Persevere with the Church’s internal work, despite world situation, Welby tells Synod

Feb 24, 2024 by Jill

by Francis Martin, Church Times:

CONFLICT and God’s faithfulness in the face of its horrors were the key themes of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s address at the opening of the General Synod in Westminster on Friday afternoon.

Archbishop Welby began his presidential address by quoting the UN secretary-general, António Guterres: “The world is coming off its hinges.”

He referred to conflicts and consequent humanitarian crises in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Myanmar, as well as tensions in Pakistan, the Philippines, Mozambique, and the Korean peninsula, and on the United States’ southern border.

“We live in a world of suffering,” he said, but in the face of such suffering, he suggested, the Church should not shy away from its work, including its internal struggles.

He quoted the former Bishop of Chichester George Bell, who, on the eve of the Second World War, said that, in times such as these, the Church should be “even more the Church”.

“God does not abandon his Church of today, wherever it wanders. He searches and finds and carries back,” the Archbishop said. “Suffering is normal, but God is faithful, and we are called to be faithful people.”

Read here (£)