Here’s a tale of two versions of the Church of England. This past week, I’ve been talking to some of the churchwardens, parochial church council secretaries and treasurers, curates and vicars, who not only put on services and keep food banks and lunch clubs going, but are responsible for repairing the roofs and rebuilding the buttresses.
And then there’s the other Church of England – the one that is represented by its high-ups, that I usually come into contact with at this time of year when the Archbishop of Canterbury hosts his summer party at his Lambeth Palace home.
But this year, there is no clinking of glasses and the Archbishop’s apartment lies empty. Justin Welby, who dramatically resigned in November, days after a report into a prolific child abuser associated with the Church of England, finally moved out earlier this summer.
If that departure took a long time, then finding his replacement is taking even longer, and is now predicted to last until the end of the year – 12 months on from his resignation. As my conversations with the people who attend and run Anglican churches highlighted, for them it is business as usual – regardless of Welby quitting just before Christmas.
Meanwhile, Stephen Cottrell, who has the CofE’s number two job as Archbishop of York, can sign off any urgent institutional business, while he offers spiritual leadership by way of his current tour of the north, talking about the Lord’s Prayer.
So, if the Church of England has carried on regardless, might it not just give up on the protracted process of finding a replacement for Welby? Well, it might not affect Matins in Maidstone or Evensong in Evesham, but it’s a certainly a problem for the established Anglican Church.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is always one of the 26 Anglican bishops in the House of Lords, and Welby’s speeches were frequently reported on (including his final one, viewed as tone-deaf). Now there’s a void.
Then there’s the order of precedence; the Archbishop of Canterbury is always first after the Royal Family in this country, so when Donald Trump makes his state visit to Britain in the autumn, there will be an ecclesiastical-shaped hole at the state banquet (unless Cottrell returns from his tour of the north to play stand-in).
Welby’s most prominent moment, of course, as part of Establishment Britain, came with his crowning of the King at the Coronation. But there’s more to the relationship than that. Meetings may not be as frequent as the weekly audience of the prime minister, but the private talks between the archbishop and the regal Supreme Governor of the Church of England do happen.
It is this aspect of the Church of England – being the established church – that is causing the problem with finding a successor to Welby. A 20-strong Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) headed by former MI5 boss Lord Jonathan Evans with representatives of the Church of England and the Crown is wading through paperwork, studying comments sent in by the public and assessing candidates.
A quarter of the CNC represents the global Anglican Communion. One can imagine the hours of discussion about hot-button topics such as same-sex blessings and whether the Archbishop might be a woman this time. And after that, the chosen name must be submitted to the prime minister and approved by the King.
There is, of course, a simpler way of choosing a church leader. I know, as a Roman Catholic, that I will seem parti-pris, and this will send Henry VIII spinning his grave (no bad thing), but the Vatican knows how to make people focus on the task in hand.
So, Church of England: stick all the members of the CNC in a locked room and only let them out when they’ve made a decision. It worked for Rome. The conclave took just two days to elect Pope Leo XIV.
Why not have an Anglican conclave, put everyone out of their misery and send up some white smoke?
