newsEpiphany 2025: Wise men and women needed to save a church led by truth-ducking and silent self-serving bishops
Outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the equally unpopular Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York and number two man in the Anglican hierarchy
Epiphany is the day baby Jesus was revealed to shepherds, a gathering of domestic animals and three wise men at a stable in Bethlehem. At the Feast of Epiphany 2025, Justin Welby ends his disastrous stay as Archbishop of Canterbury as three wise men in the British media park their camels and call “time” on a church whose supreme governor is a king.
TREVOR GRUNDY reports-
Epiphany (it comes from the Greek word epiphaneia meaning manifestation or appearance) 2025.
It’s a day to remember if you’re an Anglican churchgoer- or more likely an Anglican ex-churchgoer.
January 6, 2025 is also the 69th birthday of the outgoing 105th Archbishop of Canterbury (2013-2025) Justin Welby.
Today, he parks his be-jewelled crozier and says goodbye to a church in a state of disruption, fuelled by massive indifference to its fate by millions of once god-fearing Brits.
Later today the Archbishop of York will be named as acting ABC.
He will be handed a broom at the start of a clean-up campaign until the end of this year when a new leader of the 85 million strong Anglican communion is installed at the Mother Church in Canterbury.
Few tears will be shed as Welby waves goodbye to a church in chaos following revelations that he and other senior leaders of the established church did next to nothing to hunt out and then name and shame a number of men responsible for destroying the lives of hundreds of young boys and girls.
Three wise men or kings are said to have bent their knees and offered amazing presents to baby Jesus.
The story only appears in one gospel, Mathew’s.
Biblical scholars reckon the story is made up and was added to the gospel (not written by Matthew) hundreds of years after the death of Jesus.
But why spoil a good story with facts? There’d be little left in the Bible were that to happen.
Canterbury Cathedral – Mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion (Picture: Trevor Grundy)
The three wise men I have chosen to listen to on this once important day in the Christian calendar are all “believers” and their words are moving, strong and sad.
All of them are well- known media/academics.
My Three Wise Men are –
Stephen Glover, writing in the Daily Mail on December 23, 2024:
“I love the Church but it’s become a self-lacerating sect, gripped by the wrong concerns – and failing to convey what many still yearn to hear.”
And this:
“Who can doubt that the many failings of the Church of England – the Established and supposedly national Church for the 85 percent of the population that lives in England – has contributed to the alarming collapse of belief and attendance?”
And the wise media man’s prediction for Anglican life after birthday-boy Justin Welby?
“Whoever is the next Archbishop of Canterbury, it certainly won’t be Stephen Cottrell (Archbishop of York).”
(Hope he’s right – Editor).
AN Wilson writing in The Times on November 16, 2024:
“I’m a believer but time’s up for the Church of England. As far as institutionalised Christianity is concerned in Great Britain, the game is up.” And: “Justin Welby’s resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury brings to the fore the awkward status of the Anglican communion, a vast unwieldy body headed by a king. The established church is no longer tenable.”
Professor Martyn Percy writing in The Times of January 4, 2025:
“The resignation (of Welby) points to a deeper malaise for the church. This is a body near the end of its natural life. Like all bodies, institutions have a lifespan too; death is a part of the existential cycle. If there is to be a resurrection – not just attempts at resuscitation and rejuvenation- death must be embraced. The church preaches this. It must live it too.” He went on: “Rather than trying to evade the death of an out- of- touch hierarchical institution, the next archbishop might embrace the end of the ecclesiastical establishment that hampers the Church of England. Let it die a natural death. Only then might the Church gain some other kingdom, much closer to the one Jesus so often spoke of and practiced.”
Mathew tells the story that the three wise men offered Jesus symbolic presents more common in Persia than Palestine.
What Jesus needs now is not costly presents, with kings and queens, princes and bishops on TV in palaces bending their well-padded knees at the side of a wooden cot next to a teenage single mum called Mary but rather truth and courage.
They were qualities shown by the chosen wise men in the British media but sadly not by a collection of cowardly and silent bishops with one outstanding exception – the Bishop of Newcastle – Dr Helen-Ann Hartley (pictured below)
.