Exploring the Connections

Fashanu's guilt over suicide of brother

by Jamie Wilson
The Guardian, March 29, 2011

Footballer John Fashanu yesterday revealed the guilt he felt about ignoring his brother Justin's last telephone call before he committed suicide.
The former Wimbledon player and presenter of the television programme Gladiators said he was haunted by a call he received on his mobile phone the day before Justin, 37, was found hanging in a garage in Shoreditch, east London, in May 1998.

At the time of his death newspapers wrongly reported there was a warrant out for his arrest in America for allegedly molesting a 17-year-old boy earlier that year.

In a frank television interview with Esther Rantzen, Fashanu said he would always blame himself for his older brother's death because he thought he could have done more. "Just before he committed suicide there was a telephone call to my mobile phone that night and the person wouldn't speak. I could hear breathing, I could feel that it was somebody from my family.

"I could feel that it was Justin, but I didn't reach out. I just put the phone down and thought: 'Oh, it's him again'. And of course the next day he committed suicide."

In a suicide note, Justin Fashanu, the former England under-21 and Nottingham Forest player who in 1990 became the first professional footballer to come out as a homosexual, said he wanted to die rather than put his friends and family through any more unhappiness.

Yesterday John Fashanu said he had not accepted Justin's sexuality, or how desperate his plight was, and the pair had not been on speaking terms for many years. "Justin confessed that he was gay, and he was living in America at the time. I think that he had - no, we had - created a situation where we isolated him. I don't think that we had accepted that he was gay. When I say 'we', I am probably trying to protect myself. I am saying 'me'.

"And I think that what happened was there were allegations that Justin was involved with some problems in America which have been published in the newspapers, and I think that he panicked and could not take it any more, and thought that the best thing to save the family from embarrassment, which he had written in the suicide note, and he committed suicide.

"Sadly and unfortunately I was not on speaking terms with him at the time. Hindsight is a lovely word. I don't think I realised the depth of loneliness and despair that he was going through. I don't think that I really, in a selfish way, understood exactly what was going on.

"I think we are all scared of what we don't understand."

The Fashanu brothers were both placed in a Barnado's home by their mother after their father left Britain to return to Nigeria. They grew up with a foster family in Attleborough, Norfolk, and were spotted as schoolboys by Norwich City scouts.

Justin became the first £1m black player but his career was cut short by a series of knee injuries. He moved to North America where he coached teams in the US and Canada.

John Fashanu, who lives in London, said he had spoken about the death to publicise the work of the Samaritans, an organisation he supports and had phoned for advice in the past. "The fact that Justin committed suicide really alerted to me that whether you are rich and famous, or whether you are poor and not famous, people have problems, and people will reach out and look for help."

Towards a Theology of Gay Marriage

by Benny Hazelhurst
Benny's Blog, March 4, 2011

As the UK Government begins to explore the possibility of new policies on marriage for same-sex couples, do we need to revisit our theology of marriage and ask "Is it really as Biblical as we think?"

 I often find myself feeling sorry for the Pharisees in the Gospels.  It is easy to dismiss them as legalistic 'stick in the muds' but at least they tried their best to be faithful to the Word of God, and to hold the line against the secular influences of Roman politics and culture.

 Their problem however, was that in their zeal to be faithful, they often got the wrong end of the stick.  As a result, over and over again, they missed the point of what God was doing, and ended up fighting against His purposes in the process.

It was in this context that they ran up against Jesus over and over again.

Food laws are one example - their focus on clean and unclean foods led to a theology which implied that it is what goes into your body which makes you unclean, rather than the declaration of Christ that it is what comes out of your heart that matters.

 

Having faith in the importance of doubt

by Mark Vernon
Ekklesia News Service, March 7, 2011

It has become commonplace to observe that mental health is in decline in the west. What I did not expect to discover is that some of these malaises have to do with an intolerance of doubt, and a lust for certainty, that look strikingly modern. Moreover, it seems that a certain attitude in religious faith – in particular, a resistance to fundamentalism – might be healthy too.

I was researching a radio series, ‘In Doubt We Trust’, and my new book, How To Be An Agnostic Dr Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist and author, told me that a number of conditions can be linked to a fear of uncertainty. The obvious case is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, often described as a ‘disease of doubt’. Sufferers experience intrusive and debilitating thoughts about cleanliness or safety because they are unable to distinguish between what has happened, what may happen and what won’t happen.

Or there are the paranoid delusions some people suffer – in a way, the opposite of OCD: rather than doubting everything, they are incapable of doubting anything. Hence, a sufferer may be convinced that everyone on the bus is out to get them; or that a devil lurks around every corner.

Professor Philippa Garety told me that there’s no point in attempting to counter the delusion directly. That only feeds the certainty with which the belief is held. Rather, the aim is gently, patiently, to encourage the individual to recognise that there are other ways of looking at the world. When they can countenance alternatives, individuals may also be able to doubt their own views.

Furthermore, she noted that such an approach might be the best way to tackle fundamentalism. Attack such religious positions head-on and you are only likely to confirm individuals in their suspicion of the world. Engage them in their concerns and things just might be different.

Dr McGilchrist believes you can see something of what is going on by understanding something about the brain. The brain is faced with a challenge, as it were, because while both hemispheres are involved in everything it does, they have very different takes on the world.

The left is good at focus, certainty and specifics: it builds a worldview that is internally consistent, but detached. (He also calls it the “Berlusconi of the brain” because it seeks to control what we think and how we to talk to one another.)

The right hemisphere, though, has a broad, open attention. It is good at making connections and handling the unexpected, though it is also less sure of itself. So, in short, the left can’t understand the right, and vice versa. Sound familiar?

And perhaps this sounds familiar too, though in a different way. Communication in the brain, across thecorpus callosum, therefore has to take a negative form. The left can’t say yes to the right because it doesn’t know what it’s saying yes to, and it may well resist what the right offers by saying no. But it can also not say no. This is to risk allowing the unexpected in, though the promise is an expanded take on the world.

The way the brain works is not necessarily the way the mind works, of course: human beings experience things and think, not neurons. However, the negative dialectic of the hemispheres is arresting because it is analogous to an essential feature of human understanding. We only embrace the unknown if and when we refuse to say no to that which is beyond us.

What struck me is that this mirrors, remarkably closely, what the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, a classic Christian text talks about when seeking to pierce the darkness of the divine with darts of love. In theology, it is called the via negativa, or negative way.

This can be frightening. Both mental health and spiritual flourishing appear to require a skilful toleration of darkness and doubt, which explains why people often prefer to cling to what they claim to know. It’s not for nothing that old maps inscribed terra incognita with the words, “Here be dragons.”

Certainty sells in science and religion. But as Thomas Aquinas realised, the best we can do when talking about God is to understand what God is not, and be open to what God might be, beyond our comprehension. It’s also known as faith.

© Mark Vernon is a philosopher. His website is here: http:www.markvernon.com/ ‘In Doubt We Trust’, a two part series written and presented by the author, began on BBC Radio 4, 6 March 2011, at 1.30pm and can be heard again on the iPlayer facility (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00z2sl8). Episode two is due on Sunday 13 March. Mark’s new book, How To Be An Agnostic (Palgrave Macmillan), is published this week.

Is there such a thing as "a Gay Christian?"

William Crawley is a BBC journalist and broadcaster who presents programs covering everything from news, current affairs and hard-hitting debate to entertainment, arts, religion and ethics. Every Sunday, from 8:30 –10:15 AM (UK Time), he and his guests debate the week's religious and ethical news in a program titled SUNDAY SEQUENCE

On SUNDAY SEQUENCE recently (March 13, 2011) he chaired a brief encounter between Alan Chambers, who leads the world's largest ex-gay movement (Exodus International), and Dr. Michael King, Britain's leading gay psychiatrist. The tape below is just over 13 minutes in length.

Gay Christian_

Christian group: ‘Our iPhone app won’t cure gays’

by Jessica Green
Pink News, March 22, 2011

Exodus International has responded to a 100,000-strong petition calling for its iPhone app to be banned

The Christian group said campaigners were trying to “stigmatise” it and denied it was trying to “cure” gay people.

On its website, Exodus International says it can help people find “freedom from homosexuality” through prayer. It also practises ‘reparative therapy’ which claims to be able to turn gays straight.

Gay campaigners say the group uses “scare tactics, misinformation, stereotypes and distortions of LGBT life to recruit clients”.

Responding to the campaign against the iPhone app, Jeff Buchanan of Exodus International told the Christian Post: “In no way shape or form is our message about trying to cure or do we try to promote that type of methodology or message.”

He added: “This is a label ['gay cure app'] that has been put forth by opponents to the application to serve as propaganda in order to stigmatise and really label the application in a false way and provoking a response such as you are seeing with the application.

“Our message is to promote the love of Jesus Christ to all those who have been impacted by unwanted same-sex attractions,” he continued.

“Really, the point of the application is to provide the material that is also on our website in a smartphone format. Nothing more and nothing less.”

Mr Buchanan, who is the church’s senior director of church equipping and student ministries, said Exodus International was not in the business of “praying the gay away”.

Instead, he said: “Exodus believes the opposite of homosexuality is not heterosexuality. It is holiness. We promote the belief that one can live a life that is congruent with their faith. That is our mission – period. ”

Calls for Apple to remove the app have been bolstered by a University of Minnesota professor who claims Exodus International has misrepresented his work on sexuality.

Dr Gary Remafedi said he wrote to Apple founder Steven Jobs and its interim CEO, Tim Cook yesterday to demand the app was withdraw.

He wrote that the app “erroneously cites my research in support of claims that homosexuality can be changed. … Associating my work with that of the ex-gay ministry and other unfounded treatments is professionally injurious and grievous”.

Apple has not commented.

Jessica has been the online news editor of PinkNews.co.uk since 2009.

"Ex-Gay" iPhone app gets approval from Apple

Exodus International, a religious group boasting a cure for homosexuality, receives approval for a new app 

by Drew Grant
Salon, March 18, 2011

The iPhone app to cure you of homosexuality.

Apple has a history of banning applications it deems obscene or innapropriate. There was that Shaken Baby app that was removed in 2009 after two days of public outcry, as well as the 5,000 "overtly sexual" programs that the company yanked in 2010.

Still, there seems to be little oversight at the company with regard to religious intolerance and homophobia. Exodus International, a group that claims "freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ," proudly released an app last week to serve as a "useful resource for men, women, parents, students, and ministry leaders." The app received a 4+ rating from Apple, meaning that Exodus' application contains no objectionable material.

A petition from TruthWinsOut.org demands that Apple remove Exodus' program, saying:

Apple doesn’t allow racist or anti-Semitic apps in its app store, yet it gives the green light to an app targeting vulnerable LGBT youth with the message that their sexual orientation is a "sin that will make your heart sick" and a "counterfeit." This is a double standard that has the potential for devastating consequences.

The group also produced this video highlighting some of Exodus' practices:
 

So far the petition has 20,000 signatures. Apple was unavailable for comment at the time of this posting. It does strike us as odd that Exodus has been up for 10 days without the tech company at least releasing a statement defending its decision, considering how quickly it responded and removed the Shaken Baby app. If it's a matter of free speech, then that needs to be the official position that Apple is willing to stand behind. If not, the app needs to be removed.

Peter Gomes: the conscience of Harvard

by William Crawley
Will and Testament (Blog), March 2, 2011

Peter J. Gomes, who has died at the age of 68, once described himself as "an oddity". He was certainly unpredictable, which added greatly to his legend as one of America's most renowned preachers and Christian commentators. Culturally and politically conservative, the Harvard University minister was invited to lead prayers at the inauguation of Ronadl Reagan and George H.W. Bush. But Gomes, a Baptist pastor, was also theologically sensitive to the plight of marginalised groups and used his pulpit at Harvard's Memorial Church to challenge the religious abuse he saw within all denominations.

He served as the university's pastor for nearly four decades,alongside his academic role as Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, and in that time became a prominent cultural voice in the United States and internationally. Those who listened to him preach say he also became the conscience of Harvard University.

In 1991, following the publication of an anti-gay article in a Harvard University student magazine, Gomes felt the need to speak publicly about his own homosexuality in order to challenge what he saw as the institutionalisation of homophobia. Five years later he published a bestselling book, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart, which made a theological case for a revolution in how we approach sacred texts within the modern world.

I met Peter Gomes in New York soon after the publication of The Good Book. It was a brief encounter: he was speaking at the church on Fifth Avenue where I was working at the time and we took part in the same event. I was, like everyone else who met him, taken by his elegance, his graciousness -- an almost aristocratic exterior which masked a natural earthiness -- and by his considerable skills as a orator. I heard him preach a handful of times, and I am not at all surprised that he was regularly named in lists of America's all-time greatest preachers.

Gomes was not a natural culture warrior, though he found himself on a few battlefields from time to time. But he had had the enviable capactity to win over opponents with sparkling displays of humour and humanity and understood that winning people is more important than winning arguments. With his death, American Christianity is a little less colourful and the global debate about the place of spirituality in public life has lost one of its surest voices.

Watch Charlie Rose interview Peter Gomes
Peter Gomes preaches at Duke University Chapel
Peter Gomes debates Christopher Hitchens
Tea Time with Rev. Peter Gomes at Harvard 

BBC Northern Ireland presenter William Crawley discusses the often controversial political, religious and ethical issues of the day.

 

Take a stand against homophobia, says Ugandan bishop

by staff writers
Ekklesia News Service, March 8, 2011 

An Anglican bishop in Uganda has urged the Anglican Communion not to "keep quiet" about the abuse and violence faced by gay, lesbian and bisexual people in his country and elsewhere.

Christopher Senyonjo, the retired Bishop of West Uganda, made the remarks in the wake of the murder of the Ugandan human rights activist David Kato. Kato, a gay Christian, was brutally killed earlier this year shortly after winning a court case against a newspaper which called for him to be hanged.

Several Christian leaders in Uganda have been accused of implicitly encouraging homophobic abuse or violence.

In an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with other Anglican primates and leaders, Senyonjo insisted that "a loving Anglican Communion should not keep quiet" when the media stir up hatred. "Silence has the power to kill," he argued, citing as an example "the tragic and cruel murder of David Kato".

Senyonjo wrote, "If Anglicans in one country dehumanise, persecute and imprison minorities, we must be true to the Gospel and challenge such assaults on basic human rights".

Critics suggest that Anglican leaders internationally have at times failed to condemn homophobic violence in an attempt to avoid controversy and division over issues of sexuality.

In 2009, Ugandan politicians backed an Anti-Homosexuality Bill which would introduce the death penalty for a second "offence" of homosexuality. There was widespread criticism of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who failed publicly to condemn the bill for several weeks, by which time over 3,000 people had signed a petition urging him to do so.

However, Williams was quick to condemn the murder of David Kato earlier this year, describing it as "profoundly shocking". He said it was time to "address those attitudes of mind which endanger the lives of men and women belonging to sexual minorities".

Same sex blessings consultation to be webcast

Posted by Anne Fontaine
Episcopal Café, The Lead, March 8, 2011

From The Episcopal Church Office of Public Affairs

Office of Communication to live webcast churchwide consultation
of Episcopal Church Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music

March 18, 19 in Atlanta, Georgia

[March 8, 2011] The Episcopal Church Office of Communication will live webcast all the plenary sessions of the March 18 and 19 churchwide consultation by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM).

The two-day consultation will center on the 2009 General Convention Resolution C056 to collect and develop theological and liturgical resources for same-gender blessings. The plenary sessions will provide information about the work the SCLM and its task groups have accomplished to date in developing these resources.

The live webcast will be available HERE 

Participating will be nearly 200 clergy and lay deputies from almost 100 dioceses of the Episcopal Church. 

Webcast schedule
Plenary sessions are scheduled:

Friday, March 18: 2 pm to 3 pm Eastern and 4:45 pm to 6 pm Eastern (1 pm to 2 pm Central and 3:45 pm to 5 pm Central; noon to 1 pm Mountain and 2:45 pm to 4 pm Mountain; 11 am to noon Pacific and 1:45 pm to 3 pm Pacific)

Saturday, March 19: 8:30 am to 9:30 am Eastern and 11 am to noon Eastern (7:30 am to 8:30 am Central and 10 am to 11 am Central; 6:30 am to 7:30 am Mountain and 9 am to 10 am Mountain; 5:30 am to 6:30 am Pacific and 8 am to 9 am Pacific)

In addition, the media conference slated for 2 pm to 2:30 pm Eastern will be live webcast. (1 pm to 1:30 pm Central; noon to 12:30 pm Mountain; 11 am to 11:30 am Pacific)

The event will be held at the Atlanta Hilton Airport (Diocese of Atlanta).

The Episcopal Church welcomes all who worship Jesus Christ in 109 dioceses and three regional areas in 16 nations. The Episcopal Church is a member province of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Episcopal Church Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music

General Convention Resolution C056

Atlanta Hilton Airport

The Episcopal Church

****

NOTE TO MEDIA: Media are invited to all plenary sessions; small group or private sessions are closed to the media. There will be a media conference with phone accessibility on Saturday, March 19 from 2 pm to 2:30 pm Eastern (1 pm to 1:30 pm Central; noon to 12:30 pm Mountain; 11 am to 11:30 am Pacific). Expected to participate are Meyers, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson, and Bishop of Vermont Thomas Ely, a SCLM member. Advance media credentials are required. Media representatives should contact Neva Rae Fox, Episcopal Church Public Affairs Officer

For more info contact:
Neva Rae Fox
Public Affairs Officer
The Episcopal Church
212-716-6080 Mobile: 917-478-5659

 

 

David Cupps Reports on Kentucky's Dio Convention

Walking With Integrity, March 7, 2011

 

Bishop Stacy Sauls predicts same sex blessings will pass at GC12

 Diocesan convention in Kentucky is like a family reunion. We are all deeply connected in many ways, with many friends across the years and miles, and it’s great to see everyone. My biggest takeaway was the strong support shown for LGBT people throughout the weekend.

This year's family reunion was a "working" one for me. I arrived the night before the convention started and assembled the beautiful display provided by Integrity USA’s national office. It always draws attention from the crowds.I also set out our fabulous buttons and literature. Integrity always wants to educate convention members about our great work.

The next morning, I distributed to each parish an invitation to become a Believe Out Loud parish, which if accepted, recognizes them as openly welcoming to LGBT worshippers. Our diocese had five BOL parishes before the convention began and I gave their deputations some Integrity buttons to wear, and many promptly put them on. In fact, out of the 100 buttons I arrived with, only 15 were left at the end of the weekend!

 

In some ways, the highlight of the weekend came when Bishop Stacy Sauls gave his annual address to the convention. In one significant section of his address, Bishop Sauls told everyone that in 2012, our General Convention will vote to approve rites for blessing same-sex relationships, and he supports their passage. And if they pass, he will authorize their use in our diocese. While some dioceses are way beyond this point, it’s still a step forward for us, and from the crowd’s reaction, it’s a step we’re happy to take together.

Kentucky is a mostly rural Southern state and we are blessed to have so many people and parishes that are very open to marriage equality. One of our Believe Out Loud parishes has a new rector that said she’s scheduling gay weddings the minute that General Convention passes the rites!

So many positive things came out of the weekend – the many people signing up for our email list, the parishes newly interested in becoming officially welcoming, the newfound confidence that LGBT equality is really coming, even in Kentucky. But the best part for me was feeling supported by my family, blessed in my relationships, and moving forward together.

David Cupps 
Diocese of Lexington
Treasurer, Integrity Board of Directors