Martin Davie–A Review Of The 2022 Partial Lambeth Gathering Calls Guidance And Study Document

The Call on Human Dignity is right to declare that ‘acts and attitudes against the dignity of God’s children are sin.’ [10] However, the Call is also problematic both in what it says and in what it does not say.

It is problematic in what it says because, as before, it takes an entirely negative view of the colonial legacy, failing to acknowledge that there are positive as well as negative aspects to it. It calls for the establishment of a Commission for Redemptive Action to shape the response of the Church Commissioners and the Communion as a whole to the historic issues of colonialism and slavery, but it does not give any explanation of why such a commission is necessary or what it is meant to achieve.

What precisely is ‘redemptive action’? We are not told. If it means that the Church Commissioners should pay reparations (to whom and on what basis?) then it should say so. It calls for Anglicans to lobby for ‘social protection measures’[11] but does not explain what these are. It suggests that the work of the ACC on promoting human dignity in relation to gender should be extended to cover sexuality, but it doesn’t say what this would mean in practice and the danger is that this could be used as a cover for encouraging the acceptance of same-sex relationships.

It is problematic in what it does not say in that although it acknowledges Lambeth 1.10 as ‘the mind of the Communion as a whole’[12] it fails to say that therefore provinces should act in accordance with it, or that where they have failed to act in accordance with it, they need to repent and seek to rectify the situation. It is also problematic in that it fails to say that the dignity of the human person exists from the moment of conception and that therefore abortion should never be viewed as a legitimate form of birth control, and in that fails to note that God’s creation of human beings as male and female means that gender transition is an act of rebellion against God that the Church should not support or give liturgical recognition to, even while offering love and support to the persons concerned.

Read it all.