Veering left, Church of England looks for a new leader

For the first time ever, a woman could land the top job in the Church of England. Last week, the church posted qualifications for the 106th person to serve as the archbishop of Canterbury. Among a slew of requirements, including the need for the next archbishop to be a “servant leader” who “will fully welcome those from the LGBTQIA+ community,” the document noted that the next head of the Church of England may be a man or a woman.

Days earlier, the Crown Nominations Commission, a group of 20 delegates from Anglican churches around the world, met for the first time to discuss Archbishop Justin Welby’s successor. Welby resigned in November after an investigation found that he knew about child abuse perpetrated at a summer camp and failed to report it.

The job description for the next archbishop doesn’t guarantee that the role will go to a woman, nor does it practically clarify what it means for an archbishop to “welcome those from the LGBTQIA+ community.” But some experts anticipate that, at the very least, the 106th archbishop will continue leading the denomination in a theologically liberal direction. If so, the head of the Church of England may have even less influence over Anglican churches around the world.

The Church of England claims its starting point in the late sixth century, when Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine of Canterbury (not to be confused with the author of Confessions), who became the first archbishop of Canterbury, on a missionary journey to Britain.

Almost a millennium later, after King Henry VIII’s infamous break with the Roman Catholic Church in 1534, the See (derived from the Latin word for seat) of Canterbury became Protestant. To date, the reigning British monarch serves as the official head of the Church of England. Although the U.K. state church is divided into two provinces, York and Canterbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury is the Church of England’s main primate, often referred to as “first among equals.”

The Church of England gained global influence with the spread of colonialism, according to Anne Kennedy, director of liturgics at Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, N.Y., and a contributor to WORLD Opinions. “The British Empire went out as a great wave and then gradually receded back to the shores of England, but they left in their wake really strong local Anglican jurisdictions,” she said. “There were archbishops and bishops and clergy in every place where the British Empire had been.”

Many national Anglican churches function as independent entities within the Anglican Communion, a collection of 42 member churches or provinces first organized in 1867. Though he does not possess the same level of authority as the Catholic Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury nevertheless functions as the figurehead of the Anglican Communion.

But the majority of conservative Anglicans have stopped looking to the archbishop as an authoritative voice and formally distanced themselves from the Church of England because of the denomination’s widespread failure to uphold Biblical principles about marriage and sexuality and female ordination.

In 1998, Anglican bishops from across the globe signed a resolution affirming that marriage is only between one man and one woman. Just five years later, the Episcopal Church in the United States ordained Gene Robinson as the first openly homosexual bishop. “Even though [the Anglican bishops] made this wonderful resolution, they were not able to carry it through,” Kennedy said.

In 2009, 53 U.S. churches broke away from the Episcopal Church to form the Anglican Church in North America. Today, the ACNA represents 28 dioceses throughout the United States and Canada.

The Anglican Church’s slide away from Scriptural teaching percolated throughout the 2000s, but it reached a boiling point during Archbishop Welby’s tenure.

Welby, tapped to serve as the 105th archbishop of Canterbury in 2013, resigned in November following the release of the Makin Review, a 253-page report detailing allegations against John Smyth, a volunteer Christian camp leader. Smyth was accused of physically and sexually abusing at least 115 boys and young men at church camps in the U.K. and Africa throughout the 1970s and 1980s, though the total number of victims “likely runs much higher,” according to the report.

The report didn’t implicate Welby in the abuse, but he admitted to knowing about Smyth’s actions and failing to respond. “I had no idea or suspicion of this abuse before 2013,” wrote Welby in a statement dated Nov. 7, the same day as the Makin Review’s publication. “Nevertheless the review is clear that I personally failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013, the awful tragedy was energetically investigated.”

Five days later, Welby resigned. But his abdication of responsibility wasn’t limited to the Smyth incident, according to Kennedy at Church of the Good Shepherd.

In late 2013, just eight months after Welby’s installment, the Church of England’s House of Bishops introduced the Pilling Report, calling for “facilitated conversations” about differing views on homosexuality. “The recommendations do not propose any change in the church’s teaching on sexual conduct,” the Church of England clarified on its website. In 2020, the House of Bishops released Living in Love and Faith, a resource series promoting LGBTQ ideology.

In February 2023, the Church of England announced that bishops could bless same-sex marriages as long as they don’t officiate them, “as if God is easily fooled,” quipped Kennedy. The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches, which makes up about 75% of the Communion, responded with the Ash Wednesday Statement, declaring that its churches could no longer recognize the Archbishop of Canterbury as leader of the global Communion.

The following April, leaders of the fourth Global Anglican Future Conference, a meeting of Biblically orthodox Anglicans primarily from Africa and the Americas, published the Kigali Commitment. More than 1,300 delegates from 52 countries attended a meeting where leaders rebuked the Church of England for its failure to uphold Scriptural authority concerning marriage and sexuality. Delegates also affirmed that they could “no longer recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury as … the ‘first among equals’ of the Primates.”

Welby never backtracked, at least during the remainder of his time in office. In a 2024 interview with The Rest Is Politics podcast, when questioned about the morality of gay intercourse, Welby said, “All sexual activity should be within a committed relationship, whether it’s straight or gay.”

When it came to articulating clear teaching on issues like marriage and sexuality, “[Welby] began trying to come up with a compromise,” said Steven Wedgeworth, the rector at Christ Church Anglican in South Bend, Ind., and a WORLD Opinions contributor. He said that Welby tried to “hold the church together, not by taking a stand and drawing clear lines, but by bringing about some sort of agreement where everyone can feel like they’ve had their say.”

The issue of female ordination also came to a climax while Welby was in charge. Although women had been permitted to become priests in the Church of England since 1992, the denomination’s General Synod allowed female bishops in 2014. Some insiders believe permitting female ordination laid the groundwork for blessing same-sex marriage.

“The fact of the matter is that churches who ordain women always move in a more liberal direction,” wrote Anglican deacon River Devereux in a 2023 article published in the North American Anglican.

Wedgeworth thinks that the next archbishop is unlikely to be a staunch defender of Biblical orthodoxy, meaning the now largely symbolic role of the Archbishop of Canterbury could continue to weaken.

“The archbishop of Canterbury, at one point would have been a very impressive office, who, even if he didn’t have technical legal authority, he would still have extreme moral and persuasive authority,” said Wedgeworth. That’s largely no longer the case.

“No one is waiting for the Archbishop to weigh in in order to decide a controversy,” he said.

The Church of England appears to have functioned as usual with an empty archbishop’s chair. That may be out of necessity after the Crown Nominations Commission has experienced some setbacks in choosing a successor. One of the CNC representatives, Andrew Cornes, was also accused of failing to report Smyth’s behavior by the Makin Review and had to step down. Three of the CNC members were chosen from a local advisory board called the Vacancy in See Committee. Due to several misunderstandings and failed vote counting, leaders have chosen members for the committee four times.

Although full membership of the CNC was expected to be announced in March, the commission didn’t announce its final three members until May 27. It held its first meeting three days later.

The Crown Nominations Commission doesn’t disclose a list of candidates, so it’s difficult to predict who the next archbishop could be. Several media outlets have named Bishop of Chelmsford Guli Francis-Dehqani and Bishop of Leicester Martyn Snow as potential contenders. Francis-Dehqani signed an open letter in 2023 calling for the Church of England to issue guidance on allowing clergy to enter into same-sex marriages. Snow served as the lead bishop on the Living in Love and Faith process until he stepped down from the role last week

Another frontrunner, Bishop of Dover Rose Hudson-Wilkin, told The Times in 2012 that she has known “decent gay people who are in faithful monogamous relationships and who are hugely committed to each other.” She added she was more concerned about “institutional racism.”

The Crown Nominations Commission is expected to announce its pick for the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury this fall. Since it hasn’t released a list of its top contenders, it could still choose a more orthodox candidate.

Anne Kennedy isn’t holding her breath. “I would expect them to pick a woman of color in a same-sex relationship,” said Kennedy. “I don’t see how they could do anything less at this point.”