A DECLARATION that “Christian truth and values” belong at the center of public life within the UK has been launched within the hope that it would attract 100,000 signatures and trigger a debate in Parliament.
The 2025 Westminster Declaration, launched last week, argues for the importance of heterosexual marriage and the “complementarity of men and ladies”. It also offers warnings about “cancel culture” and artificial intelligence (AI) unchecked by moral reflection.
“By ignoring Britain’s Christian heritage we have now endangered human life, weakened society, and created a fragmented nation uncoupled from its formative traditions, and and not using a unifying vision for its future,” the declaration says.
On marriage, which it defines as being between a person a lady, the declaration calls for a rejection of “ideologies which weaken family ties by falsely claiming that other kinds of relationship are of equivalent value to marriage”.
It also suggests that schools are “promoting various lifestyle and sexual ideologies”, and upholds parents’ right to withdraw their children from “teaching which conflicts with [the parents’] beliefs and values”.
“Group think” and “cancel culture” are known as “mortal threats” to college education; and the event of AI, though described as “morally neutral”, should, the declaration says, be overseen by an “inter-disciplinary body to incorporate Christians trained in moral pondering and decision making”.
The declaration also upholds freedom to precise religious beliefs, and condemns abortion and assisted dying, describing the latter as “contrary to Christian belief, and alien to a civilized society”.
Supporters are invited to sign the 2025 Westminster Declaration online, but no list of signatories has been published yet. Among the outstanding speakers on the launch within the Emmanuel Centre, Westminster, on 20 September were the theologian and Anglican priest Lord Biggar; the previous MP and Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief Fiona Bruce; and a retired army officer, Major-General Tim Cross.
The chair of the steering group, Mgr Michael Nazir-Ali, is a former Bishop of Rochester, now serving as a priest within the Roman Catholic Church.
He was also certainly one of the “key signatories” to a previous version produced in 2010, together with the previous Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, and the RC Archbishop of St Andrews & Edinburgh, Cardinal Keith O’Brien. Other signatories included the Rt Revd Nicholas Reade, a former Bishop of Blackburn; the Rt Revd Keith Sinclair, a former Bishop of Birkenhead; the Rt Revd Wallace Benn, a former Bishop of Lewes; and the Rt Revd Michael Langrish, a former Bishop of Exeter.
In all, the unique declaration attracted greater than 70,000 signatures. According to an archived version of the unique website, those that signed were subscribing to the idea that “protecting human life, protecting marriage, and protecting freedom of conscience are foundational for creating and maintaining strong families, caring communities and a just society”.
In an announcement last week, Mgr Nazir-Ali said: “In 2010 leaders from across the Christian traditions first released the Westminster Declaration. Rapid developments since then have made it clear that it’s time to renew this call.”
The three tenets of the unique declaration remain within the new edition, but attention is now also given to education, gender, and AI.
There are some differences: the brand new declaration doesn’t say, as its predecessor did, that marriage between a person and a lady is the “only context for sexual activity”.
The latest section on human life also accommodates more detail, on the subject of specific court rulings, though it doesn’t refer explicitly to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, currently before the House of Lords (News, 22 September).
The declaration’s stated purpose does, nevertheless, say that “a number of the selections made by Parliament and others in authority concerning the nature of human life, family relationships, sex education in schools, end-of-life care, and the use and development of recent technologies are having serious consequences.”
