Abstract
I have known seven archbishops – in varying senses of the word ‘known’ of course. This is a personal reminiscence, and only that. No attempt has been made to see those discussed in the round, write mini-biographies or weigh their legacy.
Keywords
In the 1960s and 70s when the World Council of Churches had greater financial resources and more influence than it does now, it created an international furore over its programme to combat racism (PCR). This was a period when liberation movements, particularly in Africa, were struggling to overthrow their imperial masters, and the PCR included support for the non-violent and humanitarian aspects of their struggle. When I was on the staff of Wells Theological College a letter of mine supporting the PCR appeared one day as the lead letter in The Times. The retired Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Fisher of Lambeth, wrote me a strong letter opposing my position and inviting me to where he lived, not far from Wells, to the discuss the matter. I took up his offer, and we had a robust discussion followed by another letter from him restating his disagreement with me.
Geoffrey Fisher (Archbishop from 1945 to 1961) had been a public school headmaster, and he still had that manner. Robert Stopford, later Bishop of London, told me that once at a meeting of bishops Fisher was acting in this way when he, Stopford, dared to put up his hand and say, ‘Excuse me, sir, we are all headmasters now’! Fisher was an extremely able man with a string of first class degrees, and he applied his intellect and formidable energy to sorting out the Church of England after the Second World War. It is as an able administrator that his reputation rests. But I had another wider view of him when I was working on his papers at Lambeth Palace on the 1956 Suez crisis. Fisher was deeply suspicious of the government’s policy and intervened in the debate with the simple question ‘Who then was the aggressor?’ I find it impossible to imagine anyone in the Lords now putting such a question in such a way more than twice at the most. Fisher interjected with the same question eight times. Lord Hailsham, who led on this issue in the Lords, was furious, and a vigorous correspondence between the two in their own handwriting ensued. Both were highly intelligent, belligerent men who combined aggressive candour and steely politeness in equal measure. The correspondence went on for some time until Fisher wrote an 11-page closely typewritten letter on large A5 paper, setting out the theological basis of their different approaches to the issue. The exchange was finally closed when Fisher did not reply but wrote down that Hailsham would never give in, and anyway he was mad! What is most interesting, however, is Fisher’s serious intellectual grappling with the general question of what was appropriate for a church leader to say in such circumstances. In the letter, he said that he and Hailsham had ‘quite different conceptions as to the principles which ought to guide an Archbishop in discharging his duties’. 1 His own starting point is the duty of obedience to God. ‘It is the ceaseless task of the Christian and the Christian minded state to strive after that one obedience.’ There are two interesting points about that sentence. First, the reference simply to ‘the Christian’, a reference that would include both archbishop and lay person, and that lay person in both their private and their public role. Secondly, the phrase ‘Christian minded state’. It implies, in a rather careful way, that the state, as a state, is to strive after that one obedience. It is doubtful if now, in what is so often referred to as our multi faith society, would be receptive to this kind of language, but the Archbishop felt it was still appropriate in 1956.
So, there is ‘one obedience’, but the Archbishop then goes on to say that the government, which of course Hailsham was representing, and he as Archbishop approach this from opposite ends. The government is concerned with the temporal ends of the society it governs, but he as Archbishop is concerned, referring to God, ‘To relate what I can perceive of his perfect will to our temporal affairs … that is my special contribution.’ He said that starting from different ends it is not surprising that they do not come to an exact meeting point. When that is the case ‘It is our duty to call to each other so that we may help and warn each other.’
Fisher then quotes Temple to the effect that we can only look at issues properly if we can exorcize self-centredness, but interestingly he applies this not to the individual case, but to public policy. A government will inevitably look at issues from a national perspective. He, as Archbishop, will look at them from a much wider view, and he reminds Hailsham, rather sharply, that he has duties not only to the nation, but to the wider world, and in particular to the wider Church at home and abroad. Which leads again to his emphasis on referring the matter to the UN as a way of approaching that wider perspective.
This letter is very revealing, and although Fisher is not usually rated as a theologian, it seems to me that his understanding of the respective roles of politician and church leader, and how they might approach the issue, could hardly be bettered. What we note above all is that while there is a tension, there is no absolute dualism. There is a proper difference of roles, a genuine tension, but no abyss between the two.
Fisher retired in 1961. He advised the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, that he did not consider Michael Ramsey, who had been his pupil at Repton, a suitable successor. Ramsey later told Victor Stock the conversation Fisher had with the prime minister.
According to this account, Fisher said: I have come to give you some advice about my successor. Whomever you choose, under no account must it be Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of York. Dr Ramsey is a theologian, a scholar and a man of prayer. Therefore, he is entirely unsuitable as Archbishop of Canterbury. I have known him all his life. I was his headmaster at Repton. Thank you, your Grace, for your kind advice. You may have been Doctor Ramsey’s headmaster, but you were not mine.
During the 1960s and 70s many Christians were critical of the positions being taken by the World Council of Churches in their programme to combat racism. The distinguished American ethicist Paul Ramsey voiced some of their views in his book Who Speaks for the Church?
2
In that book he held out as a model of the kind of statement the Church should make what Archbishop Michael Ramsey said in relation to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by Ian Smith, the prime minister of what was then Southern Rhodesia. The Archbishop wrote to Harold Wilson, the prime minister, to say If notwithstanding all efforts there shall come a breakdown and if you and your government should judge it necessary to use force to sustain our country’s obligations I am sure a great body of Christian opinion would support you.
3
If Rhodesia goes over the brink I agree that it is not for us as Christian Churches to give the government military advice as to what is practicable or possible. That is not our function. But if the British Government thought it practicable to use force for the protection of the rights of the majority of the Rhodesian people, then I think that as Christians it will be right to use force to that end.
4
Ramsey was interviewed on the Ten O’clock programme of the BBC Home Service on 27 October, and again he tried to make his point clear. I’ve emphasized the fact – and so did the British Council of Churches emphasize the fact that it is for the Prime Minister and the government to make judgements as to what is really going to be practicable. And what we said was that if in the judgement of the statesmen, it’s really practicable to use force in this context, then we believe the Christian conscience should allow the use of force, if it’s of the nature of police force in order to forestall and prevent more indiscriminate kinds of force and violence.
5
On the whole, the Church of England tries to be fair and representative of its different traditions in its leadership. So it was not surprising that the catholic Michael Ramsey should have been succeeded by Donald Coggan (Archbishop of Canterbury from 1974 to 1980), a scholarly evangelical who was Archbishop of York at the time. My main connection with Donald Coggan was rather after this in my role as Chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, which I was for nine years. The Archbishops are always joint Presidents of the Council, together with the Chief Rabbi and other Christian and Jewish leaders. Donald Coggan was an Old Testament scholar who always had a keen respect for Judaism, but the shift in his understanding of Christianity’s relationship with Judaism in his later years was quite remarkable.
In a 1985 lecture at St Paul’s Cathedral, after listing five attitudes which a Christian might bring to an encounter with a Jewish friend, he ended up by saying that for a Christian to share his or her faith is natural, but this should be very much in the form of a sensitive, gentle invitation. However, in 1992, in a sermon at St Paul’s Cathedral to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Council of Christian and Jews he said that Judaism and Christianity Have so much in common which is essential for the very life of the world that we should regard it as the truth of which we are common trustees and together we should make its light shine. We have a common message and, I would dare to say, a common mission. I see two hands, grasped in a common task with Christian saying to Jew and Jew replying to Christian: ‘We have passed from hatred to tolerance, from tolerance to dialogue. Now, together, we go – in obedience to a common mission – to fulfil a shared task given to us by God. We are partners. We are co-trustees. Come, let us go – and go together.'
This lecture could have made for a major row in Great Britain because it was reported without any of the original subtleties and qualifications, and Archbishop Carey could have been attacked for engaging in old-fashioned conversion of the Jews. However, the Chief Rabbi, in a great act of statesmanship, asked rabbis of the United Synagogue, of which he is head, not to comment publicly on the Archbishop’s lecture, and they didn’t. He also remarked that he understood that it was necessary for the Archbishop to say what he said, and it was necessary for he himself to hear it. All this is an indication of how much has been achieved between the two communities, and between the Chief Rabbi and the then Archbishop of Canterbury in particular, in the way of mutual respect and supportive friendship. But my main point here is the remarkable rethink undertaken by Donald Coggan, in his understanding of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. 6
Bob Runcie (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1980–1991) was Principal of Cuddesdon when I was a student there from 1961 to 1963. The previous Principal, Edward Knapp Fisher, was an austere man who maintained that tradition in the college. He used to spend his summer holidays helping out on the local farms. The story is told of two students who, noticing that the Principal liked to be in chapel by 6.30 before anyone else, decided one day to get there before him. The principal started slightly when he came in and saw the students so the following morning arrived at 6 a.m. Not to be beaten, the next day the students managed to arrive just before the Principal. So the ‘I can be earlier than you’ game continued until the Principal rumbled what was happening.
One of the features of the discipline of the college at the time was the banishing of women from anywhere near the college, even for married students. Bob Runcie decided to lighten this a little. A few married students were allowed to have their wives not too far away, and after the main Eucharist on a Sunday morning women were allowed into the common room for a cup of coffee. It was assumed that the grace of the sacrament would keep the lust of the young men down for half an hour, and the lusts of the young women had not even been thought about then. I benefited from this new slightly more relaxed regime, and because the college was very full when I applied late I was billeted out to the house of a local farming family, the Palmers, who were sweetness itself and who allowed Jo my then fiancée to come and stay in the house on some weekends. Bob Runcie remained very fond of Jo all his ministry and always enquired most tenderly and genuinely after her.
As Principal, Bob Runcie was always very conscious of the great weight of the Cuddesdon past and those who guarded the tradition watchfully, as a result of which he was very careful about making any changes. It was probably true that he and all of us should have been more alert to the seismic changes which were beginning to take place in the wider culture at the time, but the Cuddesdon emphasis on the formation of a disciplined life of prayer and worship grounded us well for what lay ahead.
A highlight of any student’s time there were the Principal’s pastoralia lectures, delivered in the final term before ordination. As the vast majority of students only wanted to get on as quickly as possible with the job of parish ministry, these were eagerly devoured, and Runcie’s were superb. Also much admired were his introductions to visiting speakers, particularly the ones we had one night a week after dinner. In a few concise, amusing and illuminating sentences, he was able to set a person and their subject before us. This did not come without cost. If you went to the cloakroom before one of these lectures, you were likely to find the Principal pacing the corridor carefully working the sentences into shape in his head.
Bob Runcie kept in touch from time to time, for example he wrote wonderfully supportive letters in his own hand for my ordination first as a deacon and then as a priest. But the next time I really saw him in action was when I was Dean of King’s College, London, of which he was visitor. I vividly remember one of his visits when I went round the great hall introducing him to members of staff. He showed then his extraordinary ability to instinctively home in on someone’s interests and through that to them as a person. Of course, he had no difficulty doing this with the academics, particularly with those from the arts departments. But he showed just the same ability with non-academics. For example, he found out that one lady, a non-academic, came from Liverpool, so could immediately mention the fact that his mother was a hairdresser in Liverpool. Although, as a result of his wartime experience as an officer in the Scots Guards, he was good friends with plenty of top-drawer people like Willie Whitelaw, he was not a snob and had no pretentions. This did not stop him having a thoroughly worldly understanding of where people stood in in the eyes of the world. So at Cuddesdon before introducing me to someone he might whisper in my ear ‘Farms 20,000 acres in Perthshire’ or something similar. All that taken into account, he was wonderfully simpatico with everyone he met, whatever their background.
It was while I was at King’s that from time to time he would ring up and ask me to write the draft of a sermon or speech for him. Of course, one was very flattered and was delighted to do this. But having done it, he might not use a word, having perhaps asked others also to write something for him. It was very variable. I wrote what I thought was a profound sermon for a special anniversary of the BBC of which he used not a word. On the other hand, I wrote an article for The Times, which appeared under his name, arguing that our defence of the Falklands satisfied Just War criteria, which appeared without a word being changed. I believe this way of using the help of others was a mistake. 7 It would have been better if he had thought out the main lines of what he wanted to say first before asking someone to write a script along those lines. He did not find the relentless pressure to produce things to say on public occasions at all easy, partly because he set himself high standards and knew how easy it was to fall below them. When on the phone about some script or other he might sigh and say, ‘Many hurdles to jump before this one’.
Nor did Runcie find the job itself easy, not least the press coverage. When they came over for the Lambeth Conference, American bishops were amazed at the way the press treated him. ‘It’s a rough, tough world over here,’ I had to say to them. In addition to the worries connected with the abduction of Terry Waite, the storm over photos of his wife Lindy in the papers and so on, he was unflagging in making himself available to other people. When I was with him in Singapore for a meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council, he was endlessly patient in talking to people and having his photo taken with them. I almost had to frogmarch him away to have a very occasional relaxing swim in a pool.
I was consecrated as Bishop of Oxford on Ascension Day 1987 in St Paul’s Cathedral. It was a most wonderful and happy occasion. A friend, the composer Patrick Gowers, wrote a special anthem for it, Viri Galilaei, which although a very ambitious piece for two organs is now often sung on Ascension Day in cathedrals. Eric James preached a wonderful sermon, on the theme of E. M. Forster’s words ‘Only Connect’, particularly stressing my need to connect mind and heart. Then when the consecration was over, Bob Runcie literally seemed to dance up the aisle, holding my hand, as we made our way to the Great West Door. His funeral in St Alban’s Abbey was, in another way, an equally memorable event, attended as it was by so many of his friends. Especially moving was the lament as his body was piped out of the door to the grave in the grounds. With his passing, there was, for some of us a sense of Ichabod. Whatever future historians make of Bob Runcie’s leadership as Archbishop, he was a great human being, with a very strong pastoral heart, often showing great care for ordinary individuals who were sick or in trouble, even in the midst of his heavy duties. For me, he had an honour especially worth having, a Military Cross for bravery, which of course he never mentioned, indeed he was extremely reluctant to speak about himself at all.
When I became Bishop of Oxford in 1987, Bob Hardy, then Bishop of Lincoln, and I got together to form an episcopal cell for the mutual support of its members. We wanted this to represent every tradition in the Church of England, as well as being representative geographically. Among those invited to be a founding member was George Carey, who after making his reputation as an outstanding Principal of Trinity College, Bristol was newly appointed as Bishop of Bath and Wells. This episcopal cell became an important part of all our lives, particularly in the early stages when most of us were new to the job and anxious to learn from one another. We met twice a year for 24 hours a time, rotating the venue around the different houses of our members. Wives would sometimes join us for a final meal together at the end of the meeting. It was a very supportive and helpful group. During its existence, George was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, which he was from 1991 to 2002. I think he found it of particular help at that time, sounding us out on his new heavy responsibilities. As is well known, George comes from a humble background and left school at 16, getting an education, including a doctorate, later. He has a good brain, is a quick learner and is well organized. So at those meetings and in my other dealings with him over the years, you would invariably see him with a notebook and pen keeping notes of what was going on. You might also find him reading a book of New Testament scholarship in French on the plane. He was often prescient in his judgements. I remember being very surprised and somewhat shocked at the height of the scandals around Prince Charles, Princess Diana and Camilla Parker Bowles when George predicted that if Charles married Camilla it would not be too long before the nation accepted her and was willing to have her as queen. So it has proved.
Working with George at meetings of the House of Bishops, the General Synod and the Lambeth Conference, he showed himself to be a strong leader, with clear ideas as to the reforms that were necessary and a determination to carry them out. This was particularly apparent after the financial losses incurred by the Church Commissioners shortly before he took over, when he brought about a major reorganization in the structures of the Church of England. All this of course was to make the Church more effective in proclaiming Christ, about which he cared deeply.
Apparently in Lambeth George and his wife Eileen were sometimes referred to as William and Mary. If they were aware of this, I hope they took it as a compliment because they did indeed work as a team, and this was a great strength. Bishop’s wives like clergy wives generally play very different role, and there is no blueprint. Bob Runcie’s wife, Lindy, had her much-loved life as a music teacher and having been brought up very much free range, remained a strong independent spirit. George and Eileen saw the ministry as very much a partnership, and George was not willing to see this in any other way. I saw this attitude at first hand when I went with him on a visit to Russia, Armenia and Georgia. On our first day in Georgia when we were collected in a fleet of black cars and George was seated in the front one, he later found out that Eileen had been displaced from the front by Orthodox hierarchy and put in a back car. He was furious and insisted that on future journeys she should be near him in the front. Similarly at the Lambeth Conference, when Eileen presided over the simultaneous conference for wives, she showed herself very relaxed and at ease with herself on the public platforms introducing events. George and I did not agree on the issue of same-sex relationships – he taking a very conservative view – but I recognized and respected his role as a strong leader who tried to make the Church better equipped to proclaim the faith in the face of all the difficulties, not least a cynical media. George and Eileen told each other that, whatever the difficulties of the job, they were going to enjoy it. That seemed to me rather a healthy attitude and one in marked contrast to both his predecessor and successor.
I was at a New Year’s Day party given by Tony and Nancy Kenny on New Year’s Day 2003 at which many of the intellectual glitterati of Oxford were present. A few days earlier the Richard Dimbleby Lecture had been given on television by the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. It was based on a major new book by the American scholar Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History. Many of the guests, who were not inclined to be impressed by clergymen, had stayed up late to watch it and were impressed. When some time later I mentioned this to Philip Bobbitt, he said to me that Rowan Williams was the one person who really understood what the book was about. And that is just one subject, not usually a major one for theologians. The range of Rowan’s intellectual interests is phenomenal, as is the depth of learning he shows in them. He has translated the Spanish mystics and written about them, including what may well become a classic of spirituality. He translates from the Russian, and in a short sabbatical when Archbishop he wrote a major book on Dostoevsky. He has written a major scholarly work on Arius and published a multitude of brilliant essays on a range of public policy issues. At the Hay Festival one year, when one of my books was shortlisted, Rowan was awarding the prize. His summary and evaluation of each of the four books was masterly. Later the same day, he did a public dialogue with Simon Russell Beale on Shakespeare, and showed himself to be deeply knowledgeable and full of insight on his work.
And this is only a portion of the subjects that Rowan has lectured and written on, as well as being a respected poet himself. All this is made possible first of all by the fact that he has a photographic memory, and is able to look at a page of Latin or Greek and remember it. He also has a good ear, being very musical with a fine voice, and he can translate from 11 languages.
I regard myself as having a wide range of intellectual interests, but I find not only that Rowan’s is wider, but that anything I think I know about he seems to know more, in greater depth. He appears to have read everything, remembered everything and is able to talk or write with a magisterial authority that can only come from having fully assimilated the material and connected it to other areas of learning. He makes most so-called public intellectuals seem very thin by comparison. In Sonnet 29, Shakespeare writes about ‘desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope’. In his poem ‘Ash Wednesday’, Eliot has his own variation of this, with the words, ‘Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope’.
Some of us might be excused for desiring at least some of Rowan’s gift and scope. I once teased Rowan and said to him, ‘God has given you every possible gift under the sun and as your punishment he has made you Archbishop of Canterbury.’
In addition to these phenomenal intellectual gifts, Rowan is a man of serious prayer and humility, deeply caring and committed to the most vulnerable. This is the Rowan that emerges so wonderfully when he is preaching at the Eucharist, especially in an informal setting. Those who experience this always regard it as a privilege. Yet he also has a reputation for being unnecessarily difficult and obscure. The New Statesman, for which he is now a lead reviewer, recently printed some letters from readers complaining that Rowan’s reviews were too difficult. He can indeed be a very difficult writer. This is partly, I think, because he cannot formulate a thought in his mind without at the same time being aware of all the qualifications and nuances that are necessary. The result is that it is not always easy to sum up what he has said in one’s own words. It is also because his range of reference is always so wide. Then there is his clear dislike of anything approaching a cliché or saying the obvious.
When in 2003 a new Bishop of Reading was needed, I appointed a committee to advise me on the appointment. This was unusual at the time, most bishops reserving the appointment of suffragan bishops exclusively to themselves. We shortlisted four candidates, one of whom was Jeffrey John. I rang up Rowan to inform him that I was doing this, and he made no particular comment. At the interviews, it was obvious that Jeffrey was the outstanding candidate, a gifted teacher and a prayerful caring pastor whose catholic spirituality fitted what we needed at that point. I was of course aware of his excellent booklet arguing that the Church should fully accept gay people and also that he was in a partnership. However, he affirmed that this had been celibate ‘for a considerable period’. No less important for me was the fact that during his time in the Diocese of Southwark he had become much admired by evangelicals for his gospel teaching and commitment to mission. Philip Giddings, a leading evangelical layman both in the diocese and on General Synod who was a member of my advisory group, expressed hesitations, but no one strongly disagreed. I rang up Rowan to tell him I wished to nominate Jeffrey. Surprisingly quickly, he agreed.
When the news got out, a strong campaign against the appointment was mounted by so-called Anglican Mainstream. They unearthed a paper that Jeffrey had given some years before, which contained some outspoken remarks on gay relationships and gave it wide circulation on the Internet. I was put under huge pressure to withdraw my nomination. This included a meeting with a dozen leading evangelicals from the diocese. It was the toughest meeting I had ever experienced, but I refused to back down. The meeting was at St Ebbe’s Church where, some years later, the able vicar bravely came out publicly that he was sexually attracted to men. On Saturday 5 July 2003 at 8 a.m. both Jeffrey and I, having been duly summoned, appeared at Lambeth Palace and went in separately to see Rowan and be told that he was not prepared to go through with the appointment. I was shattered and very nearly resigned in protest as a matter of principle. Poor Jeffrey had it much worse with his house being staked out by the press and a trawl being made through the land registry to see if he and his partner owned a property together.
I have never blamed Rowan for this and continue to hold him in the highest admiration. I can see that in his role as Archbishop he had to try to hold both the Church of England and the Anglican Communion together. Where he went wrong was in agreeing to the nomination too quickly, being led to do so by his known positive views about gays, his admiration for Jeffrey and no doubt pressures of work. We clearly should have met and thought through where opposition would come from and whether, when it came, we could hold firm to the decision. The debacle was caused by agreeing to the appointment and then withdrawing his approval. I had anticipated opposition from within the Diocese of Oxford but believed that within two years Jeffrey would have won the trust of evangelicals as he had in Southwark. What we had not anticipated was the pressure that could be brought on people in the world of emails. Clearly Rowan was put under great pressure from people round the Anglican Communion stirred up into action by Anglican Mainstream. I suspect it was them also who arranged for a letter to appear in The Times from a number of Church of England bishops opposing the appointment – an unprecedented breach of collegiality. Later, Rowan said that this opposition from other Church of England bishops had been the main influence on his decision not to accept Jeffrey. 8
This episode changed me. Although I had been liberal in my views about gay people before this, afterwards it became a deep conviction that they be treated fairly and that the Church fully accept them as a matter of justice. 9
I did not know Rowan in the early years of his ministry but was always aware of his reputation as a brilliant and holy scholar and priest. Again, although he was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in Oxford for some of the time I was Bishop, I did not know him well then, though I did chair a Church of England working party of which he was a member, which produced a worthwhile report. 10 It was when he became Archbishop for the last four years of my time as Bishop of Oxford that I worked most closely with him. He was totally at ease chairing the House of Bishops meetings, clearly mastering the paperwork without undue angst. The most remarkable meeting was at one of the heights of controversy over same-sex relationships. When the formal business was over, he simply sat on a chair facing us and opened up his heart as well as his mind over what was happening. He spoke with characteristic eloquence for nearly an hour. I sat next to Tom Wright, then Bishop of Durham, who in fact took a much more conservative position than did Rowan. I noticed that Tom was in tears. But we were all equally moved.
I have been hugely influenced by Rowan, first all of by his example of holiness and humility and then in almost every area of intellectual endeavour that we have both thought about. On the central Christian beliefs, I have been much reassured and strengthened in a Trinitarian view of God by Rowan’s continued emphasis on this in everything he writes. I remember reading two books on the Trinity some 50 years ago and thinking how naturally and essentially my own Christian thinking was Trinitarian, and so much of what Rowan writes resonates and reinforces this. But he has shifted my thinking in many areas, including in his emphasis on God creating a new humanity round Jesus, and following on from this the essential nature of the Church as the embodiment of this.
Justin Welby, who was installed as Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013, came from a career on the financial side of the oil industry. This has given him a grasp of the way the secular world works and some authority when he speaks about financial matters. His earlier work in the Church, when he made numerous visits to conflict areas in Nigeria to try to bring about reconciliation, also indicated a willingness to be bold. This was quickly shown when he spoke out against payday lenders, like Wonga, saying that the Church would put them out of business by supporting and forming credit unions. It was later shown that the Church of England had invested in an equity fund that had shares in Wonga. It was to be typical of him that he quickly admitted that this, which was unknown to him and the Church’s ethical investment advisory group, was highly embarrassing. Unlike so many public spokespeople who appear on the media, he does not equivocate but gives a clear, honest answer. Indeed, one of his most endearing features is his complete lack of side and his self-deprecating sense of humour. Shortly after his appointment was announced, I met Giles Fraser, who had just interviewed him. On a number of issues, they would not agree, but Giles was totally bowled over. ‘’E does ’uman’, he kept repeating in his best mockney. That is certainly my experience of Justin both in private and on public occasions. It goes a long way to disarming any instinct to carp and criticize. This is one of the features that enables him to be at ease in his contributions in the House of Lords. This is no doubt also helped by the fact that he comes from a social background unlikely to be intimidated by its membership, which also includes his stepfather Charles Williams.
His interventions on payday lending, banking (he is a member of the banking commission) and other financial issues mean that he has achieved a rare miracle: he got the national press talking about the Church of England and money rather than the Church of England and gay sex. The other miracle was the way, after the final push to get woman bishops floundered under Archbishop Rowan, Justin started again and in a remarkably short time brought it about. The Vatican requires three miracles for sainthood, so we only need one more. The fact that he was able to bring this about was no doubt due in part due to the sense of shock and sombre reckoning that fell on the Church after the previous failure but also significantly to Justin’s capacity to break down barriers and his experience in reconciliation work.
Justin Welby has been criticized in some quarters on two counts. One is that he is bringing in a more managerial style, particularly when it comes to training up new leaders for the Church, and secondly that he relies too much on his personal relationships rather than the structures of the Church. In relation to the latter, the two approaches are surely not mutually exclusive, and the creation of good relationships at the top can help achieve institutional rapprochement. 11
A feature of spiritual maturity in the leadership of the Church of England is a person’s capacity to genuinely enter into some of the riches of traditions other than their own. This was true of George Carey as he came to appreciate and make his own some catholic practices. It was true of Rowan Williams in his positive words about the charismatic movement. This capacity is even more pronounced in Justin Welby. Converted within and nourished in the milieu of Holy Trinity, Brompton, he is able to speak wonderfully naturally about his experience there. When asked if he spoke in tongues, he replied. ‘Oh yes, it’s just a routine part of spiritual discipline – you choose to speak and you speak a language that you don’t know. It just comes.’ At the same time, he uses catholic spiritual disciplines in his personal prayer, has a Roman Catholic spiritual director and has formed a religious community at Lambeth Palace.
Justin Welby has a clear sense of what is needed in a leader. When a new Archbishop takes up his post, he is likely to find his diary committed for months if not years ahead as all the different departments book his time for different aspects of the job. The first thing Justin did was to clear his diary for the next six months. He wanted to set his own priorities. That, together with his ability to break down barriers and speak in a clear non-pompous way, bodes well. But it will be interesting to see if the press, which has been hostile to all recent Archbishops but has so far been sympathetic to him, turns hostile when they realize that what he is saying is not only clear but a clear challenge to many of the assumptions in our national, especially our commercial life.
These seven Archbishops have all been very different people, as have the gifts they have brought to the role of Archbishop and the styles of leadership they have adopted. But all have been gifted and godly men (and until now, of course, they have all been men) through whom God has enriched the Church of England in fresh ways.