Church of Nigeria Consultation on Human Rights

July 25th, 2011
Anglican Mainstream

In 2010 Archbishop Nicholas Okoh of Nigeria reacted to activism by United Nations bodies on behalf of homosexual rights by noting that this activism went beyond the issue of rights and appeared to support the advancement of homosexual lifestyles in Africa. He said that if the United Nations Organisation was now an organ for advancing homosexual lifestyle, it was time Nigeria pulled out of that organization to protect the moral health of Nigeria.

This raised the question of the relationship between Human Rights and the Church. The Church of Nigeria convened a National Consultation on Human Rights from June 27 to July 1 2011 in Abuja. Participants attended from South Africa, Sudan, Zambia, Mozambique, India, Brazil, the UK and the USA with High Court Judges, State Governors, two former Cabinet Ministers, archbishops and theologians from the Church of Nigeria.

Its communiqué ( see here) reports that the consultation was held to: protect the moral health of the Nation in the light of the UN Human Rights Groups’ approach to promoting vices as rights in Africa; undertake a comprehensive overview of the foundations and ideology of rights as globally understood; identify the role of the Church in shaping the discourse and policies on human rights in Africa; examine the Biblical resources for understanding human rights and how human rights are framed, promoted, protected and to some extent, violated within the context of the African culture.
The communique reports that “Each person is entitled to human rights just as he/she has a responsibility to respect the rights of others. Human institutions are called upon to preserve and implement them.”

“The Church’s commitment to human rights rooted in the Biblical founding of human dignity is amplified in God’s covenant promises and supremely revealed in the incarnation of Jesus as the true image of God. Our understanding of human rights must be measured by the Bible’s revelation of human worth. the rest