It’s taken him more than a decade, but Justin Welby has finally united the Church of England. The petition calling for him to resign over the findings of the Makin Review into the serial abuser John Smyth was set up by three clergymen who would normally disagree: Dr Ian Paul, Robert Thompson and Marcus Walker, the spirit animals of the C of E’s evangelical, liberal and High Church wings. ‘Over any other issue Ian Paul and Robert Thompson would practically be suggesting pistols at dawn across the Synod chamber,’ says one member of the General Synod. Yet they were united in their anger against the Archbishop of Canterbury and in their conviction that he needed to resign.
Smyth, an evangelical who ran Christian holiday camps, severely beat more than 100 boys in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Makin Review, which was published last Thursday, found Welby and other senior figures in the Church had, from 2013, known about the allegations against Smyth (who died in 2018) and had missed opportunities to bring him to justice. It stated that Welby had a ‘personal and moral responsibility’ to pursue the matter further, but that he and other senior Church figures had shown a ‘distinct lack of curiosity’ in the allegations. Welby initially said he would stay on, following the advice of ‘senior colleagues’, yet in the end he saw that his position was untenable.
No Archbishop of Canterbury in history has quit because of a scandal
It’s often said that Welby is more of a politician than a theologian, so it’s grimly fitting that his downfall felt as though it belonged to the Palace of Westminster rather than Lambeth. Many people in the Church I spoke to about his initial refusal to resign compared it with Boris Johnson’s behaviour over Chris Pincher. ‘He wanted to stay to put things right,’ says Jayne Ozanne, a founding member of the Archbishops’ Council and the author of Just Love. ‘But you have to have credibility in order to do that.’
Yet even if his departure was unavoidable, it was still extraordinary. No Archbishop of Canterbury in history has quit because of a scandal, not even in 1621 when the primate of all England shot and killed a gamekeeper with a crossbow while hunting. These are uncharted waters for the C of E. Even those who demanded Welby’s resignation don’t now know what to expect. ‘I have no idea what will happen next,’ says Ian Paul. ‘It’ll be chaotic. But what’s the option? People say, “what’s your plan B?”. I don’t know. I haven’t got one. But he needed to go.’
‘I don’t think it’s right if Welby is a scapegoat,’ says Gilo, a campaigner who co-founded the website House of Survivors. ‘There should be other resignations. Welby’s departure needs to signal a very widespread change in culture not just within the bishops but also in Church House.’ Giles Fraser, the vicar of St Anne’s, Kew (who was himself abused, not by Smyth), believes that there is a coming ‘reckoning’ that will go far beyond Welby. ‘There might well be a domino effect with bishops and other senior clergy.’ There are, he points out, ‘quite a few bishops who are implicated in the Makin report’.
‘This has to be a watershed moment,’ says Ozanne. ‘We’ll have to look at how we manage and oversee safeguarding. Some of us have been calling for an independent commission for years, and we also need to create checks and balances to hold bishops and archbishops to account.’
‘The Church can’t mark its own homework about safeguarding,’ agrees Fraser. ‘It’s shown itself completely incapable of doing this properly.’ The man who campaigners think might stand in the way of change is William Nye, secretary-general of the Archbishops’ Council (the ‘Dominic Cummings to Welby’s Boris Johnson’, as one advocate for change put it to me). ‘William Nye is part of the problem, not the solution,’ Ozanne says flatly. ‘He has led a very poor culture in the Church of England,’ says Gilo. ‘The [C of E’s] National Safeguarding Team is not fit for purpose. If it’s not really functional it can do more harm than good.’
Campaigners for an independent safeguarding body point to a report this year by Professor Alexis Jay, the former head of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. Her conclusion was that a complete overhaul was ‘the only way’ in which the Church could address concerns over safeguarding. She recommends creating two separate bodies, independent of the Church, one with operational responsibility for safeguarding and the other to provide scrutiny. The C of E leadership will be under enormous pressure to implement her recommendations, especially now that the deputy lead bishop for safeguarding, Julie Conalty, the Bishop of Birkenhead, has said that the Church is ‘not a safe institution’.
There is a sad irony that during his 11 years occupying the Chair of St Augustine, Welby said repeatedly that his mission was one of ‘reconciliation’. ‘Reconciliation is about seeking to transform relationships that have become damaged or destructive into relationships of trust that bring new life,’ he wrote. ‘The journey towards this is not easy. It requires humility, time and patience.’ He has run out of time and others have run out of patience.
In his public resignation statement, he said he will ‘follow through on my commitment to meet victims’, but for many of Smyth’s victims this is too little too late. ‘I’m not sure now what he could say that would make his apology acceptable to me,’ says one, who didn’t want to be named. ‘He has failed me so spectacularly for nearly 12 years that words are not enough… he has steadfastly refused to meet me and I’m not sure why a meeting now would reverse all that trauma.’ He says the Church needs to investigate every member of the clergy who knew about Smyth and failed to disclose the abuse.
Under usual circumstances, it takes at least several months for the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) to agree on a successor and pass the name on to the Prime Minister, who will convey it to the King. This time the process will be harder than ever, and not just because of the cloud of the Smyth scandal looming over proceedings. Under Welby’s tenure, the balance of the 17-person CNC was changed to increase the numbers of members chosen from the Anglican Communion from one to five, and reduce the number of members from the Diocese of Canterbury from five to three. The last attempt to appoint an Archbishop of Canterbury in 2012 was rumoured to be very bad tempered. Given the strained relationship between the Anglican Communion and the ‘mother church’, it’s hard to imagine it will be quieter this time around.
The other voting members on the CNC are the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, six members of the General Synod, a bishop chosen by the House of Bishops and a voting chair appointed by the Prime Minister. The two key non-voting figures are the Archbishops’ Secretary for Appointments, Stephen Knott, Welby’s former deputy chief of staff; and the Prime Minister’s Appointments Secretary, Jonathan Hellewell. Between the two of them they take soundings, writing to leading figures in society to ask them what they consider essential in the next Archbishop of Canterbury. The CNC then draws up a shortlist of prospective candidates to interview. The successful candidate must win the support of two thirds of the CNC.
It seems inevitable that in the aftermath of the Smyth scandal and the remarkable nature of the Archbishop’s exit, there will be a strong push for someone very different to Welby. One retired bishop told me sadly that the evangelical tradition is ‘tarnished and diminished’, not only because of the Makin Review but also the abuse scandals involving the evangelical leaders Mike Pilavachi and Jonathan Fletcher.
Yet even if the appointment of a conservative evangelical would be difficult, appointing an out-and-out progressive would have its own problems. ‘The Church of England may literally not be able to afford to appoint a progressive archbishop,’ says Andrew Graystone, a theologian and author of Bleeding for Jesus: John Smyth and the cult of the Iwerne Camps. ‘The conservative evangelicals have the numbers, power and the money. If there’s an attempt to appoint someone who isn’t evangelical, what they would call “orthodox”, on sexual issues, then the conservative evangelicals are ready to pick up and walk away.’
The options left would be to either appoint a fence-sitter or stall the process. ‘On the whole the Church of England would rather have the pandemonium that comes from not deciding than the pandemonium that comes from making a choice,’ says Graystone.
‘Welby’s departure needs to signal a very widespread change in culture’
The possibility of a long period of uncertainty has led to speculation that Cottrell could become an interim Archbishop of Canterbury during the search for Welby’s successor. It would be hard to argue with the authority of someone who already has the archbishop title and since he is 66, four years shy of the mandatory retirement age for bishops, there would be no doubt that the measure would be temporary. Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London, has also been mentioned as a possible caretaker.
As for the eventual successor, Martyn Snow, the Bishop of Leicester, was once a favourite, but his odds have probably lengthened because of his closeness to Welby. Graham Usher, the Bishop of Norwich and the Church’s lead bishop for environmental affairs, is considered a front-runner, as is Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford and the C of E’s lead bishop for housing, who came to Britain as an asylum seeker from Iran. As the only bishop to publicly call for Welby to resign, Helen-Ann Hartley, the progressive Bishop of Newcastle, will get support from the Church’s liberal wing. Mark Tanner, the Bishop of Chester, and Paul Williams, the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, are thought to be strong evangelical candidates.
Whoever succeeds Welby, he or she will inherit a Church more at war with itself than at any time in living memory. They will also inherit dwindling congregation numbers, the clamour for justice from abuse victims, and an Anglican Communion fractured, possibly beyond repair. There is a tradition in the C of E of nolo episcopari – the idea that the person best suited to being archbishop might be the rare person who doesn’t fancy it. This time around, it’s hard to imagine anyone who would want the job.
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