Day: December 22, 2009

Today, NPR’s Fresh Air featured an interview with former Ford and Carter administration official, Bob Hunter. An interview with Mr. Hunter was recently featured on this blog via a guest post by Jeff Sharlet.

The transcript is here and is interesting reading to say the least. Here is a little bit:

GROSS: Uganda now has anti-gay legislation before parliament that is really draconian. It would call for the death penalty for anyone who is gay who had HIV-AIDS, the death penalty for adults who have gay sex with minors, jail for anyone who fails to report a gay person within 24 hours if there’s been gay activity, life sentences for people in same-sex marriages, and this bill also calls for extraditing gay Ugandans living abroad so that they can be brought back to Uganda and be prosecuted.

What’s your opinion of that bill, being so close to the country of Uganda?

Mr. HUNTER: Well, my opinion is it’s a terrible bill and shouldn’t be adopted, and I believe no one that I know, in America particularly, and my close friends in Uganda, I know of no one who supports it in the Fellowship.

GROSS: Since you have so many connections in Uganda and since you know President Museveni and helped bring him to the National Prayer Breakfast in 1997, which is organized by the Fellowship – the Family – did you – have you spoken out to your connections in Uganda?

Mr. HUNTER: Oh yes. Definitely. In fact, when I first called them, and well, first was an email contact, they said, look, the guy who introduced the bill came to one of our prayer breakfasts and afterwards, in a private meeting he told us about the bill and we told him it was a bad idea. So even before the bill was introduced, members of the Fellowship had said you should reach out to other people before you do this. It’s, you know, be cautious. This is not a good idea. They did it in a very polite Ugandan way but the fact is they spoke out even before it was introduced.

Mr. Hunter then mentions Jeff Sharlet’s guest post and seems very keen to emphasize the Fellowship’s position on Uganda.

GROSS: Now, so these are statements that have been made in the United States. What about statements to Ugandans like calling up connections or calling up people who they have prayed with?

Mr. HUNTER: My understanding is there has been some connections. I know I have done it personally and talked to people who would be close to people in the decision-making process about our concerns, which is very unusual. You know, we never involve ourselves in these political things. That’s not our role. But this one became so, you know, hot that we decided – I decided that I should speak out, and then I found out they were already speaking out in Uganda.

I would say that, one other thing…

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. HUNTER: …and that is that Mr. Sharlet now recognizes that we had nothing to do with the anti-homosexual bill and has so said so in post by Warren Throckmorton.

You can listen to the entire interview here.

These GOP leaders wrote a letter to Uganda’s President Museveni.

Five Republican representatives – Chris Smith, Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts, Trent Franks and Anh “Joseph” Cao – have written a letter to Ugandan President Yoweri Mouseveni pressing him to stop pending legislation that would severely criminalize homosexuality and sometimes impose the death penalty for homosexual acts.

In the letter, which you can read in full here, the men say their religious faith requires them to oppose the legislation because it contradicts the “foundational Christian belief in the inherent dignity and worth of all men and women.”

This is a good thing and a possible basis for a Congressional resolution.

In my review of information about American evangelicals in Africa, I have learned at least one thing — writing about the US ministries that do not have a connection with Uganda might be easier than disclosing those that do. Many groups have been there, invested there and worked with those who seem most responsible for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

This post briefly looks at one household name in Uganda – Joyce Meyer. At least I am told by some Ugandans that she is well known and a review of her activities there make this assessment believable.

Joyce Meyer is one of several high profile preachers with bestselling books and a massive empire based on the success of those books. Meyer’s Christianity seems to be Pentecostal with a heaping dose of prosperity tossed in. Meyer is on television every day in Uganda via LTV – Uganda’s affiliate of Paul Crouch’s TBN. When she held meetings in Uganda in 2008, hundreds of thousands of Ugandans turned out to see her and listen to Christian bands, delirious and Hillsong. She had meetings with Uganda’s first lady, Janet Museveni.

Nothing wrong with any of this or her current work there. Meyer is partnering with a Ugandan church to provide care for orphans which is after all one of the hallmarks of true religion according to the New Testament. I am writing about Joyce Meyer is due to the church with which she works in Uganda – Watoto Community Church. WCC is home to Stephen Langa, who is an elder there and one of the chief cheerleaders for the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

So in partnership with Marilyn and Gary Skinner and their ministry we are helping to build a Watoto children’s village there. They have also planted a great church, and we have plans to build a babies’ home, too.

The highlight came when over 200,000 people, in 2 nights, came to see Joyce and the Hillsong worship band.

Joyce preached with an incredible boldness, breaking down many walls of fear, brokenness and helplessness that the years of war had left. We have a long-term commitment to this area and believe through God’s power and your prayers, we can turn an impossible situation around.

It appears that Joyce Meyer Ministries is truly doing a good work at the Watoto Church. No doubt Watoto Church elder Stephen Langa is doing good things to support children there. However, he also supports a bill that in the current form would make some private, consensual adult behaviors punishable by death or life in prison. His proposal also criminalizes confidential professional relationships with same-sex attracted people now taken for granted by all pastoral and health care professionals. The harshness of the current bill rivals that of Muslim regimes where homosexuality is criminalized. So faced with a collaborator who is engaged in such an effort, Joyce Meyer could use her influence to denounce the bill on Ugandan television without denouncing the child related work there. She could do what Rick Warren has done and declare opposition to what Warren calls an “unchristian” proposal. However, when asked via email and phone, Joyce Meyer Ministries told me this instead:

While we both understand and appreciate your interest in contacting us, unfortunately, we have no comment to offer.

Thank you.

Joyce Meyer Ministries

While I can both understand and appreciate Joyce Meyer’s interest in staying neutral, I am disappointed that she is not using her influence both to help children and stand up for those image-bearers of God who are the target of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009.