Oh yes, I have some feelings about this

Clumber first pointed me toward the article in The Atlantic. It is about Nigeria and is titled "God's Country." The author is Eliza Griswold, daughter of former Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold.

Then I read more at Fr. Jake's.

I commend the larger original article for more context. These highlights are chilling.

One Tuesday at 7 a.m. in Yelwa, about 70 people were praying their morning devotions at the Church of Christ in Nigeria (founded by none other than the fiery Kumm himself). It was in February 2004, about a year after the elders had issued their edict that no Christian woman was to be seen with a Muslim man. As the worshippers finished their prayers, they heard gunshots and a call from the loudspeakers of the mosque next door: “Allahu Akhbar, let us go for jihad.” ... [P]eople fled toward the road behind the church. There, men dressed in military fatigues reassured them that they were safe and herded them back to the church. Then the men opened fire. ... The attackers—who were not, in fact, Nigerian soldiers—set the church on fire and killed everyone who tried to escape.

[snip]

Two months after the church was razed, Christian men and boys surrounded Yelwa. Many were bare-chested; others wore shirts on which they’d reportedly pinned white name tags identifying them as members of the Christian Association of Nigeria, an umbrella organization founded in the 1970s to give Christians a collective and unified voice as strong as that of Muslims. Each tag had a number instead of a name: a code, it seemed, for identification. They attacked the town. According to Human Rights Watch, 660 Muslims were massacred over the course of the next two days, including the patients in the Al-Amin clinic. Twelve mosques and 300 houses went up in flames. Young girls were marched to a nearby Christian town and forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. Many were raped, and 50 were killed.

[snip]

At the time of the massacre, Archbishop Peter Akinola was the president of the Christian Association of  Nigeria, whose membership was implicated in the killings. He has since lost his bid for another term but, as primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, he is still the leader of 18 million Anglicans. He is a colleague of my father, who was the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America from 1997 to 2006. But the American Episcopals’ election of an openly homosexual bishop in 2003, which Archbishop Akinola denounced as “satanic,” created distance between them.

[snip]

When asked if those wearing name tags that read “Christian Association of Nigeria” had been sent to the Muslim part of Yelwa, the archbishop grinned. “No comment,” he said. “No Christian would pray for violence, but it would be utterly naive to sweep this issue of Islam under the carpet.” He went on, “I’m not out to combat anybody. I’m only doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I’m living my faith, practicing and preaching that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to God, and they respect me for it. They know where we stand. I’ve said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence.”

Perhaps Abp. Akinola had nothing to do with the massacre at Yelwa. I hope he did not.

Even so, that he could grin when discussing it is absolutely chilling.

I think about the repeated contrasts in the New Testament between the way of power (the way of dominion and empire and violence) and the way of love (the way of service and compassion). Who is Lord? Jesus or Caesar?

Where endless vendettas occur it seems clear enough to me that we are dealing with the way of Caesar, the way of power and violence, the way of Satan.

And Abp. Akinola then has the nerve to denounce those who celebrate forms of love that he disapproves as satanic.

As our evangelical friend Grace keeps saying at other blogs: Lord, have mercy.
--the BB