He has, for example, written not one, but two accounts of Justin Welby. That said, one bore the sub-heading “Risktaker and Reconciler”; it’s true that Welby took risks – not least in striving to bring the Church of England to some form of agreement over same-sex relationships – but “reconciler”?
That isn’t the epitaph anyone would use now, after the Church was torn apart, and Welby’s tenure ended, by the issue of child sexual abuse.
With Sarah Mullally, recently enthroned, Atherstone is adopting a more cautious approach. Had he chosen something more enticing than Archbishop Sarah Mullally: A Biography, it would probably have involved the word “trailblazer”, given that this is how he introduces her to us.
Fine, the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury is also the first woman in the role.
Yet, as Atherstone shows, she has always demonstrated an aversion to risk – and reconciliation between the Church’s warring evangelical, Catholic traditionalist and liberal-progressive factions may prove impossible. Moreover, she’ll turn 64 on the day after her installation, and all clergy must retire at 70 – so she has just six years to make her mark.
That said, Mullally is a woman of impressive achievements and gifts. She has risen to the top of not one, but two major British organisations: before climbing through the Anglican ecclesiastical ranks, she was chief nursing officer of the NHS. After being ordained in 2002, she became one of the first female bishops in the Church of England, appointed in 2015, and then Bishop of London in 2018.
Holders of the Canterbury office were once Oxbridge men, steeped in theology. Mullally, by contrast, born Sarah Bowser, attended a state school in suburban Woking, then went to the Polytechnic of the South Bank to study nursing. Despite her dyslexia, she took Master’s degrees in management and pastoral theology. She became the NHS’s chief nurse before she turned 40 – that role’s youngest ever appointment.
Within five years, though, she had left to become a priest. Mullally’s parents weren’t religious, but she developed a deep faith from her teenage years. Her vocations to nursing and ministry combine similar commitments: “I am the bishop I am today because of that first vocation to nursing,” she said in her maiden speech in the House of Lords, “and compassion and healing are constants at the heart of who I am.”
What she has also taken from her time in nursing – much of which was spent effectively being a civil servant – is a contemporary focus on inequalities. To her, that simply represents a Christian desire for justice. For one thing, her focus on racial inequality, both in her NHS role and as Bishop of London, certainly did see her become a change-maker: she promoted ethnic-minority staff members to senior roles. There might have been pushback from some quarters, but it was relatively straightforward for the chief nurse, then the bishop, to enforce change.
But Mullally now has tougher tasks ahead. As Archbishop of Canterbury, she must deal with the continuing issues of sexual abuse and safeguarding, as well as the lingering rows over same-sex relationships. She has already dealt with complicated safeguarding problems in London, and headed the Living in Love and Faith project to try to find a solution to the ongoing same-sex dispute. But even then, the personal attacks to which she was subjected were exhausting.
That project, as Atherstone notes, highlighted another difficulty with Mullally’s personality. Ever the civil servant, she was hesitant to express her personal belief. But should a bishop not speak out? She will be under pressure in her new role to do so, and develop more charismatic oratory than she has done before, not just on women and racism, where she is already forthcoming, but also upon other divisive issues such as gay people in the Church, slavery and church reparations – not to mention potential clashes with politicians over contentious topics such as poverty, housing and the environment.
Mullally, in Atherstone’s account, is a woman of formidable organisation – her diary is broken up into 15-minute sections each day – of early starts, application to work, of compassion and strong faith. But who, I was left wondering, is she beyond that? Does she share her husband Eamonn’s passion for beekeeping? Does the Archbishop, spotted sometimes at Glyndebourne, belt out her favourite arias in the bath? Readers would surely love to know.
Atherstone, professor of modern Anglicanism at Oxford, has written a helpful account of Mullally, framing her as the ordinary rendered extraordinary, something that in many ways mirrors her own belief in the power of faith in Christ. There are gaps in this account, though, particularly on the new Archbishop’s thinking in matters such as the liturgy, the use of sacred spaces, the ecumenism and the figure of Mary – even though she has chosen the Feast of the Annunciation for her installation. Whether the trailblazer will turn out to be a risk-taker or a reconciler remains to be seen.