(An extended version of the article that appeared in ‘Credo’ in The Times, 04 January 2025 and ‘Anglicanism’, February 2025).
There is nothing unique about the premature departure of an Archbishop of Canterbury. Archbishop Welby leaves office on January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, marking the visit of the Magi to see the Christ-child. So, it is perhaps sobering to remember that, like the proverbial wise men, many of his predecessors left office to return home by some other route they had not initially bargained on.
We can date the Church of England from Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury from 1534. One of only two post-reformation officeholders to be relieved of the post, he was burnt at the stake in 1556 during the reign of Mary Tudor for being too Protestant. William Laud was beheaded in 1645, after the defeat of Charles I by the New Model Army for being too Catholic. You can’t win.
However, well before Cranmer, several Archbishops had their appointments vetoed by papal authority, whilst several chosen candidates thought better of it and declined the position. Some had their elections quashed or disputed by the reigning monarch. A couple of candidates died of plague before being consecrated, while another was excommunicated. One fled accused of high treason, and others resigned on being upgraded to the rank of cardinal – a promotion. Thomas Becket was famously assassinated in 1170, and Simon Sudbury was beheaded by an unruly mob during the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. Once upon a time, untimely death in this office was an occupational hazard.
A personal favourite of mine is Cardinal Reginald Pole, who conveniently died of influenza just a few hours after Mary I had passed away on 17th November 1558. Otherwise, he’d have been executed (for being too Catholic). Earlier in his life, he had almost married Mary I, so he was well-connected and wealthy. But in 1556, he was ordained priest and two days later consecrated bishop to become the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Tudor dynasty really knew a thing or two about how to fast-track their favourites. And get rid of them when they’d served their purpose.
Archbishops of Canterbury are expendable and rarely memorable. Before the reformation, sixteen were canonised. Few will recall these saintly figures. Nowadays an archbishop might get a seat in the House of Lords upon retirement. Well, might. So, with Welby gone and soon to be forgotten, what next?
First, this is the only time the officeholder has left due to public pressure and been made to resign. Over 15,000 people signed a petition calling for him to go, and his departure is symptomatic of a public mood that has turned decisively against an unaccountable episcopacy and its nepotistic ecclesiocracy. If the church resists scrutiny and external regulation, it will repeatedly fail as a credible public body and never be trusted again.
Second, the resignation points to a much deeper malaise for the Church of England. This is not so much a church in crisis as a body nearing the end of its natural life. Like all organic bodies, institutions have a lifespan too; death is a normal part of the existential cycle. If there is to be a resurrection – not just endless attempts at resuscitation and rejuvenation – death must be embraced. The Church preaches this. It must live it too.
Third, the Church of England continues to live and flourish locally. All life is there, and that is genuinely hopeful. But as a national hierarchical institution and international denomination, it is in an advanced state of decay. Death avoidance only means that the Church of England spends more time in a self-imposed purgatory of painful palliative stasis.
Undoubtedly, the nation (by which I mean England) is now at a turning point in history and culture. In 2034, the Church of England—a national Protestant church that decisively broke from Rome—will be 500 years old. Lambeth Palace has no plans to mark this event, as Anglicans are divided on whether this is their quincentenary. Some Anglicans think that the Church of England is a continuing Catholic church. That is not how the Vatican views this national Protestant denomination founded in Swiss-German Reformed theology. Unable to explain itself, the Church of England hierarchy stays quiet on such issues, doubtless hoping that keeping up appearances will obfuscate the reality.
One bicentenary that comes to mind falls in a few years too. In 1832, Parliament introduced the Reform Bill designed to level up the status and rights of other denominations. The Bill sought to overturn the Test Act of 1673 which had effectively barred Roman Catholics from holding public office and attending university in England. The government had been chipping away at religious discrimination since 1828, with non-conformist denominations being extended some equality measures.
But in 1832, the Church of England stood its ground on privilege, and despite broad religious support for change, bishops in the House of Lords voted against to help defeat the Reform Bill on its first reading. Cue protests and mayhem. The Archbishop of Canterbury was heckled in public, the carriage of the Bishop of Bath and Wells stoned, and a crowd of almost ten thousand turned up to watch an effigy of the Bishop of Carlisle being burned. On the third reading of the Reform Bill, no bishop was found to be in Lemming-like opposition.
The Victorian era marked a sea change in how the public viewed the Church of England. The first census of 1851 found that of the 18 million population of England and Wales, around a quarter were Anglican—only fractionally more than those who identified as non-conformists. Pressure to reform led to the disestablishment of Anglicanism in Ireland (overwhelmingly Roman Catholic) and eventually Wales in the Edwardian period. The changes were slow but inexorable.
Perhaps the most significant shifts were directed towards the entitled, lofty elitism often displayed in the Church of England’s hierarchy. The USA had acquired its native bishops in 1784 following the defeat of the British in the American War of Independence. Yet, well into the 19th century, Church of England bishops declined to recognise and affirm visiting American clergy, insisting they should be regarded as laypeople since they could not affirm allegiance to the crown. This “religion of class”, as John Henry Newman dubbed it, still believed in Rule Anglicana and presumed to treat other denominations as inferior species and even other parts of the Anglican church outside Britain as second-class citizens.
There is now mounting pressure on the Labour government to reform the House of Lords and, with that, address the anomaly of Church of England bishops sitting in the legislative chamber as of right. The Establishment has its stock of old canards to meet such demands. These include all the arguments about Church of England schools, and even occasionally, a conservative commentator might venture that bishops in the House of Lords go back to feudal times (1295, to be more precise).
In truth, the history is uneven and complex. Wales only gained parliamentary representation in 1536, Scotland in 1707, and Ireland in 1801. The anomaly of English bishops sitting in a UK parliament looked stranger when the Irish and Welsh Anglican bishops were removed in 1869 and 1920, respectively. Scottish Anglican bishops have never been represented in the House of Lords.
Reforms to bishops sitting in the House of Lords are nothing new. The Clergy Act, also known as the Bishops Exclusion Act (effective from 1642), prevented clergy from exercising any temporal jurisdiction or authority. It was repealed in 1661 with the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.
In the 21st century, under Charles III, there is no case for privileging English peers in the House of Lords, let alone a tiny group known as ‘Lords Spiritual’ who cannot conceivably represent the interests of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
One can contemplate the lengthy wish list compiled for the next occupant of Lambeth Palace. Many will call for calibration based on high-low, left-right, liberal-conservative calculations. One assumes prayerfulness, wisdom, compassion, pastoral care, depth-inspiring spirituality, and theological nous would be taken for granted. Let’s hope so.
But I think a key feature needed in the selection process this time will be entirely new: realism. The Church of England does not need another rally for revival. The people in the pew’s hopes now rest on an authentic and honest candidate who does not deny reality.
The church needs an Archbishop of Canterbury who recognises that less will be more in the future. Cutting back on the hierarchy and top-down management of churches—’heavy pruning’, to borrow a phrase from Jesus’ teaching (John 15: 1-4) —might let in some much-needed light and air for local recovery and growth at ground level.
Rather than evading the death of an out-of-touch, aloof hierarchical institution, the next Archbishop might embrace the end of the high forms of ecclesiastical establishment and accompanying status theatre that hampers the Church of England in this kingdom. The end is nigh, and to rub against the grain in order to preserve status only risks alienating the nation and public even more.
The establishment of the Church of England requires a dignified natural death – or embracing some kind of assisted end. Only then might the church gain some purchase on that other kingdom, much closer to the one Jesus so often spoke of and practised.
Martyn Percy’s The Crisis of Global Anglicanism: Empire, Slavery and Revolt in the Church of England is published by Hurst Books. He is Professor of Theology at the University of Bern, Switzerland and Professor of Religion and Culture at the University of Saint Joseph, Macao.