CofE evangelicals told: be 2021 ready

Sarah Finch, a conservative evangelical General Synod member, reports on its most recent session and reflects on what lies ahead.

For its summer session, General Synod met online, for the first time in its history.

The new Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, spoke from Galatians 1:16, and insisted that it is in us, and through us, that God can be made known to others.‘This is the heart of our message – Christ can save us and make us whole.’ But at present the church is being purged, he said, and we are having to ask ourselves: ‘What really matters? And where should we put our trust?’ He believes we should be a church of ‘glorious and profligate diversity’. (It was at this point that a small alarm bell began to sound: yes, of course the church of God is diverse, but tragically the word ‘diversity’ has become a codeword for the acceptance of same-sex sexual relationships, and an earlier speech from the Archbishop, in Chelmsford diocese in 2017, had demonstrated this acceptance.)