THE chair of the Lambeth Conference Design Group, the Archbishop of Cape Town, Dr Thabo Makgoba, has appealed for a focus on the bigger picture before a plenary and Call on Peace and Reconciliation, on Tuesday morning, and the Call on Human Dignity, on Tuesday afternoon.

As someone “born in apartheid and raised in apartheid”, and familiar with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission — which was still a work in progress, still “limping” — he said that truth and honesty needed to be brought into situations of impasse.

The global South was obtaining most of its news from international agencies, unlike those present at the Conference, he suggested: “My appeal to you is, let’s move on from a single issue to the breadth and spread of issues here. [The issue of human sexuality], though important, has received a lot of attention — more than inequality, climate, mission. . .

“People at different ends genuinely wrestle with the scriptures, but, as a human being, I don’t have the right to discriminate and judge. Understand that the fundamentals of human dignity are bigger than sex.”

Feedback had expressed impatience that the Conference had been “speaking against each other and at each other instead of with each other”, he said. He concluded: “I hope we won’t write each other off. We need to find a global solution, with bishops working together to the maximum degree possible.”