Back to fire and judgment: the monthly Millstone Awards
Millstone Award for January: Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria

Matthew 18:6 (NRSV): "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea."

As might be obvious, one major purpose of this blog is to call fire and judgment on violators of human rights and etc. Therefore, inspired by Playboy, I intend to write a monthly exposé on a person or group who has violated human rights etc, giving priority to people of faith.

And of course, an easy target is Peter Akinola of the Church of Nigeria. Akinola has been excoriated on this blog before, for supporting a bill that would criminalize any form of advocacy on by or on behalf of the LGBT community in Nigeria. More recently, an article was posted in the New York Times that gives further insight into Akinola's mind:

'The way he tells the story, the first and only time Archbishop Peter J. Akinola knowingly shook a gay person’s hand, he sprang backward the moment he realized what he had done.

Archbishop Akinola, the conservative leader of Nigeria’s Anglican Church who has emerged at the center of a schism over homosexuality in the global Anglican Communion, re-enacted the scene from behind his desk Tuesday, shaking his head in wonder and horror.

“This man came up to me after a service, in New York I think, and said, ‘Oh, good to see you bishop, this is my partner of many years,’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh!’ I jumped back.”'

I believe that the person in question is Louie Crew, a long-time Episcopalian, advocate for LGBT rights in our church, and partnered for several decades with Ernest. In an article for The Witness, he elaborates on the incident:

'In July 2002, I was a lector at the Enthronment of Peter Akinola (Archbishop of the Anglican Province of Nigeria)at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. Mark Sisk (Bishop of New York) invited Ernest and me, among many others, to his home to meet the archbishop at a reception afterward. The archbishop dashed to the other side of the room when I introduced him to Ernest at the punch bowl. Later in the reception Cathy Roskam (Bishop Suffragan of New York) called me over to engage the archbishop in conversation with me. Looking like a deer in headlights, he summoned an aide across the room and abruptly ended the conversation. Ernest had watched the latter scene from the doorway. "What did you say to him that put him into a panic?" he asked. "Nothing. He does not know you and me and he wants to keep it that way. Otherwise, he might have to feed my sheep."'


Based on this incident, I argue that Archbishop Akinola is engaging in a form of willful blindness. The definition of the legal theory of willful blindness as given by Wikipedia is as follows:

'Willful blindness is a term used in law to describe a situation in which an individual seeks to avoid civil or criminal liability for a wrongful act by intentionally putting himself in a position where he will be unaware of facts which would render him liable. For example, in a number of cases, persons transporting packages containing illegal drugs have asserted that they never asked what the contents of the packages were, and therefore lacked the requisite intent to break the law. Such defenses have not succeeded, as courts have been quick to determine that the defendant should have known what was in the package, and exercised criminal recklessness by failing to find out before delivering it.'


All Christians know that Jesus told us to love your neighbor as yourself. However, one does not love one's neighbor in a vacuum. You have to know someone before you love them. If they are from a heavily stigmatized group, as the Samaritan that Jesus used as an example of "neighbor" was, you have to get to know them past the stereotypes that you've learned.

Akinola is happy to contribute to the stigmatization of the LGBT community: "I cannot think of how a man in his senses would be having a sexual relationship with another man. Even in the world of animals, dogs, cows, lions, we don't hear of such things." Asked whether consecrating a bishop in the US violated the rules of the Anglican Communion (it most certainly does), he replied that he was merely sending a bishop to serve Anglicans where there is no church to provide one - the Episcopal Church isn't a church in his eyes. He has apparently tried to blame Islam for some of his actions: "The church is in the midst of Islam. Should the church in this country begin to teach that it is appropriate, that it is right to have same sex unions and all that, the church will simply die.”

And yet, he deliberately refuses to engage with the people who he thinks are violating God's commands. He runs from them, so that he won't have to feed their sheep. He treats children of God like an infestation, and tries to dehumanize them.

When the Syro-Phoenecian woman challenged Jesus, he came to see that she was just as much a child of God as anyone else. Akinola could have done the same with Louie Crew, but he willfully declined. Jesus deliberately touched and healed women with conditions that made them ceremonially unclean; he touched and healed lepers, which made him ceremonially unclean and put him at an actual health risk. Akinola could have followed Jesus' example, and stayed to talk to Louie. He chose to dehumanize Louie by running. He lost the opportunity that God gave him to engage with Louie as a real human being, with real needs.

If he gets another opportunity, I pray he takes it. If he does not, I don't think it will go very well for him on the Day of Judgment. Willful ignorance didn't work for Ken Lay in the Enron trial.

But whatever happens on the Day of Judgment, that day isn't now. Until then, we must break down stereotypes by educating those who have never met a gay person, or a person of color, or a person of whatever group. And we must pray for and challenge people like Peter Akinola.

http://www.thewitness.org/agw/crew042804jim.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/25/world/africa/25episcopal.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=aead195648b4ea8e&ex=1167714000&emc=eta1

Credit to Father Jake's blog for citing both articles.