IOL: Mugabe is ‘a prophet of God’ – rebel bishop

Last year, Kunonga withdrew from the Anglican province of Central Africa to set up his own province in Zimbabwe, ostensibly in a row about homosexuality.

But his critics claim he was really just preserving his own position. The mother church fired him last month. He has been steadily abandoned by all the parishes in Zimbabwe and now serves a community of only a few dozen worshippers who fill a few pews in the cathedral on Sunday mornings.

“We will not use the cathedral for services again until we have reconsecrated or sanctified it from the act of sacrilege done by Kunonga in that place,” said Bishop Bakare, who was brought out of retirement from eastern Zimbabwe to take over the cathedral parish temporarily.

Africa and its Anglicans is the “big stick” in the Communion, used by conservatives to try to verger we misguided majority-liberal, minority-conservative American Episcopalians into line. We’re constantly being reminded that there are far more Nigerians, Kenyans, Zimbabweans, Ugandans and other Africans in the pews in the Southern Hemisphere than there are English, Europeans, Canadians, and Americans in the Northern half of the globe (the Kiwis and the Ozzies mostly align with the North, with some standout exceptions).

Is this truly the example we are supposed to follow? Fall in with intolerance simply because there’s far more bottoms in the pews in countries were corruption and violence against gays are understood to have the Church’s blessing, or at least its acquiescent silence?

Kunonga, now deposed Bad Bishop of Harare, is failing to rally his base from the evidence in this story; his flock have caught on to his ways and have voted with their feet. They don’t bother about his assertions about homosexuality corrupting the Western church, and are making it clear that they would prefer to follow another leader. He still has a bully pulpit, the cathedral church, but with only a few dozen parishioner-thugs, he’s really just a pulpit bully preaching to an empty building behind padlocked gates.

The Zimbabwean Anglicans will need to do some serious purifications after he and his dirty laundry are finally kicked to the curb.