Tutu Criticizes His Church Over Stance Toward Gays

Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu was in London earlier this month to receive an Honorary Fellowship of the Guild of Church Musicians in Westminster Cathedral.

Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

For someone who won the Nobel Prize for peacemaking, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa doesn't seem opposed to stirring up some controversy.

For instance, he's been heavily critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy — a subject he addressed in front of hundreds last week at an event commemorating the 50th anniversary of Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

But it was his comments during the weekend about the Anglican Church's position on gays that drew the most notice. In an interview with the BBC, he said the Anglican Church is "almost obsessed" with gay issues and said the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has failed to demonstrate that God is "welcoming."

"God must be weeping looking at some of the atrocities that we commit against one another," he said in the interview.

He said he felt "saddened" and "ashamed" at the way the church handled the issue of openly gay New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson. "If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God," he said.

Robinson, who was elected bishop in 2003, has become a lightning rod for issues of homosexuality in the Anglican Church (known as the Episcopal Church in the United States). Since Robinson's election, several conservative congregations have separated from the main U.S. church, and others are considering it.

Meanwhile, The Daily Telegraph reports that Williams "is preparing to target individual bishops whose pro-gay policies threaten to derail his efforts to avert schism." In what the paper calls a "high-risk" strategy, he might even withdraw the bishops' invitations to attend the Lambeth Conference, a highly influential periodic meeting.

5:30 PM ET | 11-19-2007 | permalink