Another satirical post, adapted from this comment I made last October at Tominthebox News Network.
IBI, NIGERIA: The Reverend Eustace Lovejoy is a puzzled man. Back home in a country town in Washington state, he is Rector of a small and dwindling Episcopal congregation. But here in a remote part of Nigeria, where he is making his third visit to a mission hospital to bring humanitarian aid, his sermons attract crowds of tens of thousands. Locally he has been hailed as the new Billy Graham.
Gentle Wisdom’s correspondent asked Rev Lovejoy what he was preaching. He replied, “Here in Nigeria I preach the same as I do every Sunday at home, that we should all love one another, and especially we must love gay and lesbian people. Most of my congregation in America have left, because there is such homophobia there that people want me to preach a different message sometimes. In fact now the dozen or so who attend are nearly all from the town’s tiny gay and lesbian community. But when I come over here it seems the whole district wants to hear me. And then before I have even finished preaching hundreds of them come forward for me to pray for them. What I don’t understand is, why does it happen only over here?”
Gentle Wisdom then spoke to Rev Lovejoy’s interpreter, Paul Wukari, a local pastor. This was difficult because of his heavily accented English. Asked why there was such a huge response when Rev Lovejoy spoke, he said that at first crowds came to see the white man. Also rumours were going round that he was giving out American goods. But Pastor Wukari claimed that they continued to come because of the power of the preaching they heard.
In response to a question about Rev Lovejoy’s sermons, Pastor Wukari admitted that he was puzzled by them. “I know what he is saying about loving one another, and of course we should especially love people who are happy and joyful. But I get lost when he talks about lesbians, the word isn’t in my old ‘English-Yoruba Dictionary for Schools’. So I have to stop translating what he says and start preaching my own sermon. Usually I get to preach to only a few hundred, so I take my chance to present the gospel to thousands. Rev Lovejoy is often still going when I get to the appeal, but he has to stop when hundreds come forward to give their lives to Christ.”
Rev Lovejoy said that he was considering an invitation from the hospital to take up a full time position as chaplain there. “But”, he said, “I don’t think my partner would want to come. He’s a sensitive man who can’t bear heat and creepy-crawlies.” Anyway, it seems that the invitation might be withdrawn. When Gentle Wisdom mentioned Rev Lovejoy’s partner to the chairman of the hospital’s trustees, the local bishop, he replied, “What, you don’t mean to say he’s a sodomite like that Bishop Gene Robinson? This is an abomination! He will burn in hell for ever! He had better go home immediately before the local people find out and tear him from limb to limb.”
