The bishops of the Anglican Communion have endorsed measures to improve church safeguarding, in a meeting at the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury.
The “Call on Safe Church” met a positive reception after a plenary session which included a presentation from a survivor of abuse. The bishops committed to share safeguarding information across the community, and to implement the Anglican Consultative Council’s safeguarding guidelines – though they emphasised that these would be “contextualised” in each province.
The day began with the conference’s multilingual opening service in Canterbury Cathedral, where the Bishop of Lesotho, Vincentia Kgabe, preached on the Communion’s calling “to practise hospitality and to serve”, emphasising that Christ’s example “is not self-centred nor inward-looking”.
Several bishops declined to receive communion at the service, as they had done on Friday, maintaining that they were “out of communion” with bishops in same-sex marriages, and with those who support a change in Anglican teaching on same-sex marriage.
Before the discussion of the “Call on Safe Church” later that day, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, announced changes to the sessions on the “Lambeth Calls” – the ten statements discussed by the conference – which removed the electronic recording of the bishops’ votes on each statement.
Bishops will discuss the calls in small groups, with six chosen at random to offer verbal feedback and an opportunity at the end of the session to give an indication of agreement. Calls judged to have received clear assent will progress for further work.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s advisor on the conference, Bishop Tim Thornton, said that the conference was “work in progress”. “It’s hard work,” he told reporters on Sunday, “and some people are very tired.”
The process had already been amended last week to introduce a third voting option, whereby bishops could voice their opposition to a motion. This was only employed in Saturday’s session, on the “Call on Mission and Evangelisation”, where 464 bishops voted and 66 per cent endorsed the call, while 33 per cent said it required further discernment and the remaining one per cent opposed it.
The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, had told the conference that evangelism could be defined as “one beggar telling another beggar how to get bread”.
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