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| Justin Welby: a real world archbishop of Canterbury | Justin Welby: a real world archbishop of Canterbury |
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| In the 1960s there used to be a favourite children's television character called Mr Pastry. Benign, bespectacled, dressed in black, with a bowler hat and a walrus moustache, he invariably ended up looking surprised and covered in wallpaper paste. Well, the moustache has gone, but otherwise that's vaguely like the modern Church of England – which today, having been trumped by betting companies and most of the press, will unveil the next archbishop of Canterbury. | In the 1960s there used to be a favourite children's television character called Mr Pastry. Benign, bespectacled, dressed in black, with a bowler hat and a walrus moustache, he invariably ended up looking surprised and covered in wallpaper paste. Well, the moustache has gone, but otherwise that's vaguely like the modern Church of England – which today, having been trumped by betting companies and most of the press, will unveil the next archbishop of Canterbury. |
| If it is not Justin Welby, the current bishop of Durham, who has been talked about as favourite for weeks, officials will have some explaining to do. A selection process that is supposed to be a) transparent and democratic, and b) confidential – for a candidate has to be passed by the prime minister and authorised by the Queen – has once again been sidestepped and pre-empted. It leaves Church House, as usual, looking wrongfooted, hapless and drenched in paste. It happened last time too, when Rowan Williams was appointed. The established church ought perhaps to feel pleased there is still so much interest in who gets its top job on Earth. | If it is not Justin Welby, the current bishop of Durham, who has been talked about as favourite for weeks, officials will have some explaining to do. A selection process that is supposed to be a) transparent and democratic, and b) confidential – for a candidate has to be passed by the prime minister and authorised by the Queen – has once again been sidestepped and pre-empted. It leaves Church House, as usual, looking wrongfooted, hapless and drenched in paste. It happened last time too, when Rowan Williams was appointed. The established church ought perhaps to feel pleased there is still so much interest in who gets its top job on Earth. |
| Welby has excellent credentials, possibly above all that he is not John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, who has been a self-promotional figure not much liked by fellow bishops. Everyone knows where Sentamu stands on most issues (although it does depend on who he is speaking to, or writing for, at any given time), whereas Welby is so new as a bishop – less than a year since he was translated to Durham – that his stance on the litmus tests – of gay people in the church and women bishops, rather than, say, the nature of the Trinity or substitutionary atonement – remains opaque. This may be a good thing while he remains all things to all men (and, presumably, women) in the pews. | Welby has excellent credentials, possibly above all that he is not John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, who has been a self-promotional figure not much liked by fellow bishops. Everyone knows where Sentamu stands on most issues (although it does depend on who he is speaking to, or writing for, at any given time), whereas Welby is so new as a bishop – less than a year since he was translated to Durham – that his stance on the litmus tests – of gay people in the church and women bishops, rather than, say, the nature of the Trinity or substitutionary atonement – remains opaque. This may be a good thing while he remains all things to all men (and, presumably, women) in the pews. |
| Even more compelling is his interesting background as a 1980s oil trader before he saw the light, gave up a £100,000 salary and trained for the ministry instead. That means he understands the modern holy grail: money and the City, objects of mystery and awe to many in the church. They hope it means he is connected to what they think of as the real world. His experience running Liverpool cathedral and re-energising the diocese of Durham, reorganising its finances in the months he has been there, evidently help. | Even more compelling is his interesting background as a 1980s oil trader before he saw the light, gave up a £100,000 salary and trained for the ministry instead. That means he understands the modern holy grail: money and the City, objects of mystery and awe to many in the church. They hope it means he is connected to what they think of as the real world. His experience running Liverpool cathedral and re-energising the diocese of Durham, reorganising its finances in the months he has been there, evidently help. |
| The CofE's real problem, though, is not so much money as its place in the life and future of the country. It is a mark of the relative thinness of the field of candidates, thanks to the timidity of the episcopal selection processes started under that ultimate grey archbishop George Carey 20 years ago, that the Crown Nominations Commission has opted for a largely unknown and untested figure. No one suggests Welby is another Carey – a man who had also been only briefly a bishop before being inflicted on the church by Margaret Thatcher – but he is being thrust into a job where he will have a high profile. Every move and utterance will be scrutinised for heresy, error or obtuseness by the Pharisees of the church and the soothsayers of the media, not all of them actuated by faith, hope or charity. | The CofE's real problem, though, is not so much money as its place in the life and future of the country. It is a mark of the relative thinness of the field of candidates, thanks to the timidity of the episcopal selection processes started under that ultimate grey archbishop George Carey 20 years ago, that the Crown Nominations Commission has opted for a largely unknown and untested figure. No one suggests Welby is another Carey – a man who had also been only briefly a bishop before being inflicted on the church by Margaret Thatcher – but he is being thrust into a job where he will have a high profile. Every move and utterance will be scrutinised for heresy, error or obtuseness by the Pharisees of the church and the soothsayers of the media, not all of them actuated by faith, hope or charity. |
| Welby certainly looks like an archetypal clergyman and has a thin, harsh voice to match. Some mutter about whether an Old Etonian – who would be the first for 150 years to be archbishop of Canterbury – can keep the church in tune with modern society. People who were at Eton and Trinity, Cambridge, with him say they can't remember him at all, but that may be because he was in the exclusionary God-squad evangelicals of the Christian Union in those days. The death of his baby daughter in a car crash 30 years ago is thought to have impelled him towards ordination. If the CofE is to reconnect with a largely indifferent society, empathy may prove his greatest asset. Maybe charisma will follow – who knows? |