How Anticolonial Appeals Fueled East African Churches' Rejection of LGBTQ Inclusion

Why This Question Matters

Sarah K. Dreier (ISQ) investigates why disagreements over U.S. churches' decisions to ordain same-sex partnered clergy produced sharp transnational ruptures with their East African counterparts. The study asks how and why some African churches severed ties while others stayed formally partnered yet publicly denounced LGBTQ inclusion — and what those choices reveal about how global rights norms travel (or stall) across contexts.

What Dreier Examines

The paper focuses on Anglican and Lutheran churches in East Africa and their bilateral institutional relationships with American counterparts after those U.S. churches embraced LGBTQ-inclusive clergy. Dreier traces how African churches framed their responses and links these rhetorical and organizational moves to the churches' material and institutional dependence on U.S. partners.

How the Argument Is Tested

• Systematic analysis of churches' public statements, partnership decisions, and patterns of financial and institutional reliance on U.S. counterparts.
• Comparative attention to variation in responses across East African denominations and congregational networks.

Key Findings

• East African churches adopted a strategy Dreier calls "symbolic resistance": they invoked anticolonial language and ideas to claim moral and cultural authority at home while responding to U.S. liberalization.
• Churches with the least financial or institutional dependence on U.S. partners were more likely to cut formal ties entirely, using dissociation to reinforce domestic symbolic capital.
• Churches more dependent on bilateral support tended to preserve formal partnerships but issued forceful public denunciations of LGBTQ inclusion.

What This Reveals About Transnational Norms

Rather than simply rejecting foreign norms as alien, Dreier shows how actors in the Global South can convert perceived incongruence into domestic political advantage. International rights advocacy can unintentionally motivate local actors to amplify anticolonial narratives, producing strategic resistance that slows or redirects norm diffusion.

Why This Matters for Scholars and Practitioners

This study reframes debates about norm transfer by demonstrating the political uses of symbolic resistance in religious institutions and offers practical caution for transnational engagement: partners seeking change must account for how local actors use global disagreements to bolster standing within domestic religious and political arenas.