At the Center of a Schism

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The Robinson ordination galvanized Akinola to further delineate between his definitions of right and wrong. His public rhetoric has often come across as tactless compared with the nuance of other conservatives. He has called Robinson's elevation "a satanic attack on the church of God" and has repeatedly compared homosexuality to partnering with baboons, lions, dogs or cows.

Akinola is nearly as blunt in official contexts. He pulled out of a 2004 communion conference that released a report criticizing Robinson's election without condemning it outright, and he later published a statement calling it "far short of the prescription needed." The next year he helped hammer out a demand that the U.S. and other churches "voluntarily withdraw" from the communion's central governing body unless they expressed regret and declared a moratorium on further gay ordinations or blessings. Last September, ominously, he excised all references to the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury from his church's statement of mission.

Many conservatives applaud such acts, loudly or quietly. There have been moments, however, that have given pause even to his allies. After deadly Muslim-on-Christian attacks in Nigeria during the Danish cartoon debacle last year, he announced, "May we ... remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation," leading some to wonder whether an Anglican Archbishop was threatening vendetta. The Archbishop of Canterbury rode to his rescue, saying Akinola had intended a warning, not a threat. Perhaps, but it was not atypical: responding to Human Rights Watch investigators regarding a bloody 2004 Nigerian exchange in which Muslim-initiated violence took 75 Christian lives and Christian reprisals killed 700 Muslims, the group reported that Akinola snapped, "I don't have records of Christian groups going out deliberately to attack. The church says turn the other cheek, but now there is no other cheek to turn."

Similar uneasiness surfaced when Akinola backed a 2006 Nigerian legislative bill that would assign five years in jail to not just practicing homosexuals but also those who support them. He was not alone: the legislation was enthusiastically embraced by almost every religious group, Christian and Muslim, in the country. Nonetheless, the bill was condemned by human-rights agencies and the governments of other countries, including the U.S., and it contradicted explicit Anglican accords asserting gays' freedom from persecution. According to Canon Vinay Samuel, founder of the Oxford Center for Mission Studies, who has often seemed in sympathy with Akinola, "there was an effort to try to get him to change his position." Many months later, the Nigerian qualified his position, admitting "genuine concerns about human rights."