Christianity Is Becoming a Southern Hemisphere Religion

click image to enlarge

As the book, "The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies," the end product of over ten years of historical research, makes clear, it was European Christian missionaries that exported homophobia and repressive sexual mores worldwide.  Now, nominal membership of Christian denominations remains widespread across Europe and North America, Christianity is becoming a Southern Hemisphere religion with the highest concentration of churchgoing being in sub-Sahara Africa.  In Europe, Poland alone remains an anomaly with high church attendance. A piece in The Economist looks at the shift in the center of Christianity.  Here are highlights:

Christmas feels as popular as ever. But what of Christianity itself?

There are 2.4 billion people across the globe who identify as Christian, according to data from the World Christian Database. But in practice, how many of them go to church on a regular basis? To answer that question, The Economist analysed survey data from the European Social Survey and World Values Survey, which together asked 140,000 people across 89 countries about their religious affiliation, attendance and other socio-economic questions. Using this data we then predicted values for the rest of the world based on their similarity to other countries.

Church attendance tends to be low and has been falling across the much of the rich world. Just 70m of Western Europe’s 375m adults attend church at least once a month. Meanwhile, in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, the church appears as strong as ever. There are 277m adherent Christians in sub-Saharan Africa and 250m in Latin America. As Christianity has shifted southwards, that has moved the centre of Christianity to Niamey, the capital of Niger (calculated by taking the Christian-adherence weighted-average latitude and longitude of countries' capital cities). As the crow flies that is 2,433 miles from Bethlehem.

Personally, I find little surprise in these findings.  To flourish, Christianity - especially the fundamentalist varieties - requires an ignorant, uneducated populace.  Africa is the region with the most growth of Christian denominations offers in general the most uneducated populations.  Here in America studies have shown that membership in fundamentalist and evangelical tracts directly with lower levels of education.  

Are American Efforts on Gay Rights Backfiring in Africa?

While gay rights have made huge steps in the West, in Islamic countries and in Africa the situation remains abysmal.   In non-Islamic areas, American Christofascists have been busy exporting anti-gay animus and playing upon the ignorance of the local populations where those who seemingly know no accurate history are to stupid to grasps that anti-gay laws and discrimination were colonial imports from European powers, especially Great Britain.  Aiding them is the Roman Catholic Church which continues to vilify gays and inflict its 13th century mindset on sexuality on its flock, many of who are too poorly educated to realize that are being told lies and falsehoods.  As noted before, if one wants to see the poison spread literally across the globe by Christian missionaries, read "The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies" by James Neill.  It is a scholarly work with much research behind it and it truly underscores the ignorance and idiocy of those who claim homosexuality is a western import.  The New York Times as a lengthy piece on the sad state of affairs in Africa.  Here are excerpts:

After an anti-gay law went into effect last year, many gay Nigerians say they have been subjected to new levels of harassment, even violence.

They blame the law, the authorities and broad social intolerance for their troubles. But they also blame an unwavering supporter whose commitment to their cause has been unquestioned and overt across Africa: the United States government.

“The U.S. support is making matters worse,” said Mike, 24, a university student studying biology in Minna, a town in central Nigeria who asked that his full name not be used for safety reasons. “There’s more resistance now. It’s triggered people’s defense mechanism.”

Four years ago, the American government embarked on an ambitious campaign to expand civil rights for gay people overseas by marshaling its diplomats, directing its foreign aid and deploying President Obama to speak before hostile audiences.

America’s money and public diplomacy have opened conversations and opportunities in societies where the subject was taboo just a few years ago. But they have also made gay men and lesbians more visible — and more vulnerable to harassment and violence, people on both sides of the gay rights issue contend.

“The Nigerian law was blowback,” said Chidi Odinkalu, chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission and the senior legal officer for the Africa Program of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which supports gay rights on the continent. “You now have situations of gay men being molested on the streets or taunted. That was all avoidable.”

Violence against gay Nigerians has increased significantly, according to the country’s National Human Rights Commission. Most are attacked in the open by groups of men, some of whom call themselves “cleansers,” rights groups say.

But victims often do not report attacks for fear of being outed. Even men infected with H.I.V. are often reluctant to seek treatment at hospitals, fearing that the authorities will be called, said Stella Iwuagwu, executive director of the Center for the Right to Health, an H.I.V. patient and rights group based in Lagos.

The United States’ role comes as longstanding foes in its culture wars continue to move their fight to Africa. Many private supporters of equal rights for gay people in the United States, after landmark successes at home, are increasing their funding of gay causes abroad, especially in Africa.

American conservative and Christian groups have also turned to Africa, where the vast majority of people still share their opposition to same-sex relations and marriage.

Gay Africans are becoming increasingly caught in the American culture battles being waged in Africa, said the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia who is a researcher at the Massachusetts-based Political Research Associates.

“When two elephants fight, the grass will suffer,” said Mr. Kaoma, who has documented the ties between American evangelicals and the anti-gay movement in Africa. “This is what’s happening in Africa. African L.G.B.T. persons are just collateral damage to U.S. politics on both ends.”

[T]ying developmental assistance to gay rights has fueled anger across the continent. After Uganda’s president signed a tough anti-gay law last year, for example, the Obama administration announced that some aid money for the Ugandan police and health agencies would be cut off or redirected.

“This is an abuse of power, and that’s why many are turning around and saying, ‘Keep your money,’ ” said Father George Ehusani, former secretary general of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, adding that Nigerian Catholic charities had stopped applying for American government grants that promote gay rights.

The real enemy of LGBT equality is fundamentalist religion of all stripes which, in my view, is a cancer that needs to be eradicated whether it goes under the banner of Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, or Islam.  No matter the name employed, it is a true force for evil.

U.S. Kicks Gambia From Trade Agreement Over Anti-LGBT Crackdown

As noted many times on this blog, as the Christofascists have seen more and more defeats in America and Western Europe, they have been increasing their efforts to export anti-gay animus and bigotry to ignorant, uneducated corners of the world where the populous is literally to stupid and uneducated to realize that they are being sold a bogus bill of goods, often with the aid of corrupt and incompetent governments all too eager to distract local populations from the chronic miasma of government misrule.   A case in point is Gambia where a virtual jihad against gays is underway.  Thankfully, the U.S. government is using its trade powers to strike back at the anti-gay bigotry and has kicked Gambia from participation special trade status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000.  More actions like this need to be taken.  If nations want to act like reactionary extremists, then there needs to be a tangible cost attached to their bigotry.  Here are highlights from BuzzFeed:

The United States on Tuesday dropped the Gambia from a popular free trade agreement in response to a crackdown on LGBT rights and other human rights concerns. 

The decision to drop the small West African nation from special trade status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act of 2000 came late Tuesday afternoon, just after media in the Gambia announced that three men would be put on trial for homosexuality. These are the first to face trial since police began arresting people on allegations of homosexuality in November. At least 16 more are known to be in detention, and Gambian human rights activists do not know if they are even still alive.

“The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has been monitoring the human rights situation in The Gambia for the past few years, with deepening concerns about the lack of progress with respect to human rights, rule of law, political pluralism, and the right to due process,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House, in an email to BuzzFeed News. “In addition, in October, Gambian President Jammeh signed into law legislation that further restricts the rights of LGBT individuals, including life imprisonment for so-called ‘aggravated homosexuality.’ Reports have surfaced of arrests, detention, and torture of individuals because of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.”

For the first time the gay community really is coming together to get equal consideration in U.S. foreign policy,” said Mark Bromley of the Council for Global Equality, which lobbies for LGBT rights in international affairs. Bromley said that only in recent years have LGBT groups been able to exert the kind of influence that certain religious or ethnic communities have exerted to focus the U.S.’s foreign policy when their counterparts in other countries are under threat.

The meeting that Gambian human rights activists held with White House officials earlier this month — which was facilitated in part by the Council for Global Equality — was the first time they say they had met with anyone above the level of a State Department desk officer to discuss Jammeh’s human rights record.

Expelling the Gambia from the special trade status was the first time that the U.S. had sent the kind of signal that Jammeh will take seriously in response to human rights abuses, Camara said.

“Jammeh [will] know that the US is really not joking not now,” Camara said. Until now, “he was really playing with them” and behaving as if there were no consequences for violating human rights protections. Among the dozens who have been killed or disappeared under his rule are two American citizens believed to have been abducted by Jammeh’s security forces in 2013.

As I said, it is far past time that corrupt tyrants like Jammeh be deprived of any and all deference as a head of state and that nations bear direct economic consequences for the human rights abuses of their leaders.   Indeed, if these leaders are going to act like animals, they needed to be treated like animals and their countrymen need to bear the consequences of embracing ignorance and bigotry.    

Oh, and the same goes for America which needs to put Bush, Cheney, et al, on trial for war crimes and punish them accordingly - why do the words "death penalty" spring to mind when i think of Cheney?  If America wants to punish those who are guilty of human rights abuses around the world, we need to start at home.

The Connection Between ISIS and Lack of Education

I've noted often that to thrive extremist forms of religion require ignorant and uneducated populations.  Hence why Christianity's main growth area at present is in the most backward regions of Africa.  It's also the reason that American Christofascists seek to gut education programs in America and rewrite text books to support their poisonous belief system which begins to disintegrate in the face of scientific and modern knowledge.  But religious extremism is not limited to Christian extremists as demonstrated by ISIS (or ISIL as it is sometimes called).  To survive Islamic extremism also needs ignorant and uneducated populations.  Apiece in the New York Times makes the case that to defeat ISIS not only must America and its allies use military might, but they also need to over time  attack the underlying basis for religious extremism: lack of educated populations.  Here are excerpts:

As we fight the Islamic State and other extremists, there’s something that President Obama and all of us can learn from them. For, in one sense, the terrorists are fighting smarter than we are.

These extremists use arms to fight their battles in the short term, but, to hold ground in the long run, they also combat Western education and women’s empowerment. They know that illiteracy, ignorance and oppression of women create the petri dish in which extremism can flourish.

That’s why the Islamic State kidnapped Samira Salih al-Nuaimi, a brave Iraqi woman and human rights lawyer in Mosul, tortured her and publicly executed her last week. That’s why the Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai, then 15 years old, after she campaigned for educating girls. And that’s why Boko Haram kidnapped hundreds of schoolgirls in northern Nigeria and announced that it would turn them into slaves.

In each case, the extremists recognized a basic truth: Their greatest strategic threat comes not from a drone but from a girl with a book. We need to recognize, and act on, that truth as well.

For similar reasons, the financiers of extremism have invested heavily in fundamentalist indoctrination. They have built Wahhabi madrassas in poor Muslim countries like Pakistan, Niger and Mali, offering free meals, as well as scholarships for the best students to study in the gulf.

Shouldn’t we try to compete?

Shouldn’t we use weapons in the short run, but try to gain strategic advantage by focusing on education and on empowering women to build stable societies less vulnerable to extremist manipulation?

[W]e’re not playing the long game, as the extremists are. We are vastly overrelying on the military toolbox and underemploying the education toolbox, the women’s empowerment toolbox, the communications toolbox. We’re tacticians; alas, the extremists may be better strategists.It’s not a question of resources, because bombs are more expensive than books. The United States military campaign against the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS and ISIL, will cost at least $2.4 billion a year and perhaps many times that

Obama seems to have dropped his 2008 campaign promise to establish a $2 billion global fund for education. And the United States gives the Global Partnership for Education, a major multilateral effort, less in a year than what we spend weekly in Syria and Iraq.

[T]he historical record of the last half-century is that education tends to nurture a more cosmopolitan middle class and gives people a stake in the system.

Girls’ education seems to have more impact than boys’ education, partly because educated women have markedly fewer children. The result is lower birthrates and less of a youth bulge in the population, which highly correlates to civil conflict.

I support judicious airstrikes in the short term against the Islamic State, but that should be only one part of a policy combating extremism.
So let’s learn from the extremists — and from those brave girls themselves who are willing to risk their lives in order to get an education. They all understand the power of education, and we should, too.

The USA never seems good at playing the long game.  We need to think in the long term as well as short term military action.  We also need to recognize the threat that our home grown extremists of every faith represent and oppose efforts to dumb down education and fill our text books with religious based fairy tales.  It's no coincidence that overall belief in Bible inerrancy directly correlates with one's low level of education.

Uganda Court Annuls anti-Homosexuality Law

In addition to losing nearly two dozen law suits in America seeking to uphold anti-gay marriage bans, the Christofascists have now also suffered a defeat in Uganda where that nation's constitutional court has invalidated the "kill the gays" law that was inspired by and advocated for by American Christofascists exporting homophobia (and its attendant lies and propaganda) to the ignorant and uneducated Ugandan populace.   I suspect that hate merchants like Scott Lively, Tony Perkins, and fat tub of lard Rick Warren are weeping and ranting at this 100% correct ruling.  Here are highlights from the BBC on this most welcome development.

Uganda's Constitutional Court has annulled tough anti-gay legislation signed into law in February.

It ruled that the bill was passed by MPs in December without the requisite quorum and was therefore illegal.

Homosexual acts were already illegal, but the new law allowed for life imprisonment for "aggravated homosexuality" and banned the "promotion of homosexuality".

Several donors have cut aid to Uganda since the law was adopted.

Ugandan government spokesperson Ofwono Opondo said the government was still waiting the attorney general's advice about whether to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court.  He added that the ruling showed to Western donors that Uganda's democracy was functioning very well and that they should reinstate any aid they had cut.

The Ugandan authorities have defended the law in the past, saying President Yoweri Museveni wanted "to demonstrate Uganda's independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation".

The challenge to the law was brought by 10 petitioners, including academics, journalists, both ruling and opposition MPs, human rights activists and rights groups.

"The retrogressive anti-homosexuality act of Uganda has been struck down by the constitutional court - it's now dead as a door nail," the AFP news agency quotes prominent journalist Andrew Mwenda, one of the petitioners, as saying.

Sadly, Uganda was better ruled as a British colony than it is under the corrupt, incompetent and down right ignorant  regime currently in charge.  Not surprisingly, given the lack of an educated populace and the general ignorance of much of the population, evangelical Christianity and Roman Catholicism are currently flourishing in Uganda.  Perhaps Michelle McQuigg should consider emigrating to Uganda - she'd likely fit right in.

Africa: Homosexuality Isn't Some Western Invention

One of the current favorite ploys of corrupt and incompetent African rulers who are desperate to distract their ignorant and uneducated populace from the severity of their misrule is to play the gay card and depict homosexuality not only as a threat to "authentic African social norms" but to also claim that it is a western import that has corrupted traditional African society.  The claims, of course, could not be further from the truth and the state the case for the argument that many African countries in actuality were far better off as colonies of European powers than under corrupt, incompetent self-rule.  Further intensifying the poisonous mix has been the propaganda of American Christofascists and charlatans like Scott Lively and Rick Warren.  A piece in The Advocate shines the spotlight on the fact that homosexuality existed in Africa long before the European conquest and that the homophobia we see today is the true western import.  Here are excerpt:

The claim by some African leaders that homosexuality is a Western export — used most recently by Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni to defend his country’s brutish legislation — doesn’t even pass the laugh test. But to get beyond guffaws, it helps to read Boy-Wives and Female Husbands, by Will Roscoe and Stephen O. Murray, published in 1998. The book, which draws in part on older ethnographic studies, catalogues so many varieties of indigenous African homosexuality that it makes the range of Western sexual identities seem positively narrow. The myriad examples of Boy-Wives and Female Husbands suggest that, of the competing forces of homosexuality and homophobia, only the latter could plausibly be an import.

» The Fante people of Ghana believed that people born with heavy souls — of either sex — would desire women, while those with light souls would desire men.

 

» In Akan society, lesbian affairs were “virtually universal”; some women purchased extra-large beds to accommodate multiple partners.

 

» Among the Zande of southwestern Sudan, a warrior who chose to marry a boy paid spears to the boy’s parents, addressing them as gbiore (father-in-law) and negbiore (mother-in-law).

 

» The Ovigangella people of Angola used the term kuzunda to describe a type of mutual masturbation in which the glans are rubbed against each other. “Solitary masturbation is so unfamiliar... that not a single word exists for it.”

 

» In Ashanti society, older boys penetrated younger boys or engaged in reciprocal anal intercourse (known as jigle keton).

 

» The Lovedu people of Lesotho were ruled by queens who were required to take wives and even assembled female harems.

 » In South Africa, migrant workers often took male partners, who became known as “mine wives.”

Homophobia and fundamentalist religious beliefs both rely on the same thing: ignorant populations that can be manipulated by the power hungry be they wearing pastor robes or seeking political advancement.  Sadly, when  individuals like Uganda president Yoweri Museveni make statements like the one noted above they are relying on the ignorance of their own populace but also announcing their own ignorance and stupidity to the world.  In fact, this basic theory applies across the broad be it Vladimir Putin making the foul claims or some fundamentalist pastor someplace in Bumfuck America.

The take away?  The importance of knowing true history and being able to challenge the batshitery of the "godly folk."  As for Museveni, he might just as well have "I'm a fucking moron" tattooed across his forehead.  He makes a trained circus dog appear to be the height of intelligence in comparison.

Why Africa’s Turning Anti-Gay

Sadly, news out of much of Africa is increasingly depressing as ignorant and corrupt rulers are using gays as a scapegoat for colonialism - even though it is colonialism that brought anti-gay laws to the continent in the first place - and a way to distract a gullible public from the massive misrule by their leaders.  Making the situation even worse are the efforts of American Christofascists to export homophobia to Africa even as they are losing the so-called culture wars in the west and America in particular.  For their brand of religion to thrive, one needs an ignorant populace and they have that in much of Africa. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the unfortunate situation.  Here are highlights:

[A]fter a story about George Freeman, director of the Sierra Leone LGBT organization Pride Equality, was published in a local newspaper last year—with photos accompanying it—he was dragged from his car and beaten by two men on motorcycles.

Freeman never consented to the story; the newspaper culled its content from an MTV interview. His assailants were never caught.

There are many stories like Freeman’s, of course, and the situation is steadily getting worse, even as LGBTs have made remarkable progress here—or perhaps because of it.  In fact, the rising tide of anti-gay sentiment in sub-Saharan Africa, as elsewhere, is an ironic brew of anti-Westernism and Western influence.  And well-meaning American activists may be making it worse.

Homosexual acts are illegal in 78 countries. Of these, 21 are small island nations, 20 are in the Islamic world, and 33 are in sub-Saharan Africa. In all three categories, almost all anti-gay laws are a vestige of European colonialism, and date back approximately 150 years.

Ironically, anti-gay leaders—politicians, clergy, journalists—in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone have all, within the last month, called gay rights, and homosexuality itself, a “Western” innovation that must be resisted in order to preserve “traditional African values.”

In fact, pre-colonial African traditions varied widely. Over 20 cultural varieties of indigenous African same-sex intimacy have been recorded by anthropologists. There are Bushmen paintings of men having sex with one another. There are countless examples of cross-dressing and cross-gender behavior. There are instances of female warriors marrying other female warriors, such as in the kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin—unsurprisingly, the Europeans called them ‘Amazons.’  There are even cases of male homosexuality being seen as possessing magical properties, such as the transmission of wealth from one person to another.

The irony would be funny if it weren’t tragic: cultures with rich traditions of sexual diversity now asserting that sexual diversity is Western, and that Western anti-gay bias is a traditional cultural value.

“African” ideas about homosexuality are often those spread by American Evangelicals, out to colonize Africa spiritually rather than politically.  Lou Engle, Scott Lively, Human Life International—these are not household names in the United States, and that’s precisely the point. Like has-been basketball players dunking baskets in Europe, the leftovers of the American Evangelical scene have found new life in Africa.

These Westerners bring (relative) wads of cash and influence, and are gladly met by opportunistic African leaders. Each group is using the other: Evangelicals shift policy and are able to raise money back home, and their African collaborators can posture against Western imperialism and get rich.

The notion that developing world countries should leapfrog 40 years of social history, and the corresponding one that Western sanctions should whip them if they don’t, only feeds the flames of anti-Western sentiment and bolsters the political position of anti-Western posturing.

There are alternatives. Donor nations could support those countries who have passed anti-discrimination laws (Botswana and Mozambique, for example), replacing the Western stick with a carrot. . . . Most importantly, European and American funders can support a fight for equality in Africa led by Africans themselves.

Homophobia, not Homosexuality, Is Alien to Traditional African Culture

It drives me crazy to watch American Christofascists play blacks - both here in America and in Africa - for suckers and, worse yet, to see blacks allow themselves to be played for fools due to a lack of knowledge of true history.  Here in America, white Christofascists are the same group who used the Bible to justify segregation, bans on interracial marriage, racist views of blacks, and now back Republican Party efforts to disenfranchise blacks across the country.  Any black citizen that knows who these folks are ought to run screaming away from them.  Yet, here in Virginia, the racists and theocrats time and time again get black pastors to do their bidding like trained circus dogs.  Now we see the same thing happening in Africa where American Christofascists have been busy exporting hate and homophobia even as they see themselves losing the war against gays in America.  A piece in The Guardian looks at the fact that anti-gay violence and homophobia are NOT traditional to Africa.  It's all an import brought by colonial rule and white missionaries, many of who are Christofascists.  In my view, blacks who listen to American Christofascists would do well to have their foreheads tattooed with "I'm a cretin." Here are some story excerpts:

While the Sochi Olympics have understandably brought much needed attention to the prevalence of homophobia in Russia, the crisis for LGBT communities in African countries has only been given footnote status by comparison. Homosexuality is a crime in 38 of 54 sub-Saharan countries but even as tougher laws are being enacted in Uganda that would, for example, make it a crime not to report gay people to the police, there is a strain of cultural relativism often evident in debates on LGBT rights in Africa. This has allowed the apparent misconception among some people, both in Africa and the west, that homosexuality is an imperial import and that those opposed to the human rights of gay communities are simply reclaiming their pre-colonial cultural values.

Any person with the time to study the history of sexuality in traditional African cultures will discover that this claim is baseless. Indeed, the history of sexuality in traditional African societies has always been characterised by diversity in sexual practices and identities. Homosexual practices and identities are not new to Africa. What is new is the campaign for LGBT rights that has arisen in reaction to the revival of a homophobic legal and religious tradition inherited from European colonialism.

In the past few years, the movement against LGBT rights in Africa has brought together very strange bedfellows, African Muslim and Christian preachers with strong backing from rightwing American Christian organisations.

The dehumanisation of members of the gay community across Africa has been justified by invoking both God and traditional African culture. However, for over a century the same religious groups now claiming to be the custodians of traditional African cultures have been at the centre of programmes to systematically efface Africa's traditional cultures on grounds that, in their view, such cultures are un-Christian and un-Islamic. Thus, the position adopted by many of Africa's political and religious elites on issues relating to LGBT rights owes more to their colonial religious education than it does to their traditional African roots.

The very existence of "sodomy laws" imposed on many African cultures by British colonial rulers in an attempt to stem what they thought of as the sexual immorality of African cultures point to the presence of diversity in sexual practices among Africans prior to their encounter with Europeans.
I venture to suggest that indeed the absence of words for homosexuality in some African languages, if this is true, is in itself proof that gay people were never considered as existing outside of the norm in such traditional African societies. Thus, it is more likely that the language of "othering" now used to discuss and describe gay communities in Africa is a remnant of colonialism.

As I said, if blacks want to be true to their cultural history, it is the American Christofascists who need to be rejected and criminalized, not gays.   I'd further add another reason that American Christofascists have focused on Africa: their poisonous version of Christianity needs ignorant, uneducated populations to flourish.  African doing the bidding of these Christofascist are demonstrating their own ignorance and stupidity.  Harsh statements?  Yes, but all too true.  Fundamentalist Christianity is nothing less than a pestilence that needs to be eradicated.