It matters little whether we apply the label of “crisis” to the situation; the reality is that the departing Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is leaving office at a time not of his own choosing.
Similarly, it is not of great consequence — for the purposes of speculating who might come next and in what state they might find the Church — how we assess the precise circumstances that led to Archbishop Welby’s departure.
For what little it might be worth now, it was clear to most observers at the time that the period immediately following the Coronation was the right time for Welby to go.
Irrespective of what Keith Makin might have been lining up to say in his report on the John Smyth sexual and physical-abuse scandal, the Archbishop — at that point 10 years into the role — would inevitably have used up almost all his political capital by the time of the Coronation. What could have been better than to go out on a high after the Coronation?
Regardless, we now face two stark facts. The Archbishop is to step down on his 69th birthday on the Feast of the Epiphany, having been forced out of office, and the process to appoint his successor has already begun, with all the jockeying for position that entails.
Seemingly within moments of Welby resigning, many articles began identifying potential successors. Two names are common to almost all the lists, and so I shall start with them.
The first is Graham Usher, age 54 and the Bishop of Norwich for the last five years. In former times, he might have been seen as the automatic choice: close to the Royal Family (the King recently appointed him as his Lord High Almoner) and a Catholic (of the affirming variety) to replace an evangelical (of the open variety).
The Church of England has tended to favor a balance in churchmanship — a Catholic Archbishop tends to follow an evangelical, and vice versa. We need to remember that it is a different sort of church now, with many of the current episcopal appointments falling to evangelicals of different hues.
Usher is well known for his ability to get on with people from all backgrounds. He was trained at Westcott House, the college of choice for many of those receiving preferment in the church in recent decades. His closeness to the Royal Family surely cannot do his chances any harm. But will he be seen as too safe a choice? Will the Crown Nominations Commission look for a different sort of approach — perhaps something more radical?
The second is Guli Francis-Dehqani, age 58 and the Bishop of Chelmsford for almost four years.
You might think that being brought up in an Anglican-Episcopal household hardly represents a drastic departure from the norm, but Francis-Dehqani’s childhood was in Iran and her family faced the full consequences of the Islamic revolution of 1979 in that country.
In separate incidents, her mother was wounded, and her brother was killed, in the mayhem that enveloped that country. Her father, Bishop of Iran since 1961 and President Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East from 1976 to 1986, moved to England in 1980 and operated as a bishop in exile.
Francis-Dehqani’s appointment to Chelmsford was greeted in some quarters by what has now become a familiar refrain — she had never been a parish priest. The answer from her supporters was that she was caring for her young children in the period in which she would have had her first incumbency. This vignette illustrates how much the Church of England has changed in recent years.
What is undoubtedly the case is that Francis-Dehqani has won many plaudits for her competence as a bishop and for her refusal to cave in to the business-planning obsession of those for whom the Church of England is tantamount to being just another corporation to be managed.
An outside bet for the role might be Michael Beasley, age 56 and the Bishop of Bath and Wells for the last two years. Like the bishops of Norwich and Chelmsford, his instincts are liberal, but he has sought to balance those credentials with a degree of realism about the cost to unity of, for example, the proposed changes to sexual ethics in the Church of England. Known to be level-headed and approachable, he might prove to be a compromise candidate, were either or both of the favorites to falter.
Another possible candidate would be Martyn Snow, also age 56 and the Bishop of Leicester for the last eight and a half years. Of late, he has played a lead role in the Church of England’s Living in Love and Faith (LLF) process, which has led to the introduction of same-sex blessings in church, and could possibly also permit same-sex civil marriages for clergy in due course, but without — it would seem — bothering to change the Church of England’s doctrine of marriage.
Snow’s position appears to have morphed from one of being opposed to LLF, albeit mildly, to one of looking for reconciliation on this issue in the “broken middle” of the church. His intrepidness in offering to lead the highly charged, and often bad-tempered, LLF process is admirable, but it seems unlikely that it will be sufficient for him to secure Canterbury.
Before Welby’s resignation, there had been speculation that the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, might be translated to Canterbury to steady the ship as part of a deliberately short tenure — he is 66 and has been the Archbishop of the church’s northern province for the last four years. However, it seems that the continued furor over the church’s safeguarding failures, a few of which center on Cottrell’s perceived shortcomings, appear to have put paid to any ambitions he might have harbored.
Each time an opening arises at Canterbury, there are calls for an appointment to be made from the Anglican Communion, someone from overseas. While it is certainly a topic of interest, and likely to fill column inches, the reality of being the diocesan bishop for an English diocese and a member of a British House of Lords would seem to complicate matters.
There are other barriers too. The Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) established for the Canterbury appointment might not be as conservatively minded as some had previously expected. This is because the as-yet unnamed Canterbury CNC members from the Anglican Communion — up in number from one to five — are widely rumored to be more liberal than the Anglicans they will purport to represent from their respective continents. This could well scupper the chances of any conservatively minded candidates from the Anglican Communion.
Alternatively, there could be a scope for a liberally minded candidate from the Anglican Communion to be considered for the role. But arguably the most attractive of those candidates — the Archbishop of Cape Town, Thabo Makgoba — was named by Makin in an unflattering light.
Underlying the appointment is a sobering reality. The Church of England continues to struggle.
Its worshiping numbers remain below pre-COVID levels, ordinand numbers are greatly diminished, and the finances of many dioceses and parishes are precarious. The church is tearing itself apart on safeguarding, in which the balance between sufficient accountability for past failings and avoiding a culture of blame is proving to be difficult to strike.
To make matters worse, not only is there a widening theological gulf between liberals and conservatives emerging through LLF, but there also appears to a mismatch between the composition of the College and the House of Bishops, which are majority liberal, and the larger Anglican churches, which are young, evangelical, and conversative.
This is not to promote a counsel of despair, but it is to highlight that the Church of England has lost the clarity of its mission. The composition of the Canterbury CNC, and the predominantly liberal hierarchy of the church, make it unlikely that the appointed candidate will be able to offer the compelling — and robustly orthodox — Christian vision our country so desperately needs.
There is no future for the church in offering a repackaged version of secularism; contemporary Western society is far more adept at doing that. The lights have not gone out yet, but the prayers of the saints are needed more than ever.