Kevin Ward

Morality plays and money matters: towards a situated understanding of the politics of homosexuality in Uganda

Since the drafting of Ugandas anti-homosexuality bill in 2009, considerable attention has been paid both in Uganda and across the African continent to the political and social significance of homosexual behaviour and identity. However, current debates have not adequately explained how and why anti-homosexual rhetoric has been able to gain such popular purchase within Uganda. In order to move beyond reductive representations of an innate African homophobia, we argue that it is necessary to recognise the deep imbrication of sexuality, family life, procreation and material exchange in Uganda, as well as the ways in which elite actors (including government officials, the media and religious leaders) are able to manipulate social anxieties to further particular ends. We employ a discourse analysis of reporting in the state-owned newspaper New Vision , first considering how the issue of homosexuality has been represented in relation to wider discourses regarding threats to public morality and national sovereignty. Then, through fieldwork undertaken in Uganda in 2009, we explore three key themes that offer deeper insights into the seeming resonance of this popular rhetoric about homosexuality: constructions of the family, the nature of societal morality, and understandings about reciprocity and material exchange in contemporary Ugandan society.

New York Encounters: Religion, Sexuality, and the City:

This paper explores questions of sexual difference and religious belief in relation to recent debates in urban studies and geography on urban encounters. Although it has been widely suggested that increased contact between members of different groups is an important driver for tolerant and respectful intergroup relations, there is need for more careful consideration of the kinds of sites that actually facilitate ‘meaningful encounters’. Specifically, we draw on empirical research in Episcopalian churches in New York City and examine how straight-identified parishioners and clergy narrate and perceive their encounters with the citys LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) population. Moving beyond the traditional focus on public space in the literature on cosmopolitan urbanism, we examine how churches serve as ‘micropublics’ which organize, facilitate, and/or limit encounters with sexual difference. To capture the tension between orthodox theological understandings of human sexuality and lived experiences in a metropolitan context where homosexuality is expressed relatively openly, the discussion focuses in particular on an evangelical case-study parish, where the church leadership is opposed to full LGBT inclusion in the church.

Lifelong Education and the Workplace: A Critical Analysis.

This paper contains an analysis of policy formulations which underlie the work of the ‘Leeds Adult Learners at Work’ project (1991‐93). The overall aim of the project was to assess the contribution that broadly based Employee Development training schemes organized through the workplace can make towards achieving the internationally recognized goal of ‘lifelong learning’. The paper follows Ball (1990) in seeing policy as a contested arena in which different actors struggle to impose their views. This involves an analysis of competing discourses. However, the discourse interfaces with a socio‐economic system in which individual adults find their day‐today lives increasingly constrained. First, an analysis is made of the economic context of education and training policy in terms of the international division of labour, the apparently contradictory processes of deskilling and reskilling, and mass unemployment. A critical analysis follows of the rhetoric which identifies education and training as a panacea for...

Sexuality, Activism, and Witness in the Anglican Communion: The 2008 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops

The international Anglican Communion is a key site for struggles over the status of gays and lesbians within Christian churches. This article examines the forms that movements for gay and lesbian inclusion have taken in the Communion through an analysis of collective action at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, a central event in Anglicanisms institutional structure. The analysis builds on recent critiques of the state-centric orientation of much social movement research, arguing that intrareligious movements provide important sites for understanding contemporary processes of social change. Although prior accounts of the sexuality debates within Anglicanism have tended to provide relatively monolithic portrayals of a “gay rights lobby,” activists at Lambeth employed diverse and contested repertoires of action. Although some use was made of conspicuously oppositional protest, many campaigners framed their activities as forms of Christian witness emanating from within the boundary of Anglicanism (rather than the field of secular politics). Gay and lesbian groups sought to complicate overly binaristic notions of conservative (or traditional) versus liberal Christians, stressing aspects of their Christian orthodoxy and their commitment to patterns of lifelong partnership and monogamy. At a moment when many secular gay and lesbian organizations are taking more notice of religion, there is a need for future research to consider how gay and lesbian Christian movements will engage with and influence wider equality struggles.

'The Armies of the Lord': Christianity, Rebels and the State in Northern Uganda, 1986-1999

The accession to power of the National Resistance Movement in Uganda in 1986 was intended to inaugurate a new beginning for Uganda, an end to the political, ethnic and religious divisions that had characterised the countrys violent history since the 1960s. Although peace, stability and the strengthening of democratic structures have brought substantial progress to many parts of the country, the Acholi of Northern Uganda have felt largely excluded from these benefits. Violence and insecurity have characterised the districts of Gulu and Kitgum since 1986. It is not simply the failure of development that has been so distressing for the inhabitants, but the collapse of the moral framework and the institutions that gave society coherence. Religion has played a considerable part in articulating the sense of loss and anger at this state of affairs. Traditional Acholi and Christian religious sentiments have helped to shape and sustain rebel movements against the central government, and to inform Acholi responses to the violence inflicted by rebels and government. The article, based on field work conducted in 1999, examines ways in which the main Churches, Catholic and Protestant (Anglican), have historically been bound up with the political divisions of Acholi. It examines the painful adjustments which loss of access to power has necessitated, particularly for the Anglican Church. Since 1986 the Churches have had a vital role in conflict resolution and in envisioning new futures for Acholi. The majority of the population, required to live in protected villages, have few material and spiritual resources. The importance of Christian faith and practice for Acholi living in such situations of prolonged conflict, with few signs of speedy resolution, is assessed.

Constructing the boundaries of Anglican orthodoxy: An analysis of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON)

Abstract This article examines the evolution of the transnational orthodox Anglican movement through the lens of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON)—the movements most significant public expression to date. GAFCON represented the first large‐scale event at which a sizable number of Anglicans (ordained and lay) from both the global North and global South gathered to galvanise an ‘orthodox’ response to the current ‘crisis’ in the Anglican Communion (a crisis precipitated by debates over the status of homosexuality). The analysis is based upon fieldwork conducted at GAFCON, a review of a range of documentary sources, and retrospective interviews with several attendees. The article argues that GAFCON constituted a key moment for the attempted framing of movement objectives for participants, other Anglicans, and outside observers, fixing a standard of orthodoxy in the final Jerusalem Declaration. While attempting to project an image of orthodox unity to outsiders, GAFCON leaders also made the negotiation of certain aspects of cultural difference central to the events purpose. Detailed examinations are provided of two topics (homosexuality and female ordination) that exemplify the ongoing negotiation of the boundaries of orthodoxy within the movement. The article concludes with reflections on the significance and further development of the movement

Emplacements: The Event as a Prism for Exploring Intersectionality; a Case Study of the Lambeth Conference

This article addresses the intersection of sexual orientation and religion and belief through a focus on a specific religious community — the worldwide Anglican Communion. It does so by unpacking a particular event within this Communion debate: the decennial Lambeth Conference, at Canterbury, UK. Events have received little attention within sociology, yet case studies of particular events potentially represent an effective way of empirically researching the complexity of the ways that intersections of categories, such as sexual orientation and religion and belief, are experienced in everyday life. By focusing on the strategies of pro-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) groups at Lambeth, this article demonstrates how, in the material space of an ‘event’, abstract discourses and positionings in diffuse social networks become transformed into tangible emplaced social relations where power is outworked.

The Meanings of Communion: Anglican Identities, the Sexuality Debates, and Christian Relationality

Recent discussions of the international Anglican Communion have been dominated by notions of a ‘crisis’ and ‘schism’ resulting from conflicts over issues of homosexuality. Existing accounts of the Communion have often tended to emphasise the perspectives of those most vocal in the debates (particularly bishops, senior clergy, and pressure groups) or to engage in primarily theological analysis. This article examines the nature of the purported ‘crisis’ from the perspectives of Anglicans in local parishes in three different national contexts: England, South Africa, and the United States. Unusually for writing on the Communion, attention is simultaneously given to parishes that have clear pro-gay stances, those that largely oppose the acceptance of homosexual practice, and those with more ambivalent positions. In doing so, the article offers new insights for the growing body of literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians, as well as wider discussions about the contested nature of contemporary Anglican and other Christian identities. Key themes include the divergent ways in which respondents felt (and did not feel) connections to the spatially distant ‘others’ with whom they are in Communion; the complex relationships and discordances between parish, denominational, and Communion-level identities; and competing visions of the role of the Communion in producing unity or preserving diversity amongst Anglicans.

Obedient Rebels - The Relationship between the Early Balokole and the Church of Uganda : The Mukono Crisis of 1941

Balokole, mot luganda, signifie le peuple sauve . Cest un mouvement religieux issu de lEglise anglicane en Ouganda dans les annees 1920, a linitiative de Simeoni Nsibambi. Une crise latente eclata en 1941 lorsque vingt-six adherents furent exclus du seminaire anglican de Mukono (situe au nord du lac Victoria). Dans la suite, on parvint a un accommodement entre lEglise anglicane et ce mouvement qui est maintenant integre dans lEglise a laquelle il a donne des eveques. Concerne aussi le Rwanda

Series on Church and State: Eating and Sharing: Church and State in Uganda

The article explores the complexities of church-state relations in Uganda, with particular reference to the two dominant churches: the Anglican Church of Uganda (the Protestants) and the Roman Catholic Church. Together the two churches include some 80 per cent of Ugandans. Since the beginnings of Christianity in the late nineteenth century, the rivalry between the two communions has had political implications, with the Anglican Church perceived as constituting a quasi-establishment and the Catholics as lacking political clout. In local discourse, ‘eating’ refers to the enjoyment of political power; ‘sharing’ to the expectation of inclusion. The article looks at the attempt to overcome sectarian politics, and the Christian witness of both churches in the face of state oppression and violence.