Boesak speaks on homophobia and the churches
"Manifestations of the backlash have emerged in various way."
THE Other Foundation, the Durban Lesbian and Gay Centre together with the Diakonia Council of Churches, hosted a public discussion with renowned anti-apartheid leader, theologian and author, Prof Allan Boesak on Monday night.
The event, titled Breaking Through the Backlash: Transformative encounters between LGBTI people and the churches in Africa, was the opening event on the first day of a larger Africa wide three-day gathering of church leaders and activists to address homophobia and the churches in Africa.
In his address Boesak said: “Not did we only call racism a sin in general, we called it a form of idolatry in which the dominant group assumes, on the basis of pigmentation and the mythical belief in a social construct called race, for itself a status higher than the other and through political, cultural, military and economic power. As well as social and psychological restructuring they seek to play God in the lives of others.”
Participants included secular and church-based LGBTI activists and their parents and organizations, theological and other researchers/scholars, church-based media groups, and institutional church leadership who are challenging faith-based homophobia and transphobia – from local congregations to the highest levels of leadership.
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“Theological schools and seminaries, spaces in which pastors are trained, have initiated processes to relook at their training curricula and institutional cultures towards improving the teaching and practice of churches to be more inclusive of people regardless of their sexual orientation and gender non-conformity. However, the progress of the last three years is seeing an emerging backlash, with increased divisions about how to deal with a new wave of change in the churches,” said The Other Foundation’s Teboho Klaas.
“Manifestations of the backlash have emerged in various ways and at various levels in churches, such as due processes of decision-making being flouted by reactionary groups in the churches, exemplified in the Dutch Reformed Church (southern Africa); using voting power of African delegations in the United Methodist Church in the United States of America, to block a resolutions in favour of including LGBTI people and clergy, using the myth that homosexuality is unAfrican, not cultural and unbiblical; as well as Africans leading in the division seen in the establishment of separate conference from the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church,” added Klaas.
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