Being the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England, has at all times been a dangerous enterprise. Fashionable incumbents usually are not more likely to be murdered earlier than their very own altar, beheaded by Puritans, or burned as a martyr. However being the chief of 85 million believers on this planet’s third-largest Christian group—the Anglican Communion—continues to be a difficult and irritating job, as Justin Welby, who simply resigned on Nov. 12, is aware of too nicely.
Welby’s resignation was prompted by a lately concluded evaluation into the Church of England’s actions over its worst identified abuser, John Smyth.
Being the archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England, has at all times been a dangerous enterprise. Fashionable incumbents usually are not more likely to be murdered earlier than their very own altar, beheaded by Puritans, or burned as a martyr. However being the chief of 85 million believers on this planet’s third-largest Christian group—the Anglican Communion—continues to be a difficult and irritating job, as Justin Welby, who simply resigned on Nov. 12, is aware of too nicely.
Welby’s resignation was prompted by a lately concluded evaluation into the Church of England’s actions over its worst identified abuser, John Smyth.
Smyth was not a priest however relatively a lawyer, and a outstanding chief within the Iwerne motion, which ran evangelical youth camps that had been largely focused on the British elite. In his public life, Smyth was a virulent homophobe who efficiently prosecuted Homosexual Information for blasphemy in 1976. In non-public, he was obsessive about intercourse, and he sadistically beat teenage boys and younger males, typically whereas bare himself, claiming that it was a part of their non secular self-discipline.
Welby knew Smyth, and the evaluation questioned his account of being unaware of the abuse. However that’s hardly his solely drawback. The Smyth case goes to the guts of Anglicanism’s fashionable contradictions, and it has triggered an enormous disaster of religion in addition to calls by the Church of England’s second most vital chief, the archbishop of York, for the position of Canterbury itself to alter.
For liberals, it’s an indication of the inherent hypocrisy of conservative evangelism. “It’s very tough to carry that set of beliefs and never be colluding with abuse,” Alison Webster, a progressive Methodist who labored for the Church of England for 25 years, instructed Overseas Coverage. “It’s an authoritarian theology and a deeply sexist one.”
Like different religions, Anglicanism has been combating its previous failures over abuse.
“Each time you tried to speak about it, no person wished to hear, and no person actually wished to consider abuse may happen inside a Christian context,” Webster mentioned. However after the publicity of different abusers from the Nineties onward, the Church had—slowly and painfully—developed a set of safeguarding norms.
Welby, previously the bishop of Durham, got here into workplace as archbishop in 2013 hoping to deal with previous abuses and convey the communion collectively. However he didn’t have a straightforward job. Andrew Brown, a spiritual correspondent and the co-author of a guide on the Church of England, instructed Overseas Coverage, “Being archbishop was already an inconceivable job when Rowan [Williams, the previous archbishop] took it up.”
That impossibility stems from Anglicanism’s sheer attain. The archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t have the identical hierarchical energy as Catholicism’s pope—however he’s thought of “first amongst equals” in an enormous communion. The Church of England is proverbially a broad church, protecting an unlimited vary of practices and doctrines from Anglo-Catholic ritual to evangelical preaching. However the wider Anglican Communion—descended from the Church of England—can also be geographically huge, spanning from Papua New Guinea to Boston.
That span is a legacy of the British Empire and the Anglican missionaries who accompanied it. The dealing with of Smyth fell firmly into the imperial custom. A 1982 report, which stayed inside to the Iwerne motion, concluded that he had dedicated a number of “sadistic” and “evil” felony offences. Nonetheless, the police weren’t notified. As an alternative, Smyth was reportedly inspired to maneuver to Zimbabwe with monetary assist from different evangelicals.
There he continued his abuses, till the Zimbabwean police grew to become conscious of his actions after the mysterious demise of a 16-year-old boy in his care. He fled once more, this time to South Africa, the place he’s believed to have abused extra kids earlier than his demise in 2018. At no level did the English church leaders who knew of his abuses attain out to their African counterparts to warn them, nor did they contact police when information of his abuses reemerged in 2013.
The dumping of an English abuser on Africa, with the collusion of English leaders, will solely deepen African convictions that the mom church must repent.
“The church,” mentioned Martin Palmer—my father, in addition to an Anglican theologian and advisor to a number of previous archbishops—“has by no means been in a position to deal with the heritage of the plurality of empire.”
The break up over homosexuality is probably the most painful division inside that heritage right now. The broadness of the Anglican Church historically included house for lots of homosexual folks, each as clergymen and congregants. Left to their very own gadgets, components of the church may look one thing like Anglican Communion’s Episcopal department in america, which has lengthy been supportive of LGBTQ+ rights, together with by performing same-sex marriages since they had been legalized nationwide in 2015.
In distinction, the African church buildings that make up the vast majority of the fashionable Anglican Communion principally take a hard-line place on homosexuality that has put them immediately in battle with Western liberals. (The South African church, thanks partly to Desmond Tutu’s previous management, is one thing of an exception.)
The Church of England has been left in an uncomfortable compromise place; it is not going to carry out same-sex marriages, but it surely permits restricted blessings and tolerates brazenly homosexual clergy—who nonetheless typically really feel discriminated in opposition to and focused by their very own church. Neither aspect is proud of this.
Welby’s personal stance, neither condemning nor approving of same-sex relationships, happy nobody, and requires his resignation got here even earlier than the Smyth report was launched, each from conservatives akin to Ian Paul and homosexual clergy.
However the Church of England can also be the official faith of England and a key a part of the nationwide order. The archbishop of Canterbury crowns the monarch, who’s the formal head of the Church of England. Bishops sit within the Home of Lords. The archbishop thus has to serve an English public that’s strongly in favor of same-sex marriage in a rustic the place attendance at companies has been declining for many years, whereas on the identical time heading a worldwide communion largely made up of conservative African church buildings whose membership is rising.
Welby’s reply was to double down on his personal custom of well-financed evangelism within the hope that the motion may revitalize the church in England. He outlined himself as an “open evangelical,” embracing the passion of the custom with out inflexible conservatism. However over his decade in workplace, church attendance fell by roughly a third, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, when Welby’s choice to shutter church buildings attracted heavy criticism. Slightly than bringing new life to the church, Welby’s perceived favoring of evangelism widened its divides.
As an English scandal, the entire affair can also be unsurprisingly intertwined with class. Smyth focused college students at Winchester School, one of many nation’s elite non-public faculties, which has additionally been accused of colluding within the cover-up of his crimes. Welby is an Etonian, a former banker, and so posh that the final large story about him was his discovery that his organic father was Winston Churchill’s non-public secretary. The Iwerne camps that each Welby and Smyth participated in nearly completely sought to transform the youngsters of the wealthy and highly effective—the identical class that powers a lot of contemporary Anglican evangelism.
Welby’s successor will nominally be chosen by the king. In actuality, King Charles III will decide the identify given to him by the prime minister, who in flip will probably be working with a brief listing of two names given to him by an Anglican committee—one which now consists of representatives from the worldwide church buildings.
It might be tough for them to agree on a reputation, particularly one untainted by the Smyth scandal. However whoever they decide, the job will keep simply as inconceivable.
