.

If we expect to lead or contribute in any way outside our borders, if we would help those who need our assistance, if we would meet our responsibilities to the marginalized, we must first, all of us, demolish the borders which we have allowed history to erect between men within our own nations, barriers of religion and social ignorance.
        

"There is," said an Italian philosopher, "nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."

We should “not judge or take offence at one another's particular mode of witness but rather respect each other as followers  of differing vocations within the general task of building the kingdom.” What we witness at present in the Army is a schism of sorts, although not all that unhealthy, because each group can contribute immensely to the other. For the sake of brevity I will call the southern hemisphere group ‘A’ and the northern hemisphere group ‘B’. Both groups have effected a mutation of sorts by aligning themselves with the world; allowing culture to inject its imperfect nature in our thinking. And as it relates the LGBT debate, A has never been further apart from B than it is currently. Both are slightly off balance and to avoid any collapsing into parochial sectarianism or an indiscriminate spiritual chaos we need to come together.

Can we not craft a policy acceptable across SA borders while still respecting the different capacities of understanding and adoption of positions?

Our initial goal must be to “assert a need to collect and re-evaluate what the current society’s norms are and set to create a more globalized all inclusive system of social values and norms.” Harvey Cox argues that, “secularization and urbanization are inevitable events in growing societies and that for Christianity to survive it needs to be re-interpreted so that it does not fall to the way side like many other relics.”
Sven Ljungholm