Archbishop of Cardboardery

The new Archbishopess of Canterbury is everything we might expect from 2020s upper-level Anglicanism. As Bishop of London, for example, she campaigned against climate change. She’s pro-choice when it comes to abortion. She promoted Black Lives Matter when it was the height of fashion. She was one of the forces behind the Church of England’s subtle moves to redefine marriage. She refused to ordain Calvin Robinson for his refusal to decry the Church’s ‘institutional racism’ (denying a job to a black man, ironically). In short, she embodies everything that is wrong with the state church: bland, insipid, liberal; a cardboard cutout of the metropolitan middle class which occupy her former diocese (very few of whom actually attend church or own the name of Christ.)

While the House of Bishops and senior Church managers will bask in the splendid glory of having made so historic and daring an appointment (a woman! No-one saw that coming), the dear old Church of England’s spiral of decline will continue unchecked, the theological vacuum at its top unchallenged. The appointment of Bishop Sarah may not be the cause of the Church’s decline, but one of its many symptoms. Liberals of a former generation propagated their Bible-denying faith in the Church of England, and this week’s catastrophic appointment is a culmination of that century-long war against the God of scripture. Although her enthronement will be a further denial of the Biblical standard of male leadership in spiritual matters, it is worth noting that many of her predecessors, though male, were apostates, disappointments, hirelings and wet lettuces. Welby set the bar so low that even Archbishop Sarah will have to make some effort to do worse.

Times like this remind me of the advantages of being a Protestant Dissenter, freed from any obligation to own this Archbishop or her colourless confession.

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3:12