Nigerian Anglicans Seeing Gay Challenge to Orthodoxy
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: December 18, 2005

ABUJA, Nigeria - At one end of town on a fall Saturday morning, in a soaring cathedral nestled in a tidy suburb, dozens of Nigeria's most powerful citizens gathered, their Mercedes, Porsche and Range Rover sport utility vehicles gleaming in a packed parking lot. The well-heeled crowd was there to celebrate the Eucharist with the leader of Nigeria's Anglican Church, Archbishop Peter J. Akinola.

At the other end of town, in a small clubhouse behind a cultural center, a decidedly more downscale and secretive gathering of Anglicans got under way: the first national meeting of a group called Changing Attitudes Nigeria. Its unassuming name, and the secrecy accompanying its meeting - the location was given to a visitor only after many assurances that it would not be revealed to anyone else - underscored the radical nature of the group's mission: to fight for acceptance of homosexuals in the Anglican Church in Nigeria.

"We want to tell the bishop that it is our church, too," said Davis Mac-Iyalla, a 33-year-old former teacher who founded the group, which claims to have hundreds of members. "They do not own the word of Jesus. It belongs to all of us." Story