Prior to Friday, the Church of England was without a leader for nearly a year. In the not-so-distant past, this would have been as unimaginable as the UK being without a prime minister. And yet, in a sign of the church\u2019s growing moral and cultural irrelevance, the long absence of an Archbishop of Canterbury elicited little public commentary or concern.<\/p>\n
The news on Friday that Dame Sarah Mullally has been appointed<\/a> as the new head of the church may have brought this period of uncertainty to an end. But it won\u2019t reverse the church\u2019s growing estrangement from its congregants. <\/p>\n Indeed, Mullally\u2019s ascension to the head of the church is, if anything, confirmation that the Green Party at prayer is more determined than ever to alienate the world\u2019s dwindling Anglican flock and drive itself further into obscurity.<\/p>\n Among Britain\u2019s right-thinking classes, the reaction to her appointment has been one of celebration. She is the first female Archbishop of Canterbury, and therefore supposed proof that the church has moved with the times. The 63-year-old Mullally appears to firmly share this view, just as she shares much of the chronic wokeness that has eroded the church\u2019s standing. <\/p>\n Much of the blame for the CofE\u2019s problems can be laid at the feet of her predecessor, Justin Welby. He was forced to resign<\/a> in November after an internal review \u2013 the Makin Report \u2013 found that it was likely he knew of, but said nothing about, the crimes of John Smyth. Smyth was an inveterate sadist who brutally abused hundreds of young boys at Christian camps, one of which he met Welby at in the 1970s. <\/p>\n Enjoying spiked?<\/p>\n Why not make an instant, one-off donation?<\/p>\n We are funded by you. Thank you!<\/p>\n \n \u00a32 Choose an amount<\/p>\n \n Donate now\n <\/p>\n \n Please wait… <\/p>\n It was under Welby that so much damage was done to the church Mullally now leads. Much of it was self-inflicted. The morose, weedy archbishop seemed to view his job as denigrating the CofE as often as possible. \u2018It is now time to take action to address our shameful past\u2019, Welby said in 2023<\/a>. This dramatic statement was made in response to the \u2018revelation\u2019 that the church, in the 18th century, had invested in a company that transported slaves \u2013 the short-lived South Sea Company. Welby set up a \u00a3100million slavery reparations fund, which has since been increased to \u00a31 billion. He even encouraged the desecration of his own churches: in 2021, he ordered parishes to hunt down any relics that could be linked to slavery or colonialism, declaring that \u2018some [monuments] will have to come down\u2019. <\/p>\n Welby was a full-throated supporter of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, in response to which he established a \u2018race action plan\u2019 to atone for his \u2018deeply institutionally racist\u2019 organisation<\/a>. This plan insisted that a certain proportion of new clergy members had to be from an ethnic minority, while Jesus, Welby said, should be \u2018re-imagined\u2019 as black in CofE churches. <\/p>\n Welby couldn\u2019t resist a fashionable cause. In 2020, to the surprise, by then, of no one, the church pledged to become Net Zero by 2030.<\/p>\n One of Welby\u2019s favourite pastimes, when he wasn\u2019t libelling his own church, was meddling in politics<\/a>. In 2023, he described the Conservatives\u2019 Illegal Migration Act as \u2018isolationist\u2019, \u2018unprecedented\u2019 and \u2018morally unacceptable\u2019. He described the Rwanda scheme as \u2018ungodly\u2019, and bleated about the \u2018cruel\u2019 Tories\u2019 \u2018harmful rhetoric\u2019. Last year, he complained that the Conservatives\u2019 new definition of extremism \u2018disproportionately target[s] Muslim communities\u2019.<\/p>\n This touches on another peculiar aspect of the CofE in recent times. Namely, that it appears to be far more interested in the wellbeing of British Muslims than British Christians. This trend admittedly predates Welby: in 2008, then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said the imposition of Sharia law<\/a> in Britain was \u2018unavoidable\u2019 and possibly a good thing for \u2018social cohesion\u2019. The church\u2019s own head, the notoriously Islamophilic King Charles<\/a>, said he would rather be the \u2018defender of faith\u2019 in general, rather than \u2018defender of the faith\u2019, the Anglican faith, as his official role has it. Islam can \u2018teach us today a way of understanding and living in the world which Christianity is the poorer for having lost\u2019, he said in his 1993 lecture \u2018Islam and the West\u2019. Sounding more like a Muslim cleric than the future head of one the world\u2019s largest Christian traditions, Charles said that Islam can imbue Westerners with a \u2018wider, deeper, more careful attitude to the world\u2019. <\/p>\n Recently, there are signs that the church\u2019s attitude to Christians has metastasised from indifference to animus. In a public letter, senior figures at the CofE said it was \u2018deeply concerned\u2019 by the Unite the Kingdom march<\/a>, organised in London last month by Tommy Robinson. Referencing some marchers\u2019 displays of faith and use of Christian symbols, including the cross, the church leaders claimed that \u2018the co-opting or corrupting of the Christian faith to exclude others is unacceptable\u2019. In opposition to what they called a \u2018misuse of Christianity\u2019, they urged people to \u2018celebrate the rich diversity of our communities as we continue to work for a truly united nation of all faiths and races\u2019. No doubt some among the 150,000-strong crowd were wrong\u2019uns \u2013 the sort of BNP types who have long hung around Robinson \u2013 but the majority were everyday, patriotic people and many were Christian. The rally even began with the entire crowd reciting the Lord\u2019s Prayer. <\/p>\n Alas, there is little evidence that Mullally will change the church\u2019s trajectory. Unsurprisingly, given she\u2019s been a senior figure of the church for some time, she seems to share in the identitarian posturing that has brought the CofE to its current low ebb. She laid out some of these views in 2017, when she gave her first speech as the Bishop of London. \u2018If churches are going to be more relevant in our communities\u2019, she said, \u2018that means increasing churches that are led by women, who come from black, Asian and minority-ethnic groups\u2019. She has been described as \u2018managerialist and bureaucratic\u2019, which makes her sound more like a member of Starmer\u2019s cabinet than a spiritual leader.<\/p>\n We get a measure of Mullally from her response to Covid. Described as \u2018leading\u2019 the church\u2019s handling<\/a> of the pandemic, she welcomed every authoritarian measure imposed by the UK government, and even oversaw the shutting of churches to the public. After the pandemic, she unveiled<\/a> a new sculpture at a church in Kilburn, entitled \u2018Black Madonna and Child of Covid Lockdown\u2019. This apparently was a \u2018testament to the resolve of the congregation\u2019s BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) women throughout the pandemic\u2019.<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s shrinking Christian congregation will find little comfort in the rise of Mullally to the CofE top job. The spirit of Welby lives on in her. Under the new Archbishop of Canterbury, English churches can get ready to host<\/a> plenty more silent discos, mini-golf tournaments and evenings with celebrity drag queens. Anything that\u2019s not Christian worship, then.<\/p>\n Hugo Timms<\/strong>\u00a0is an editorial assistant at\u00a0spiked.<\/p>\n Help us hit our 1% target<\/p>\n spiked is funded by you. It\u2019s your generosity that keeps us going and growing.<\/p>\n Only 0.1% of our regular readers currently donate<\/strong> to spiked. If you are one of the 99.9% who appreciates what we do, but hasn\u2019t given just yet, please consider making a donation today. <\/p>\n
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