Baptism of fire for our new Archbishop
Justin Welby comes to the throne of Canterbury at an extraordinarily challenging and difficult time, and the first thing to say is that we hold him in our prayers. ‘Can it be that you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?’, asked the wise Mordecai of the young and innocent Queen Esther, [Esther 4:14] at a time of great crisis and fear. He has made self-deprecating jokes about his appointment and clearly does appreciate the difficult context of his task, notably the effects of economic decline on the poor and the need for the church to bolster what the state can do. He has also spoken of this problem opening up new opportunities to help people find the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ through the presence of the church in its many dimensions.
Here is an Archbishop not in the least shy of naming the name of Jesus in the public forum, and facing the world and its challenges through Him. Here is an Archbishop stressing the Holy Spirit at work personally and socially, as was evident at his recent participation in the Trent Vineyard service earlier this month. This seems to mark him out as open to new possibilities and futures, someone not to be trapped by the formalities of the ancient Church of England, a leader to take the church to the ‘God-forsaken’ places and bring to them the love of Christ crucified and risen.
Ecumenically an Archbishop speaking of the experience of the Spirit will surely help greatly in widening the scope of our currently rather constrained ecumenical approach to Christians outside the Roman and Orthodox communions, to evangelicals who share our faith but do not find mono-episcopacy a condition of entry to the Kingdom of God. Christians urgently need to act in common, and rarely has there been a time of greater pressure for Rome and Canterbury to come together in defending their freedom of teaching and practice in the face of the growing chill factor of state secularism against Christianity in the educational forum.
Archbishop Welby had prepared his response to the Marriage Bill before the Parliamentary debate as holding to the self-evident truth that marriage is between a man and a woman, a simple but very necessary statement of the social and theological fact. We might add that partnerships between same-sex couples are a form of friendship, and the government is basically confusing these categories in its relabelling exercise. Unfortunately for Archbishop Welby, the way the government has decided to impose this change, with no real consultation, no time for informed discussion, and a focus only on party political image, this issue is going to be a crisis for Christians and for the Established Church in relation to an aggressively secular state. With most large religious groups against this change, we face the prospect of a ‘secular v sacred’ Kulturkampf. We move towards Ash Wednesday and Lent, following Jesus into the desert, and pray for Justin Welby.