Editor’s Note: This essay is part of an extended series, February 10-21, focused on the related subjects of the succession at Canterbury and the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals crafted by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order.
“I thought we had had enough of Martha and it was time for some Mary.”
So quipped Prime Minister Harold Macmillan about Queen Elizabeth II’s appointment of Michael Ramsey to succeed Geoffrey Fisher as the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury (Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey, p. 107). Drawing on Luke 10, Macmillan was caricaturing “practicality” and “spirituality.”
Macmillan said to Ramsey, “Fisher doesn’t seem to approve of you.” Ramsey defended him. “Fisher,” he said, “was my headmaster and he has known all about my deficiencies for a long time.” “Well,” said MacMillan, “he is not going to be my headmaster.” (Owen Chadwick, Michael Ramsey, p. 107).
This essay is in two parts. The first is a consideration of the six post-war Archbishops of Canterbury (1945-2012) and then the archiepiscopate of Justin Welby (2013-25). In the second part, tomorrow, I will offer descriptions of six Church of England bishops who may turn out to be among the candidates to succeed Welby, and outline the process of choosing the next Archbishop.
Six Post-War Archbishops of Canterbury, 1945-2012
Geoffrey Fisher (1945-61), headmaster-like and of centrist tradition, renewed Canon Law and inaugurated the autonomous Anglican Provinces of West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa and South Africa.
Michael Ramsey (1961-74), an Anglo-Catholic and prayerful theologian, spoke against racism and the criminalization of gay people.
Donald Coggan (1974-80), a quiet, self-effacing liberal Evangelical, was a Hebrew scholar (favored by Fisher to succeed him), who initiated the “Call to the Nation.”
Robert Runcie (1980-91), honored tank commander and liberal Catholic classics scholar, prayed for Argentinians at the Thanksgiving Service at St. Paul’s Cathedral at the end of the Falklands War and instigated the Faith in the City report.
George Carey (1991-2002), an open Evangelical, born in the East End of London, steered the Women Priests legislation through General Synod and launched the Decade of Evangelism.
Rowan Williams (2003-12), from Wales, with no previous experience as a bishop in England, remains a renowned spiritual and philosophical theologian and poet whose legacy includes sponsoring Christian-Muslim “Building Bridges” seminars and the “Fresh Expressions of Faith” initiatives.
Usually, the appointment to Canterbury is seen as a pendulum swinging between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics. With Justin Welby being seen as particularly managerial, perhaps a successor who is non-managerial may be wanted? More Mary than Martha?
Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, 2013-25
“Why is there a telephone in your study?” I asked a student in Trinity College, Cambridge, in January 1978, when I stayed there prior to an interview at Ridley Hall. “Oh, that is left over from a previous student, Prince Charles. His detective insisted on it.”
So relayed Justin Welby. Very few people know that Welby, who would later crown King Charles III on 6 May 2023 in Westminster Abbey, had used the same set of rooms as the future king in Trinity College, Cambridge. Their years and subjects were, respectively: 1967-70 (archaeology and anthropology) and 1975-78 (history and law).
Is it fair to portray Justin Welby as the most Martha-like of archbishops since Fisher? Perhaps. After all, before ordination he traded in derivatives in the City of London and was the group treasurer of a large British oil exploration and production company, Enterprise Oil, in London at the age of 30. He brought this activism into his new role in 2013 and that year was appointed to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which produced the report Changing Banking for Good.
However, on the Mary side, he does have a profound and inspiring life of daily prayer and Holy Communion and has a charismatic Roman Catholic spiritual director. I have known him since December 1976, when we lived together for a week in the vicarage of St. Mary Magdalene, Islington, during Islington Week, an opportunity for evangelical students in Oxford and Cambridge to test out a vocation to ordination through immersion in the inner city.
I witnessed this aspect of his prayer life when I was Mission Theologian in the Anglican Communion. He shared worship, three times a day, with the Community of St. Anselm, which he founded at Lambeth Palace as a gap year for young people from around the world, from any denomination, based on prayer, service, and study. His most extensive writing on prayer is his introduction to the book Listening Together: Global Anglican Perspectives on the Renewal of Prayer and the Religious Life, edited by Muthuraj Swamy and Stephen Spencer (2020). This was the culmination of one of his priorities for his archiepiscopate.
It may be worth pondering his achievements:
- visiting all the primates of the Anglican Communion (then 33), in their homes with his wife, Caroline, in his first 18 months in office, which laid the foundation for the successful make-or-break Primates’ Meeting in 2016;
- winning the “War on Wonga” in 2013, when an “off the cuff” remark on the BBC Radio 4 Today program led to the demise of the payday lender;
- enabling the vote in General Synod in 2014 for consecrating women bishops;
- organizing the funding from the Church Commissioners for building a new Lambeth Palace Library in Lambeth Palace garden, which opened in 2020;
- writing three books: Dethroning Mammon (2017), Reimagining Britain (2018 and 2021), and The Power of Reconciliation (2022);
- the preparations, meeting, and follow-up of the Lambeth Conference in 2022;
- his three priorities of reconciliation, evangelism, and prayer, which led to visits to dangerous contexts, deanery missions, and the founding of the Thy Kingdom Come annual ecumenical prayer movement during the nine days before Pentecost;
- publication of three pre-Lambeth Conference 2022 books on those themes, with chapters written by theologians from the Global South;
- the pastoral care involved, and the public services led, for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II and for the Coronation of King Charles III;
- finally, encouraging the Inter-Anglican Standing Committee on Unity, Faith and Order in the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals (published on 6 Dec 2024) to allow a new definition of being Anglican within the contours of Communion and a term-limited rotating presidency of the chair of the Primates’ Meeting and of the Anglican Consultative Council across the five regions of the Communion.
On the negative side, his actions to allow same-sex blessings in England have widened the split in the Anglican Communion on issues of sexuality. He was also impatient in trying to push through legislation in General Synod on a 53 percent majority for standalone services of blessings after same-sex marriages or civil partnerships. Although the legal and theological advice of officers given to the House of Bishops has, to date, been kept unpublished, some think that a two-thirds majority was recommended by them for such a major change in the doctrine of marriage.
In the end, following the detailed Makin Review on the crimes, and multiple cover-ups, of the abhorrent sadism of John Smyth, Justin Welby was right to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury. At first, on Channel Four News he gave a profound apology but insisted on carrying on.
Then an online petition calling for his resignation gathered 15,000 signatures, and a public rebuke by the Bishop of Newcastle, Dr. Helen-Ann Hartley, led to the announcement of his resignation on 12 November 2024: “It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024.”
Two weeks later, he badly misjudged his final speech in the House of Lords by beginning with flippant jokes about his resignation and failing to mention the victims of John Smyth. The next day he offered an apology for the speech. He stepped down on 6 January, the Feast of the Epiphany and his 69th birthday, exactly one year before he had planned to do so. It marked a sad, tragic, end to nearly 12 years of mission and ministry as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Part Two of this essay, considering the Six Possible Successors and the Process for Choosing the Archbishop of Canterbury, will be published tomorrow.
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Graham Kings, in his retirement in Cambridge, is honorary assistant bishop in the Diocese of Ely and research associate at the the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, which he founded in 1995. He has served as Mission Theologian in the Anglican Communion; Bishop of Sherborne; and vicar of St. Mary’s Church, Islington, London, where he co-founded Fulcrum.