BBC:
SA church on horns of ox dilemma
“Animal anti-cruelty officials in South Africa have locked horns with the Anglican Church over plans to slaughter an ox at a church ceremony….”

News24.com:
Concern over ox killing by church
“THE fate of an ox due to be killed next Friday in a ritual slaughter at a church in Khayelitsha is evolving into a clash between the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and the Anglican church….”

UPI:
Church’s ox sacrifice plan draws protest
“CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Nov. 25 (UPI) — An Anglican Church’s plan to sacrifice an ox in Cape
Town, South Africa, is being opposed by animal anti-cruelty supporters….”

Cape Argus:
Cleric lashes critics of church ox slaughter
November 23, 2005
By Bulelani Phillip
“A row over the slaughtering of an ox has erupted at a city church and the pastor of the church has lashed out at complainants, saying they are ‘imposing their views and norms’ on African people….”

The last paragraph says,

“Sogiba said he had no problems with the SPCA guidelines, ‘but in townships animals are slaughtered daily and weekly for funerals, so I find it strange that now that it is on church premises, this causes a hullabaloo’.”

There is nothing strange about it.

“Now that it is on church premises” is exactly the point….

On the general topic of sycretism in the Anglican Church from the Church Times, an excerpt from Bringing new blood into church:

“Hostility to ritual animal slaughter lingers from the colonial era, when missionaries forbade indigenous Africans from carrying out ‘heathen’ practices.

“Nevertheless, the Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Njongonkulu Ndungane, says that the practice is not banned.

ì’Iím not mindful that this issue has ever come before our commissions to say this is prohibited, because itís not animal sacrifice as such. Itís a liturgical function which connects the living and the dead,’ he says.”

Martyred by the Anglican Diocese of False Bay
on Friday, November 25, 2005

(photos compliments of the SPCA, Cape Town)

Lamb of God,

Have mercy!

“No More Animal Sacrifices”

by the Rev. Andrew Linzey
(Anglican priest)

21 I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

– Amos 5:21-24