Africans suffer from ‘collateral damage’ in US culture clash

From The Church Times-

RIGHT-WING organisations in the United States are cultivating African religious leaders as part of a strategy to undermine the social witness of US mainline Churches and promote homophobia in Africa, says an in vesti gative report by an Anglican priest and scholar, the Revd Kapya Kaoma.

The report, Globalizing the Culture Wars: US Conservatives, African Churches, & Homophobia, was commissioned by the progressive think tank Political Research Associates. It argues that African bishops and other leaders are being used as proxies in an internal US conflict.
The report charts how neo-conservative groups, such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), have presented the denominations’ commitment to human rights as an imperialistic attempt to manipulate Africans into accepting homosexuality — which they characterise as a purely Western phenomenon — and an attempt to destabilise and corrupt African morals.

Such groups have characterised the denominations — the Episcopal Church in the US, the United Methodist Church, and the Presbyterian Church USA — as opposed to family values, the report goes on. Their rhetoric has fomented homophobia in Africa with disastrous conse quences, such as the proposed anti-gay Bill in Uganda, it suggests. Sexual minorities have become “the collat eral damage” of US domestic conflict.

More here-

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=84974