With the process of choosing a new Archbishop of Canterbury now underway, it perhaps won’t come as a surprise that many commentators have already quietly written off the next incumbent, even before those running the process have started sifting through names, let alone choosing one. It is not their fault, mind. However, turning another page makes no real difference to a narrative drama that is essentially bound to rehash and repeat the previous storylines.

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The management and leadership theorist Peter Drucker opined that culture always “eats strategy for breakfast.” General Synod is a veritable breakfast buffet that meets for several days commencing Monday. Expect little but status theatre and windy speeches from loyalists. Dissent and grumbles will be muted, and the propaganda machine will be cranked to optimum strength. (Everything is fine and going according to plan; the media, public and people in the pews couldn’t be more wrong!). General Synod gatherings now resemble some elected assembly in a totalitarian one-party communist state (pre-1989) or a theocracy, in which autocratic bishops and their advisors reign supreme.

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