Burning Passions in Southern Africa

May we be willing reapers of the Word, not Sowers only!

(c) Matthew Wettlaufer, The Murder of Matthew Shepherd*

    Sometimes readers’ responses can take you a little bit by surprise.  In that potential readers have been fairly warned that these essays are exercises in free-style thinking rather than stated opinions, I find it pretty easy to not take things too personally, but once in a while a negative reaction forces you to delve a bit deeper in to a topic.  Such is the case with a short paragraph written on Ludovic-Mohamed Zaheb’s intention to found a gay and feminist-friendly mosque in Paris, France ( see:  French Mosques for Women and Gays? ).

    The phrase, or I will admit, paragraph in question is as follows:

Not that we can be too hard on them.  News coverage also indicates numerous Anglo-American Fundamentalist leaders stumbling over the question of whether or not practicing gays should face the Biblical death penalty – a situation American-backed “Christian” conservatives in Uganda seem too close to implanting.  (Try placing that one in the Minnesota constitution!)

    'Them' referring to violent anti-gay Islamic Fundamentalists in Europe and North Africa.  

    The point of contention being whether or not anti-gay, often border-line hate legislation in some of Africa’s more volatile nations is being generated and funded by Fundamentalist anti-gay Christian groups out of the United States.  In this case, the clear answer is yes – in fact, many of the more extreme anti-gay Evangelical groups in the United States openly brag about their activities in Africa on their websites.

Southern Evangelicals and Interracial Marriage – Is Race the New Gay?

 ne Kjast

    Forget Same-Sex Marriage, it seems a lot of  Southern USA Evangelicals are still trying to grasp interracial marriage.  With world-wide trends towards marriage indicating that it is a social institution in general decline – no longer seen as essential for raising children or living in a committed relationship – potentially outmoded concepts of marriage might seemingly outlive marriage itself. 

    South Africa and the United States South, two of the world’s most racially controversial societies in the 20^th Century, are again generating racial headlines.  It seems that certain ghosts of the past still haunt feelings of trust and acceptance between racial groups in these two regions.

    Last December (2011), despite decades of civil rights movements and legislation against racial discrimination, the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church in Kentucky voted 9 to 6 to bar interracial  couples from becoming members or being used in worship services.  After a week of bad press, the church did reverse itself, but the damage was done.

    Huffington Post writer Melanie Coffee sums it up by asking, “So between you and me, how do you really feel about interracial couples? Are you OK with it as long as: A) It's not one of your children? B) It's not in your church C) They're not gay or D) The couple's happy?” (Coffee, see below).