newsWomen bishops wait in the wings of a church in crisis
Guli Francis-Dehqani, (Anglican) Bishop of Chelmsford, who might be the first women Archbishop of Canterbury
Lord Evans of Weardale is the chairman of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), the 17- strong body of priests and lay officials responsible for choosing a new Archbishop of Canterbury as successor to the disgraced Justin Welby who was forced to resign last November because of his failure to bring clerical paedophiles to justice.
By Trevor Grundy
Lord Evans is a former head of MI5.
He is leading the search for the next Archbishop of Canterbury (ABC) and has made it clear that he doesn’t want to end up with a long list of names of pale males who all went to Oxbridge and Cambridge and who live next door to one another in south east England.
He told Kaya Burgess of The Times (July 5, 2025) that after listening to the opinions of about 11,000 respondents to a public consultation on who should be the next head of the Church of England (CofE) it was clear that British churchgoers (Anglicans) hope the next one will be a woman.
Lord Evans was the director of MI5 from 2007-2013.
There is an estimated 85 million members of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
The ABC isn’t the head of that Christian body but he is a key spiritual adviser and leader.
Many of the churches in Africa are strongly against marriages between same sex partners and condemn the private lives of gay men and women.
How the next ABC – the 106th – gets round that one is anyone’s guess.
As the announcement deadline draws near, there’s concern that after almost a year of mainly private talk between senior CofE clerics, that the CNC might not be able to reach the two thirds majority needed to agree on a single candidate.
The final decision will be with the king who is supreme governor of the CofE thanks to Henry V111 in the 16th century.
This crisis has been caused by a massive sexual scandal involving senior clerics with friends in high places.
It caused the resignation of Justin Welby last November.
Justin Welby as a schoolboy at Eton
This ex-Etonian’s replacement will enter Lambeth Palace at a turbulent time.
The reputation of the massively wealthy state church is at one of its lowest points.
Reports from various religious correspondents say that the most likely person to replace Welby is the Iranian-born Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Rev Guli Francis-Dehqani.
Another front-runner is the Bishop of London, the Right Rev Dame Sarah Mullally.
The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, is number two in the C of E. He appears to have ruled himself out as next ABC because he’s 66.
Normally an ABC is in the job for ten years.
The normal retirement age is 70.
Last year’s revelations that so many sex abuse cases had been hushed-up has thrown the established church into disarray.
But even before the sex abuse scandals, it was in serious decline.
Only 650,000 people attend Sunday services.
The Roman Catholic Church has around a million regular worshippers and a similar number are mosque-going Muslims.
Justin Welby when he was Archbishop of Canterbury at the tenth assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Busan, South Korea from October 30 to November 8, 2013 (Picture: Trevor Grundy)
Perhaps a well-respected but presently little known (outside of church circles) woman could save a church which appears to be on the edge of irrelevance in secular Britain.
Christians say that it’s odd that so many of the church’s best-known men have kept silent on sex abuses that have ruined the lives of hundreds of men and women when they were children
On those who ruin the lives of children, Jesus said: “But anyone who is an obstacle to bring down one of these little ones who have faith in me would be better drowned in the sea with a great millstone round his neck.”
If that was really so, there’d be a few CofE clerics with their heads deep in the mud at the bottom of the River Thames.