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| Cherry Vann at sacred Synod in 2020 with her partner, bishops and legal staff Source: Twitter |
"The 'Call on Human Identity' referenced the last statement of a Lambeth resolution on the issue from 1998, known to all as 'Lambeth 1.10' describes marriage as being 'between a man and a woman in life-long union' and states that 'legitimising or blessing of same-sex unions cannot be advised'."
"The initial response raised by the globally small minority of Anglicans who have long repudiated the statement - and some having already introduced same-sex blessings or marriage - concerned matters of principle.
"In the words of the bishops of the Church in Wales, the draft Lambeth Call on Human Dignity, undermines and subverts the dignity of an integral part of our community, rather than affirming them."
For a timeline on this sorry saga see Lambeth Conference and the same-sex story.
Same-sex spouses have not been invited to Lambeth. So deeply do the Welsh bishops feel about this ban that they have chosen to stay in a local hotel as a token of protest because +Cherry Vann’s same sex partner would not be allowed to stay on the Conference site.
How convenient for the bishops having to take superior accommodation to make their protest. At what cost and to whom one wonders.
The cost to western Anglicanism of their behaviour is considerable.
As this Anglican Ink article notes, provinces engaged in 'Progressive Ideology', including same sex marriage, are dying while provinces mainly in Africa and globally that are not so engaged are growing.
An analysis, Is Anglicanism growing or dying?, shows that in Africa the number of Anglicans increased from 7,718,000 in 1970 to 56,947,000 in 2015. Globally the numbers increased from 47,394,000 in 1970 to 90,771,000 in 2015.
"In 1970, the combined membership of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada came to 4,373,000. In 2015, the combined membership of TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada came to 2,537,000 and it has dropped considerably since then. In half a century North American Anglicanism has halved in size...
"For the rest of the West the picture is mixed. The numbers for England, Scotland, and Wales are as bad or nearly as bad as for North America...
"Central to understanding Lambeth 2022 will be recognition of who is not present. Swathes, perhaps the majority, of non-western Anglicans will be unrepresented. Beyond this, new Anglican groupings will be absent, yet they have substantial links with much of Anglicanism."
The article concludes, "Numbers are not everything, but they are not nothing. The massive growth and decline in the Anglican Communion cannot be passed over in an embarrassed silence...The shrinking provinces of North America and Britain need a new humility. Any attempt at 'business as usual' will lead to the spectacle of mostly white bishops from mostly declining western dioceses holding disproportionate influence at Lambeth. Such optics would render the deliberations of Lambeth 2022 wholly invalid."
Instead of posturing with false notions of human dignity, the Welsh bishops, and most of the English bishops, should have the humility to face reality and accept that they have been in error.
The alternative cost should be clear even to a bishop in the Church in Wales.
