Archbishop Warns of Churches' 'Self-Inflicted Death Sentence'

Tuesday May 24

The Archbishop of Canterbury has warned that churches which obsess about their internal differences are effectively signing their own death warrant.

In an interview for Life and Work ahead of his appearance at the Church of Scotland’s General Assembly tomorrow, the Most Rev Justin Welby acknowledged separate surveys from England and Scotland in recent weeks which each claimed that there were more people of no religion than Christians.

He said: “I am always slightly sceptical about these surveys, but the long term trend is very, very clear… and one does wonder at what point the churches will come to recognise that an inward-looking obsession with their differences is a self-inflicted death sentence.”

However, he added that his confidence was in the ‘absolute security’ of the churches’ message of the good news of Jesus.

Asked whether movements like the Fresh Expressions offered hope for the future of the churches, he said: “I think that all kinds of practical things, like Fresh Expressions, are really really important. But one of the things that has struck me very recently was we had this big prayer initiative between Ascension and Pentecost called Thy Kingdom Come, and the response was overwhelmingly greater than any of us expected. We reckon about 100,000 people got in touch.

“And whether it’s from that, or from what I hear from Scotland, our hope is in the faithfulness of God, and that is absolute security that whenever the church turns back to Christ things happen. So my hope is in a renewal of prayer, a renewal of love for one another, a renewal of confidence that we are the carriers of the best news for every human being that there could ever be – the news of Jesus Christ.

“So Fresh Expressions, Messy Church, Pioneer Ministry – those are just outworkings, they’re symptoms of the faithfulness of God.”

The Archbishop will address the General Assembly on Wednesday morning in support of the Columba Declaration, in which the Churches of Scotland and England recognise each others’ clergy and commit to working together. He said: “The functional purpose of unity is to have the capacity to be incarnated witnesses to the reality of Jesus Christ, and if we’re not doing that one rather wonders why we exist at all.”

Read a longer interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury in July's Life and Work. Subscribe here.

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