Worship leader Matt Redman, the head of the Coptic Church in the UK and a top imam are among the winners of a new set of Awards given by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lambeth Palace has revealed.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, today announced the awards on the third anniversary of his installation.
There are six new awards, to join three pre-existing ones, including awards to recognise outstanding service in the fields of prayer and religious life, reconciliation, and evangelism and witness – the Archbishop's ministry priorities.
Bishop Angaelos, general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the UK, is to receive the Lambeth Cross for Ecumenism, alongside His Eminence Archbishop Gregorios of Thyateira and Great Britain, and Canon Simon Stephens. Bishop Angaelos has been a key voice in the promotion of interfaith relations; last year taking part in an unprecedented ecumenical gathering at Lambeth Palace, hosted by Welby, to call for the fundamental freedom of religion around the world. More recently, Angaelos has urged governments to recognise the massacre of religious minorities including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims in the Middle East as genocide.
One of the new awards given by Welby this year is the Cranmer Award for Worship, which will be received by Matt Redman, alongside Canon Dr James Lancelot, Dr Philip Moore and Michael Williams.
The Langton Award for Community Service will be given to six recipients, including Sir Hector Sants, who heads Welby's task group on credit unions. The group's final report last month found that the Archbishop's 'To Your Credit' initiative had helped encourage a "sea change" in public and political thought on payday lenders and credit unions as an alternative, cheaper source of finance. Since the task group was set up, payday lending has declined by 68 per cent and membership of credit unions has grown by 13 per cent.
Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, an imam and assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, is one of five recipients of the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation. Widely considered an ambassador for interfaith relations, he and Welby have worked together a number of times in the past, including to condemn the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in 2013, and at an interfaith vigil for Iraq in September 2014.
The awards will be presented at a ceremony at Lambeth Palace on March 31.
"It will be a huge honour and joy to confer these awards upon such an extraordinary and diverse group of people. The recipients come from many walks of life and many parts of the world, but all have served in their fields with distinction and self-sacrificial service, going beyond the call of duty," Welby said.
"I hope and pray that the ceremony on 31 March will be an opportunity for us to honour them and give thanks to God for their gifts, which have been such a blessing to the church and to the world."
