God makes us all different – that’s what we’re dealing with, Welby tells the young people

The Archbishop of Canterbury has stressed the importance of disagreeing well and seeking peace as he launched a course on reconciliation to be used in church youth groups.

The Difference course is already being used in secondary schools (News, February 2), having previously been launched in prisons (News, 13 May 2022). The course has now been redeveloped for use by church youth groups.

At a launch event in the gardens of Lambeth Palace on Wednesday, Archbishop Welby reflected on his childhood experiences of living with conflict in his family: “The thing that most children want, in my experience, more than anything else is security, stability, and safety at home.”

While it was unsettling to be exposed to conflict, it was also inevitable, he said, because “we’re all slightly different.”

Becoming isolated in “look-alike groups” that excluded others was “the opposite of what God made us for,” he said. “God makes us in community, and God makes us incredibly diverse.”

In an interview with ITV’s Good morning Great Britain before the event, Archbishop Welby said: “We have forgotten how to forgive, how to go with the flow.”

It was a Christian imperative to live with difference, he said. “Jesus Christ does not say, ‘Be ye all as one another.’ He talks about how we are all known by God, loved by God and says, “Serve one another and love one another, even though you are very different.” He says “Love your enemies.”

This was more than being tolerant, he said. “I think we have to be the ones who recognize the difference, we forgive when people have made, with all conscience, a mistake. . . and who learns to accept that we are all different and that we can learn from each other.”

Asked about the conflict in the Middle East, he said that “there has to be a ceasefire, but it has to include not only the release of the hostages, but also the accounting of the hostages who have died; then it must include discussions that can, over time, begin the generational task of building trust.”