Does anyone care that the Archbishop of Canterbury abstained?
from Anglican Futures:
In an interview last week with the Anglican Communion News Service, the Archbishop of Canterbury made a big song and dance about the fact that he had abstained, “on a motion about prayers for couples in same sex relationships,” because, “Archbishops of Canterbury must always work for the maximum possible unity in the Church, however impossible that may seem and however deep our differences. For that reason, I abstained on the vote because my pastoral responsibility extends to everyone in the Church of England and global Anglican Communion.”
Putting aside this faulty approach to the unity of Christ’s Church, those tempted to believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury is in anyway neutral on these matters only need look at his track record to see what an empty gesture this ‘abstention’ is.
Summer 2022 – Lambeth Conference
At the Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury prevented any debate or vote about matters of Human Sexuality and continuously misrepresented the position of the Anglican Communion – as “Walking Together” in their differences.
These were not neutral acts, but ones which entirely accepted the progressive narrative of those whose actions have “torn the fabric of the Communion” yet wish to continue as if nothing has happened.
January 2023 – Launch of the ‘Prayers of Love and Faith’ – resources to bless couples including those in same-sex relationships
This recent abstention is not the first time that Justin Welby has attempted to present himself as ‘above’ the debates and discussions about blessing same-sex couples. A few weeks before February’s General Synod, he told a packed press conference that he was “extremely joyfully celebratory of these new resources,” but that he would not personally use them because of his, “responsibility of being a focus of unity for the whole communion.”
If anyone was in any doubt as to what his personal position about the prayers was, his insistance that this was a ‘self-denying ordinance’ gave the game away and his argument that the prayers were in fact an outworking of Lambeth I.10 because they blessed the people not the relationship was simply bizarre.
The wider Anglican Communion were not fooled then and will not be fooled now.
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