Replacing the archbishop

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: new leadership for the Church of England.

The search is underway for the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury. In late May, the Crown Nominations Commission began its work and it’s expected to name a successor this fall.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: But, for most of the world’s Anglicans, the decision won’t carry much weight.

WORLD’s Paul Butler has the story.

PAUL BUTLER: Last November, Justin Welby resigned as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury.

Welby stepped down after the Church of England published a 253-page report detailing child abuse allegations against John Smyth, a volunteer Christian camp leader. While the document didn’t implicate Welby in the abuse, it indicated that he had known about Smyth’s behavior since 2013. Audio from a BBC interview with Welby:

BBC: I should have pushed harder, because I knew enough to know that people very rarely, almost never, abuse once. I should have said, “Are we absolutely sure there’s no one else involved?”

After announcing his resignation, Welby spoke before parliament:

PARLIAMENT: There comes a time if you are technically leading a particular institution or area of responsibility, where the shame of what has gone wrong, whether one is personally responsible or not, must require a head to roll.

As the lead bishop of the church of England…Welby decided he was the one who should take the fall.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was once a powerful role. The first Protestant archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, shaped the principles of the Anglican Church with a book he wrote in 1549.

KENNEDY: And that book, the Book of Common Prayer, is really what makes people Anglican in their ethos.

Anne Kennedy oversees liturgy at Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, New York. She is also a WORLD Opinions contributor. She says that as Anglicanism spread with the British Empire, the Church of England couldn’t effectively govern each province.

KENNEDY: They gradually gained jurisdictional authority, so there were archbishops and bishops and clergy in every place where the British Empire had been. And that then became what's called the Anglican Communion.

The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t directly control churches within the Anglican Communion. He isn’t a protestant Pope.

KENNEDY: But he always has always had the power to convene meetings and synods where decisions would really be made and has a spiritual authority that should matter deeply.

But over the last few decades, many of the world’s more than 80 million Anglicans have stopped looking to the Archbishop for spiritual guidance. That’s largely because of the widespread failure to uphold Biblical principles about marriage and sexuality. The slide developed gradually. More than 25 years ago, things looked pretty good.

KENNEDY: In 1998, all the bishops from around the world made what's called Resolution 110. And that in that resolution, they, all the bishops from around the world, affirmed marriage as between a man and a woman.

Yet just five years later the Episcopal Church, which represents the United States in the Anglican Communion, ordained Gene Robinson as the first openly homosexual bishop.

KENNEDY: Even though they made this wonderful resolution, they were not able to carry it through.

In 2009, 53 U.S. churches broke away from the Episcopal Church over this and other theological issues. The group formed the Anglican Church in North America. Today, the ACNA represents 28 dioceses throughout the United States and Canada.

A larger split over same-sex marriage occured while Justin Welby was archbishop.

Many Anglicans had high hopes when Welby was installed in 2013. He was advertised as an Evangelical. But that’s not how he’ll be remembered.

WEDGEWORTH: He still wanted to be cautious for the sake of the institution, so he said he wouldn't push radical change, but he personally supports gay marriage.

Steven Wedgeworth is the rector at Christ Church Anglican in South Bend, Indiana.

WEDGEWORTH: The doctrine on paper, it still says marriage between a man and a woman with the intent for the propagation of the species, with the intent to be faithful for life. But they said, We will bless same sex marriages. And so that was the final breaking point.

In 2023, roughly 1,300 bishops met at the Global Anglican Future Conference to renounce the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

WEDGEWORTH: So that's their response, is that we are actually, in fact, in truth, the majority of worldwide Anglicans. And additionally, even better, we represent the historic doctrine and moral practice, and from from their perspective, Canterbury no longer follows historic Anglican faith and practice.

Today, some conservative Anglicans might be curious about what the Archbishop of Canterbury has to say, however…

WEDGEWORTH: No one is waiting for the Archbishop to weigh in in order to decide a controversy.

That’s unlikely to change when the Crown Nominations Commission picks Welby’s successor. Wedgeworth says they could surprise everyone by choosing a Biblically orthodox candidate. In that case, the role of archbishop could regain some credibility.

But Anne Kennedy suspects the church will continue its leftward trajectory.

KENNEDY: I would expect them to pick a woman of color in a same-sex relationship. That would be my expectation. I don’t see how they could do anything less at this point.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler with reporting from Bekah McCallum.

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