The Archbishop of Canterbury gave his presidential address to General Synod this morning. The text is available here: Archbishop’s Presidential Address to the General Synod preceded by this remark “In his presidential address to Synod today, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby spoke of the need for ‘massive cultural change’ within the Church of England so that people can flourish together despite deeply held differences on issues such as sexuality and women bishops”.
The Abc’s address:
‘facilitated conversations may be a clumsy phrase’
It is not only clumsy, it is vague, meaningless and open-ended, much like his address.
The only other spar that surfaced in this sea of blandness was his weird reference to the ‘heroics’ of the Ugandan and Nigerian churches. Those being the ones that actively persecute their LGBT communities!
So justice lgbt next in his church ?
I suspect he is right – that the churches in those places, as well as having obnoxious views, and doing terrible things, also have awful struggles, and the Christians in them face challenges that are mountains to climb. I think too he is right about the C of E and that it is also true of my own church. The only way ahead is diversity. Acknowledgement that we cannot always agree and must sometimes let others have a very different path. That some churches will offer marriage to same sex couples and others will not.
Not a fan of this man. Nonetheless, I think he has experienced several reality checks and he is capable – as so many are not – of distinguishing between layers of importance.
The underlying problem is neutrality on sexism and homophobia. Neutrality that legitimizes both.
Diversity is not inherently good. The church doesn’t encourage diversity on racist theology. Until it takes a stand against sexism and homophobia, the institution, and its diversity, are morally bankrupt.