As the Church of England gears as much as appoint a recent Archbishop of Canterbury, the feminine candidates look like more able than the male contenders.
On January 6, the day Justin Welby stepped down, The Independent newspaper ran an article by Aine Fox, social affairs correspondent with the PA news agency: Who could be the following archbishop of Canterbury?
Her front-runners are: Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London; Guli Francis-Dehqani, Bishop of Chelmsford; Graham Usher, Bishop of Norwich; Michael Beasley, Bishop of Bath and Wells; Martyn Snow, Bishop of Leicester; Rose Hudson-Wilkin, Bishop of Dover; and Helen-Ann Hartley, Bishop of Newcastle.
Having spent many hours as a contract journalist since I left C of E ministry in 2019 watching bishops in motion at General Synod sessions, at press conferences and within the House of Lords, I might agree with Fox’s short-list.
I think these are the candidates the 17-voting-member Crown Nominations Commission, chaired by Lord (Jonathan) Evans, a former director-general of the UK security service MI5, can be likely to think about as having the most effective leadership ability out of the 42 diocesan bishops of the established Church.
But what’s striking on this list is the prevalence in line with modern leadership values of the feminine candidates. An evaluation into why this example has arisen so starkly within the leadership of the C of E might provide a budding academic with a doctoral thesis.
Suffice it to say here that the 4 women within the running for Archbishop of Canterbury appear to have in greater measure than the three men the qualities that the secular world considers needed for a primary role – force of personality, televisual communications skills and a capability to read the room.
Bishop of London Sarah Mullally has had her critics. I criticised her in an article for The Conservative Woman in July 2021 for not being overjoyed enough that Christian people were once more in a position to sing hymns in church after the ending of the lockdown restrictions.
But during Justin Welby’s disastrous farewell speech within the House of Lords on December 5 by which he joked that his head was the one required to roll after the Makin Review into the John Smyth abuse scandal, among the many bishops sitting on the benches she very clearly registered in her body language the inappropriateness of Welby’s tone. Her ability to read the room on this instance gained her plaudits from safeguarding campaigners.
But she just isn’t the front-runner for the highest job, perhaps because she is simply too closely related to the managerialist type of the Welby era.
The front-runner by way of intellect, eloquence and representing the clean break that many in frontline C of E parishes want from perceived bureaucratic bossiness from the centre is the Bishop of Chelmsford, Guli Francis-Dehqani.
I haven’t any temporary for her theologically. She has consistently acted to ditch the Church’s traditional sexual ethic by supporting the introduction of services of same-sex blessing in various General Synod votes since February 2023. But her plenary lecture last September on the Church Times Festival of Preaching at Great St Mary’s in Cambridge was a tour de force.
She revealed that she had earned herself “a slap on the wrist from central church” for questioning the Archbishops’ Council’s national “Vision and Strategy” programme to grow recent congregations during an address to Chelmsford Diocesan Synod in 2022.
She told the St Mary’s congregation: “The language of Vision and Strategy risks ignoring the fact of frailty, brokenness, sin – all of which might in fact be redeemed, but it surely risks missing the blessings in that which is small and vulnerable and marginal. It leaves us relying heavily on our own strength, as a substitute of remembering that the whole lot is dependent upon our faithfulness and our reliance upon God.”
She said to laughter from the audience: “These reflections appeared to chime with numerous people and, to my great surprise, gained a bit little bit of traction on Twitter (because it was then). I must also say that they earned me a slap on the wrist from central church – who told me that such talk undermines the work of the Vision and Strategy department.”
Her Iranian background clearly plays well for her in the current cultural climate prizing diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI). She wouldn’t only be the primary female Archbishop of Canterbury but the primary from a non-European ethnic background within the history of the office.
But even without her DEI advantage, she would seem to have the political edge over Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who can be the primary black Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, each of whom could be perceived as too confrontational of their approach.
Bishop Hudson-Wilkin has been withering in her criticism of the continuing provision for opponents of ladies bishops within the conservative evangelical and Anglo-Catholic wings of the Church. Bishop Hartley was the one diocesan bishop to call publicly for the resignation of Justin Welby after the publication of the Makin Review in November.
I’m not arguing that the values of the secular world should drive the selection for Archbishop of Canterbury. But the C of E has turned itself into quite a cosmopolitan institution for the reason that Sixties. That is why I think it’s more likely to turn to the Bishop of Chelmsford to guide it in present circumstances.
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
