From the London Guardian-It tells you a lot about the state of the Anglican Communion that when Dr Michael Nazir Ali made his bombshell announcement that he was stepping down as Bishop of Rochester to minister "to the persecuted Christians", the liberals who told me assumed that he was going to work for the Archbishop of Nigeria. They thought the persecuted Christians he meant were the rich white North Americans who have split off from their mother church there in protest over homosexuality, rather than the poor black or brown ones who live in countries where sharia law is a problem.
His position within the diocese of Rochester had become a difficult one. A lot of his clergy were unhappy with his decision last year to boycott the Lambeth Conference, which was meant to be a gathering demonstrating the unity of the Communion's 800 bishops around the world. In the event, something like 230 stayed away but the only English heavyweight to do so was Nazir Ali.
Signing up for a declaration that describes the Archbishop of Canterbury as an apostate for his tolerance of liberal views on homosexuality was not a way to endear himself to his colleagues, who already regarded him as vain and ambitious. But he is also consistent about his beliefs and prepared to act on them and suffer for them. As a young man in Pakistan, the son of a convert from Islam, he became the youngest Anglican bishop in the world, in a back-country diocese from which he had to be rescued, after local fundamentalists threatened to kill him and his family.
More here-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/mar/30/rochester-nazir-ali-resigns
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