The Crown Nominations Commission – composed of lay and clerical delegates, chaired by Lord Luce, an elderly Tory peer, with two diocesan bishops, Gloucester and Carlisle, and the Archbishop of Wales as an observer from the rest of the Anglican world (!) – is contriving to make a meal of selecting the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury to succeed Rowan Williams next year.
The Church of England still matters, even if fewer than 1m worshippers attend services each week. It provides the ritual flummeries of the state and tries to give a sort of spiritual and moral essence to the country.
The old certainties and arrogance may have crumbled but who becomes Archbishop of Canterbury still matters well beyond the confines of cathedral precincts. Whoever is chosen will shape the church’s character for the next decade.
Archbishop Williams is retiring to the agreeable academic sinecure of the mastership of Magdalene College, Cambridge after 10 fraught years at the helm of a fractious church and as chairman of the fissiparous worldwide Anglican communion.
Since he unexpectedly announced his resignation in March, the commission has certainly had enough time to come up with a successor.
But after three meetings they still have not managed to do so. Perhaps that has something to do with forming a committee of 16 voting members to reach a two-thirds majority for the chosen candidate.
It certainly means there will be a hiatus in the See of Canterbury, at the head of the Church of England and in the chairmanship of the worldwide communion lasting well into 2013.
Prayers have been offered up for a successful outcome, eventually, but God may be enjoying the spectacle too much to care. In any event He has little to do with it, since the process these days has more to do with corporate executive selection than spiritual leadership: a bit like choosing the director-general of the BBC with a dash of the selection of the West Coast mainline franchise thrown in.
This time all potential interviewees had to supply a CV and submit to interview, just as ordinary bishops have to these days.
And that’s part of Anglicanism’s problem. A state church born out of a 16th century political fix that spread across the world, the third- largest Christian denomination has traditionally striven to be a broad institution, most recently trying to hold together a spectrum ranging from conservative evangelicals to high church Anglo-Catholics – worshippers who wouldn’t willingly be seen dead in each other’s churches.
Part of Archbishop Williams’ difficulty in trying to keep the show together was shown when one of the noisiest evangelical factions objected to him even preaching at their conference and ostentatiously absented themselves when he was allowed to lead prayers instead. If this seems a bit like the 1980s Labour party, it can sometimes feel like it.
In other words it is very unAnglican and if that’s broad, tolerant England, consider that the average Anglican is now a black African, led by bishops flexing postcolonial muscles, tired of being patronised and ignored and espousing views, particularly over the issue of gays, that are positively antediluvian. Some say gays are satanic, others would like to see them locked up or even executed.
They have been especially exercised by liberal British and US Anglicans’ attempts at reconciliation with, even celebration of, those gays who unaccountably still wish to be associated with a church whose leaders rather wish they would just go away and leave them in peace.
The African bishops have also been juiced up and funded by American conservatives waging their own internecine political battle with their church’s socially liberal leadership.
Understandably, finding someone to lead this church requires more than the saintly Archbishop Williams could manage, more used as he was to chairing an academic seminar or a diocesan synod than an international institution.
The church is not helped either by the fact that it has got used to playing safe in recent decades in its choice of bishops: opting to select grey, uninspired managerial men in preference to inspirational spiritual leaders – a process inaugurated and exemplified by the previous archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, chosen by Margaret Thatcher 20 years ago.
This time the choice seems to be between John Sentamu, self-promoting Ugandan-born Archbishop of York, and Justin Welby, nearly 10 years younger, an Old Etonian former oil trader and recently appointed Bishop of Durham.
In the old days it used to be so much simpler. The choice of archbishops and bishops was essentially in the hands of the prime minister (who might farm selection out, as Winston Churchill did to his adviser, the FT’s Brendan Bracken, a lapsed Irish Catholic).
You cannot do that any more: there has to be a semblance of democracy even if it takes place in secret behind closed doors.
The CNC seems to be deadlocked.
Perhaps there really is a need for prayer.
Or possibly a headhunter.