The committee reported as required within a year of its commencement, with its position clear from the title of its report: “Proceed with Caution.” The report’s summary clearly said that the U.K. Government “must ensure ethics are at the center of its policy, including expanding the role of the Ministry of Defence’s AI Ethics Advisory Committee” (p. 4). Also critical, from my perspective, was the firm view spelled out in the fourth of its central recommendations: “The Government should ensure human control at all stages of an AWS’s lifestyle.”

There was much that I learned from those who gave evidence to the committee, orally or in writing, and through site visits to research centers and military establishments. I gained a level of technical knowledge and understanding of the development and use of AI across the military spectrum, much of it uncontroversial. I also found, though, that the moral position with which I joined the committee was reinforced through the course of its work. My focus from the beginning was on what might be called the distinctive dignity of humanity. Theologically, such a position in the Judeo-Christian tradition is rooted in the belief that human beings are made in the image of God, according to his likeness (see Gen. 1:26).

As those made in the image and likeness of God, human beings have the capacity to reason. We use our intelligence in all its different forms to come to particular judgments that, at their best, show wisdom. Created through God’s Word, we are endowed with reasoning capacities that can be lifted by his Spirit to reflect even the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5; 1 Cor. 2:16). Machines, however sophisticated and technically proficient, are very different. Whatever “intelligence” they have is not the same as the intelligence with which human beings are endowed. Indeed, it is not intelligence as we know it. It is computation through data analysis, algorithms and the like; and it may be better to call it what it is rather than imputing human characteristics to inanimate things, often only having a digital reality.

Anthropomorphizing machines and their calculations is not at all helpful. It can distract us from what they are and deceive us into thinking that they have the same capacities as we have, and better. Theologically, the stakes are high. Projecting the features of human beings who are made in the image and likeness of God onto machines, which are by no means as wondrously created (Psalm 139.14), is only one step away from idolatry. The stakes are high pragmatically as well, especially when we begin to assume that through the exercise of “intelligence,” weapon systems have the competence to make life-and-death judgments in relation to human beings made in the image and likeness of God. In an important study; An Ethical Evaluation of Lethal Functions in Autoregulative Weapons Systems to be published next year by Nicole Kunkel, drawing on the philosopher Brian Cantwell Smith, makes an important distinction between the “reckoning” of which artificial systems are capable and the “judgment” that human beings are enabled by God to exercise.

On the modern battlefield — and the battlefields that are sure to come — it is important to retain confidence in human judgment, relying as it does on seeing the whole. It has a God-given freedom “to do otherwise” than what it is programmed to do, and it has capacities for empathy, for mercy, for perception in depth and for wise discernment that may transcend that which may be calculated even by the normal exercise of logic.

Alongside the gift of reasoning comes the calling of responsibility. To act responsibly means to make judgments that bear moral scrutiny, and to which we can expect to be held to account. They are an exercise of moral reasoning that follows from our creation in the image and likeness of God that embody in some way, albeit provisional and partial, the moral law of God by which we ourselves will be judged by God’s perfect justice. Acting ethically is more than reckoning whether our decisions meet certain programmed criteria. It requires those advanced attributes of understanding, the capacities of judgment I have already described that can see in the round, and the ability to assess short- and long-term consequences. All of these are needed for the responsible analysis of risk, upon which the humane conduct of warfare depends.

It is for these reasons that retaining proper levels of human control — meaningful human control, as it is often called — is essential in weapon systems. Quite what that means in relation to every weapons system in all its different elements, from design to targeting and different theatres of usage, is a complex matter in practice. But the principle is vital to uphold. The necessity of determining who is responsible for lethal decisions is necessary as much for law as it is for ethics. It is necessary theologically as well. For the calling to act responsibly lies at the core of our human identity, made in the image and likeness of God. To evade that calling, and to pass it on to that which is not human, is a denial of humanity and will lead to the deformation of humanity.

There are larger questions to be asked of the use of AI in weapon systems and the development of so-called Autonomous Weapon Systems. They are well articulated in Nicole Kunkel’s forthcoming book, and they apply to all weapons and the way that they are used. Will they serve the purposes of peace? That is not only a question of whether they limit and control the use of violence in warfare in the way that Christian thinking about the just use of weapons has sought to do (jus in bello), which is enshrined in international humanitarian law. It is also a question of whether they will serve the establishment of peace, the question that lies at the root of the Christian just war tradition (jus ad bellum) that reaches back to Augustine in the fifth century and, moreover, whether they will help or hinder the creation of a just and sustainable peace when the conflict is finally over in the way that more recent reworking of the just war tradition has done (jus post bellum).

I will soon lead the funeral of a distinguished old soldier. His family has asked for the Collect of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, his first regiment, to be prayed at the service. The collect concludes with these words: “enable us, while loving our country best, to enter into the fellowship of the whole human family, and give us now and ever the gift of courage to seek after a just and merciful peace.” I shall offer that prayer, remembering not only the life of a fine human being who served his country well, but also praying for those charged with the responsibility of the development and use of weapon systems, especially those that incorporate Artificial “Intelligence.”

By the mercy of God, I was by no means shunned by the people of Coventry when I arrived some 360 years later as their new bishop. Indeed, after 15 happy years in the diocese there was a good deal of heartache on my part as I laid down my diocesan crozier and miter on the altar of Coventry’s great modernist Cathedral, to be installed a few weeks later as Dean of Windsor in the ancient, medieval Chapel of St. George. The twists and turns of history became clearer to me as I made my promises to serve God in this new ministry near the tomb of Charles I, executed by the Parliamentarians in 1649, and as I made myself at home in my study, where the table on which his decapitated body was laid so that it could be reunited with his head before his burial. I was glad that in the 21st century, God still seemed to have a purpose for monarchy, prayer book and bishops, in this land at least!

I confess that for some time I was struck by the sharp differences between living then in the post-industrial city of Coventry, with all its deep social challenges, and now within the walls of a working castle, still a royal residence where grand and profound events are etched on the national consciousness. The contrast was symbolized in the “beautified brutalism” of Coventry Cathedral, consecrated in its present form in 1962 after the destruction of its earlier manifestation in the horrors of the Second World War — the opposite of the exquisitely fine shapes of the early perpendicular gothic architecture of St. George’s Chapel. But I began to realize that the resonance between these two great and holy places murmured through the deep history of Christian saints.

Coventry Cathedral, both in its pre-war stone and post-war concrete, is dedicated to St. Michael and All Angels. Among several of its artistic treasures is a magnificent statue of St. Michael defeating the devil. The 15th-century chapel at Windsor Castle is dedicated to St. George. It was built to provide a spiritual home for the Knights of the Garter, founded by Edward III in the previous century, together with the College of St. George, established at the same time to offer prayer for and spiritual counsel to the king and his company of noble knights.

St. Michael and all the angels proved to be truly providential patrons for Coventry Cathedral, and for the surrounding city, as Coventry was pummeled by enemy bombing throughout much of the war. St. Michael would have no truck with evil and he stood against it — as the Letter to the Ephesians puts it, “strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power” (Eph. 6:10). The fatal flaw of evil is that it presumes its own power, and its followers are beguiled into foolish idolatry through its false and dangerous promises. The strength of those who “stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph. 6:11) is to rely on the power of God, believing in the promises of God, wielding only the weapons of God’s peace. It was in that spirit, the spirit of St. Michael, the Spirit of God, that the provost of the cathedral was able to declare to the world on the Christmas Service broadcast by the BBC from the ruins of cathedral only weeks after the worst bombing of the city,

What we want to tell the world is this: that with Christ, born again in our hearts today, we’re trying, hard as it may be, to banish all thoughts of revenge. We’re bracing ourselves to finish this tremendous job of saving the world from tyranny and cruelty. We’re going to try to make a kinder, simpler, a more Christ-child-like, sort of world in the days beyond this strife.

No doubt King Edward chose St. George for the saint’s martial associations. Edward was busy both defending his kingdom against threats from the Scots and securing his claim to the French throne; and he knew his knights were inspired by the stories of St. George their comrades had brought back from the Crusades. Nevertheless, Christian sainthood, rooted in the “strength of God’s power,” will not be seduced by worldly causes. After all, George laid down the weapons of Roman war to be a soldier in Christ’s army of peace.

To be sure, there are several depictions of St. George around Windsor Castle heavily clad in armor and fiercely wielding his sword. I am struck, though, by a very old icon of which I have a become a custodian, in which St. George looks strikingly unprotected as he rides his steed. The only weapon he wields is the thinnest spear the iconographer could depict. Try killing a dragon with that! It would split in a moment and the fiery head of the beast would rise up in a second to devour you. But that’s the point. The way of defeating the one who pretends to be “the ruler of the world” (John 12:31), is not through matching its ways but, as followers of Christ — crucified, risen, ascended, and returning — through trusting in God’s ways.

The deprivations of COVID and everything that has followed have given rise to a sense of permacrisis. The crisis of health (which remains present and overshadows our future in multiple ways) has been followed by a crisis in the cost of living, the crisis of war in Europe and the Middle East (with real risks of escalation on both fronts) and the ever-deepening ecological, environmental, and climate crisis (that threatens our existence). To add to the turbulence is what appears to be a crisis of democracy in many of the places where we have taken it for granted, my own land included. The list could go on and we can argue about the relative strength of each of them. What is indisputable, though, is that the world faces many evils. It always has, of course, but these are evils on our watch, and it is difficult not to be overwhelmed by their scale.

Here in the College of St. George, founded to pray for the ways of God to be seen in this nation and throughout the world, as I look to the inspiration of St. George, I am strengthened also by the witness of the two saints that King Edward III invoked alongside St. George in the combined patronage of our historic chapel — St. Edward the Confessor and the Blessed Virgin Mary. The confession of faith in the victory of Christ displayed by Edward. The hope of a new, transformed world sung in Mary’s prophecy of the redemption of the world that her son would bring. The armor of God that George found safer than even the best technology the Roman army could offer: truth, righteousness, and faith, the gospel of peace and the word of God (Eph. 6:14-17). These are the ways of God that bring the salvation won by Christ to the world.

Rather than the following the example of the beloved disciple, some have not taken Mary to their homes and hearts. Rather than magnifying “God [our] savior” (Luke 1:46) with Mary, and exalting in the mercy and strength of God, some have raised Mary to a place that risks obscuring the unbounded grace of God that she found in her son. Rather than acknowledging with Elizabeth that Mary is “blessed among women” (Luke 1:42), some have neglected her and even said harsh things about her. Rather than celebrating with Elizabeth that Mary has received God’s gift of his Son through her hard-won willingness to believe that “there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (Luke 1:45), some have tried to locate Mary’s merit in places other than the humility of her heart and her readiness to receive the election of God before the “foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).

Anglicanism’s restrained but real recognition of the place of Mary in the purposes of God and the life of church provides the seeds for an approach to Mary that brings Christians together and heals our divisions. A credal church affirms Mary’s unique significance in the scheme of salvation. Jesus was “incarnate from Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,” as we say in the Nicene Creed. He was “born of the Virgin Mary,” as we proclaim in the Apostles’ Creed. That is why Mary is rightly called Theotokos, God-bearer. A liturgical church remembers the life of Mary — her conception and birth, the Angel’s Annunciation and the Visitation to her cousin — and rejoices with her that God “has done great things” (Luke 1:49) for her. That is why we called this woman “Blessed” (Luke 1:49).

A scriptural church will proportion Mary according to Scripture, with Paul’s insistence that Christ was “born of a [Jewish] woman” (Gal. 4:4), with John’s testimony, that she was faithful at the dying of her son as well in his living (John 19:25-27) and with Luke’s evidence that after Jesus’ resurrection she was named amidst the apostles, “constantly devoting [herself] to prayer” (Acts 1:14), and doing as Jesus had told them, waiting to be “clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). This is why we are to heed Mary’s words about her son to “do whatever he tells you” (John 2:5). For what is Anglicanism if not credal, liturgical, and scriptural? That is the basis of our being semper reformanda, always meek to be reformed by Scripture and the creeds, and the gospel they tell that is expressed through the authentic liturgical tradition.

There are several signs that the church of God is ready to gather in surprising ways around a common love of Mary. Contemporary Roman Catholic teaching is probably not too far from that form of devotion to Mary, dear to the heart of Luther, that sees her pointing towards her son rather than to herself. Evangelicals, often women, are finding in Mary a surprising source of inspiration as one who exemplifies the dynamic of grace and demonstrates the call to proclaim the gospel to the family and on the streets that lies at the core of evangelical experience and commitment. Charismatics are drawn to Mary as the one who shows us how to receive the Spirit in abundance, stay close to Christ in all the conditions of life, be filled with the Spirit of Pentecost, and go out onto the streets to manifest the reality of the kingdom of God on earth. Christians with a strong sociopolitical instinct find Mary’s prophetic vision — of a world transformed by the just rule of God that brings down the thrones of abusive power and raises up the poor and outcast — a manifesto of hope. Feminist Christians see in Mary an embodiment of Spirit-inspired agency and an affirmation of the necessity of womanhood in the purposes of God, for without Mary there is no Jesus. Beyond the church other communities of religion, from Muslim to Yazidi, give Mary high praise and challenge the people of her son and his cross to regard her well.

Perhaps there is a place, though, for Anglicanism, with its historic calling to hold within its own life the deep gifts of faith and the wide working of grace, to make a new ecumenical intervention. What if Anglicanism were to find ways to call the churches to recognize that, whatever the tensions there may have been between our particular assessments of her, we are bound together with Mary, for she is, in the oft-repeated words of John, “the mother of the Lord.” What if we were to bid all the churches — all the beloved disciples of the world — to stand together with her at the cross, so that rather than scattering to our own homes, we form together, with Mary, one house and home?

Of course, to have any credibility to make such bold moves among all the churches, we would need as Anglicans to take determined steps among the churches of our Communion (and within them) to heal the hurts and ease the strain of our life. We would need to become a little more like Mary, ready to put all our energies into receiving Jesus Christ and releasing his ministry into the world. Lent is a good time to do that, a good time to give room to God’s Spirit — the Spirit who overshadowed Mary — to shape within and among us the virtues — the blessedness, if I may put it like that — of the kingdom of God. Those virtues begin with believing in the fulfillment of God’s word and saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord” (Luke 1:38). They lead to those characteristics, those beatitudes — of the life of the disciple that Jesus taught us. They are ways that I often wonder whether he saw first in the life of his mother — poverty of spirit, meekness of soul, purity of heart, yearning for righteousness, working for peace.

These ways of the kingdom of God will take us to Jesus’ teaching and prayer on the eve of his death, that we should be sanctified in the truth and one in him. They will take us further, all the way to the cross, when Jesus said “It is finished” (John 19:30) knowing that his church had been formed in the home of the beloved disciple with Mary his mother.

They will take us to Pentecost so that we hear the “sound like a rush of a violent wind” that fills “the entire house” (Acts 2:2) of God’s church and propels us into the city and to the ends of the earth to speak in many tongues the same good news that God has made Jesus, “born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4), “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). They will take us close to the heart of Mary, and to the wounds of sword of division in the body of her son that pierce her soul and move her prayer.

By Christopher Cocksworth  

The Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process crossed an important threshold at the February sessions of its General Synod. LLF began its life six years prior. The 2017 February synod narrowly chose not to take note of a House of Bishops proposal concerning same-sex relationships. The bishops’ decision to hold to the traditional doctrine of marriage while at the same time offering generous pastoral provision that stopped short of blessing same-sex relationships failed to achieve a majority in the House of Clergy. It was a moment of some trauma that led to the Archbishops’ call for a “radical new Christian inclusion in the Church … founded in Scripture, in reason, in tradition, and the Christian faith as the Church of England has received it.”

That challenge gave birth to what later became known as “Living in Love and Faith: Christian Teaching and Learning About Identity, Sexuality, Relationships, and Marriage.” LLF has been a remarkable ecclesial venture. People of different theological views and of different sexual and gender identities have engaged with each other in respectful ways seeking to understand each other — and their Christian reasoning — better. It has required a commitment to seek the mind of Christ together not only about matters contested for some decades by Christians but also how they may live truly and authentically together in one Church bound together by their common faith in him. The project has encompassed three distinct phases: compilation of teaching and learning resources  whole-church engagement with them, generally in small groups; discernment and decision by the College of Bishops, culminating in a Response from the Bishops to LLF, including Prayers of Love and Faith, presented to the February synod; and a motion.

Although LLF has been a wide-ranging and ambitious project on identity, sexuality, relationships, and marriage, the focus of the synod motion was on same-sex relationships. The doctrine of marriage as the joining together of a man and a woman in a lifelong, exclusive relationship was affirmed. At the same time, draft Prayers of Love and Faith were offered “as resources in praying with and for two people who love one another and who wish to give thanks for and mark that love in faith before God.” The provision included two “Sample Services,” one of the Word and the other eucharistic, showing how the prayers could be woven together in a service of “Dedication and Thanksgiving for a Couple,” with the inclusion of one of two prayers for God’s blessing.

On one level, it is a modest and subtle liturgical provision. Most of the prayers  themselves — all of them optional — are without controversy and the two prayers for (for not of) God’s blessing seek to bless not the relationship itself, whether civil marriage, civil partnership, or an otherwise committed and faithful relationship, but the people, that they may  — as one of the prayers puts it — “rejoice in hope and be sustained in love.” Moreover, an important note states that the prayers are “‘neither contrary to nor indicative of any departure from the doctrine of the Church of England in any essential matter,’ including but not limited to the definition of marriage in Canon B30.”

It can be seen as a genuinely Anglican attempt to hold different positions together in a broad liturgical revision anchored in fidelity to the doctrine of marriage and to respond to clear pastoral need. It is proper that the virtues of many same-sex relationships should be recognized and appropriate forms of prayer offered with sensitivity and generosity. The provision reached for ways to do so.

It is true that some evangelical bodies were geared up for resistance to almost any form of pastoral provision for those in same-sex relationships. But it is also true that the proposed provision has united a broad alliance of evangelical networks, and some significant catholic voices, in suspicion, bewilderment, consternation and, among most the evangelical spectrum, rejection. Among explanations for this antipathy are:

• the accompanying response from the bishops to LLF which set a number of hares running;
• statements made in press conferences that used language of blessing in a more unguarded way than the provision itself;
• communications of individual bishops welcoming probable, in their minds, future changes to teaching practice including, in the not-too-distant future, to marriage;
• an assessment that the two prayers “for God’s blessing,” though careful, still cross critical boundaries;
• a perception that when the prayers are formed into a service and performed liturgically, especially with the blessing of rings, they could appear to be a quasi-wedding;
• a fear that the prayers were a harbinger of more to come.

There are other causes, though, that have something to do with ecclesial processes. Great care had been taken in producing the resources, encouraging engagement with them, bringing the bishops through a process of discernment to a point of decision. Some form of diversified consensus on key intentions of the provision seemed to have emerged. Then, however, we — and I say we because I am a member of the College and House of Bishops, and I accept my share of responsibility — allowed ourselves to hurry the last and vital stage. We did not give the time and attention to hone the response and scrutinize the prayers with the great care that was needed for documents put into the synodical process and, in so doing, to check whether there was a sufficiently common mind among us to find secure expression in common texts.

Furthermore, we promised pastoral guidelines on the practical outworking of the provision, with all their complex legal and theological questions, at a later point, rather than offering them alongside the liturgical provision. The result was that the response and prayers raised more questions than they answered, questions that could not be answered by the entirely reasonable probing of the synod. As well as other consequences, it soon became clear that different bishops had, after all, different understandings of what was being provided.

So where are we now? The prayers are only drafts. They have not been commended. So we now move into the fourth stage of LLF. It is likely to be the most difficult. The risk of sustained and systemic disruption to the life of the Church of England has risen, the knock-on effects of the Synod vote to the structures of the Anglican Communion are already being seen (as evidenced by the recent meeting of ACC), and the Anglican contribution to the unity of the universal Church has become less clear. Although among some in the Church of England respect for the bishops and trust in their processes has increased, among a significant proportion of others, trust and confidence in their bishops has eroded. But careful work on this next stage of LLF could rebuild some of the trust and repair tears to the fabric of our common life and so avert lasting damage.

There are legal questions:

• Is the provision genuinely consistent with the doctrine of the Church of England, and does it pass the strict canonical test it has set itself?
• Is its distinction (novel for the Church of England) between civil marriage and Holy Matrimony secure?

There are practical questions:

• How is the conscience of clergy and parishes who find themselves unable to use some or all of the liturgical provision to be respected?
• What level of pastoral provision will be needed for those who could not use them, and should it involve, as many are arguing and as the Archbishop of York conceded in the debate, serious forms of structural differentiation?
• Will clergy of the same sex be free to enter into civil marriage?

There are theological questions:

• Can the distinction between blessing a couple as people before God, rather than their relationship, carry the theological weight that is placed upon it?
• What is the provision saying or implying about the permissibility or otherwise of sexual intimacy in relationships of the same sex, and in opposite sex relationships that the Church does not recognize as marriage, and what is its theological case?
• How will the Church of England explain to other churches of the Communion, and its ecumenical partners, and the other major religions of its land, what exactly it is commending and provide the necessary theological reasoning?

Ecclesial questions are raised about how, in exercising leadership, the bishops tend — as they did in the first two phases of LLF — to the ecology of the church of which their order is only one part.

Liturgical questions are raised by all four areas.

Whatever one’s hopes for the outcome of these deliberations — more conservative or more progressive — they are essential, and without the most careful attention to them, the use of the provision faces legal challenge, the implementation of the proposals risks pastoral chaos, and the reception of the provision in the Church of England, the Anglican Communion, and the worldwide Church of God will be confused.

The LLF project is founded on the hope that the One who desires that we are where he is, one in him with the Father, so that the world may believe (John 17.24), will calm troubled hearts and guide us into the ways of peace and truth. There is still a hill to climb – as Jesus knew to his great cost – before that hope is fulfilled. That is the challenge for the next stage of LLF.

The 2022 Lambeth Conference was a very different experience for me than the 2008 Conference. I was ordained bishop shortly before the last Conference. Since my episcopal ordination took place in London, I had not yet stepped into the Diocese of Coventry as its bishop before heading off to Canterbury. I was bishop in name and law but in ministry and experience I was in serious deficit. And it showed. The Conference confirmed in practice what I knew in theory. Bishops are made to serve the people of God and their mission in Christ in a particular place. Without their people and the network of relationships with the people, history, culture, economics, and geography into which they become embedded, bishops are of little worth.

Fourteen years on, I was able to bring the Diocese of Coventry with me, not only in heart and prayer, and not only in sharing with and learning from other bishops across the world, but in the fuller sense of what the Church of England Common Worship Ordinal describes as “the Church in each place and time [being] united with the Church in every place and time,” through the ministry of its bishops. We were there not only as Christians bound together through our faith in Christ, and not only as individual ministers of the gospel of Christ committed to the work of the kingdom of God, but as bearers or carriers of churches embodying in some real way the life and apostolic calling of those churches in their different world-contexts.

As well as being taken deeper into what it means to be a bishop in the Church of God, I also learned more of what the Lambeth Conference means to the life of the Anglican Communion. Essentially, the Church is relational. The Conference was that part of the Church manifested as the Anglican Communion being the Communion — or, rather, becoming more fully the Communion, because our being is always in the process of becoming. I saw more clearly how the relationality of the Communion involves relationship with the physical space of Canterbury Cathedral (as some sort of maternal home, awesome in its proportions and history); with the actual person of the Archbishop of Canterbury (as a generous and loving host, gifted in this case with an extraordinary energy); with each other (as called and sent by God to our people and places, gathered together now in this place and with this person for the building up of our common life); with brothers and sisters from other churches and communions (whose fellowship and wisdom beckoned us beyond ourselves into a bigger vision of the church); with Jesus Christ, in the Spirit, and his relationship with the Father (greatly helped by some wonderful liturgies and inspired music).

As with Conferences past, I suspect a highlight for most bishops was the small-group experience of the Bible studies. My group — South Sudan, Philippines, Sierra Leone, US, and England — was faith-building, joy-giving, knee-bending, and tear-jerking. To gather around the ancient texts of Scripture brought alive by the Spirit of truth speaking through the testimony of contemporary churches, so different in their situations yet so similar in their desire to follow Christ, was a humbling example of “the wisdom of God in its rich variety” being “made known — through the Church — to the rulers and principalities” (Eph. 3:10).

The larger group gatherings, from the plenary presentations of the Lambeth Calls to the seminars, were personally edifying, in the way that conferences at their best are good learning experiences. They were also ecclesially enriching because this conference taught us from a world-church perspective about missionary challenges, disciple making, environmental imperatives, safeguarding necessities, reconciliation possibilities, prospects for inter-church unity, complexities of inter-religious engagement, and questions of human dignity; and then made us think about what it all means for Anglican identity.

What the Conference was not so good at was enabling the proper episcopal oversight and leadership of the Communion that, at least until 2008, belonged to the character if not necessarily the constitution of the Lambeth Conference. That incapacity showed itself in the process for drafting, refining, and affirming the Lambeth Calls. We were presented with immature texts. I do not mean that they were of poor quality (though some were certainly better than others); rather that they had not been through the sort of maturation process that such agreed statements require. There was certainly no credible process for developing them during the Conference, and the appeal to a third stage of the Conference after the residential period felt like a missed opportunity.

It may well be that, given the size of the Communion and the constraints of time and language on the Conference itself, the Lambeth Conference cannot be expected to fulfill both the relational-educational role and the discussing, deliberating, deciding function that belongs to the ministry of bishops if they are to be used by God to form the church (again in the words of the Church of England Ordinal) “into a single communion of faith and love.” I hope that work is beginning now on a new structure and shape of the Lambeth Conference that allows both roles to be fulfilled.

As well as a lot to learn about the ministry of a bishop and the function of the Lambeth Conference, there was also much to stimulate one’s thinking about the Anglican Communion itself. I was left with three main conclusions. First, the Communion is a remarkable reality in the purposes of God: it is a privilege to be part of it. Second, it is fragile and damaged: the absence of hundreds of bishops in 2008 and 2020 was a serious loss, and the broken communion evident in the Conference Eucharists exposed more wounds for all to see. Third, the Communion is still evolving: as it evolves there is an opportunity of grace to preserve its life, promote its mission under God, and address its problems. The Conference raised several matters that require some deep ecclesiological thought.

One of those matters, perhaps the most general and generic, is that, even to this English bishop, the Conference — and hence the Communion — felt too English. How is the relationship between the Communion and Canterbury (culture, provincial church, cathedral, and archbishop) to be expressed and embodied in the future? Other matters include the application of subsidiarity to Anglican ecclesiology, and how this relates to earlier Anglican commitments to mutual responsibility and to the implications of interdependence in so far as they touch substantive doctrine. Those in turn relate to questions of reception — a theme handled poorly in the Human Dignity Call but more promisingly in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech on the occasion of that Call about “truth and unity” and how it “sometimes takes a very long time to reach a point where different teaching is rejected or received.”

As the Communique from the Global South identified, there is much for the primates to consider when they next meet about how long that time is allowed to be and how it is handled. I hope that they will make good use of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) to help them design responsible reception processes for the necessary determinations and the shape of the Communion while they are taking place. If that work is done well, the Anglican Communion will be well placed for the next Lambeth Conference.