THE announcement of the next Archbishop of Canterbury is sure to be a big media event. Public indifference to the C of E does not mean a lack of interest in its personalities.
I remember being faintly embarrassed in 1980, when Robert Runcie was introduced on the early-evening sequence Nationwide, walking shyly into the studio, accompanied by the music of “The Lambeth Walk”. Working at the BBC, as I was, I was quickly commissioned to make a film about him, with Peter France as the interviewer. We talked to Richard Chartres, then his chaplain; to his son, James; and to Lindy Runcie as she played the piano. He didn’t say much about his personal beliefs, but he confessed to a love of the prayer of St Teresa of Ávila: “Let nothing disturb thee, nothing affright thee; all things are passing, God never changeth.” That left an impression.
Eleven years later, after his resignation, I was preparing an Everyman film to mark the announcement of his successor, which was assumed to be several months away. The idea was to invite four individuals to compose “letters” to the new Archbishop, laying out their hopes for the C of E: “Dear Archbishop. . .”. I invited Fr Jimmy Collins, a Roman Catholic priest from Kirkby, in Liverpool, the novelist Susan Howatch, the academic and writer David Dabydeen, and the writer Sara Maitland.
We filmed the four contributors, and sat down on a Monday morning to begin to edit the programme, in the belief that we had at least four weeks to prepare it for transmission. Then, Lambeth Palace played a blinder. On just the second day into the edit, the name of the new Archbishop was announced: George Carey. And so followed five days of working day and night, chasing archive material, completing interviews, and adding last-minute commentary — all so that we could transmit live on the following Sunday evening, adding the graphics as it went out. It was probably the most challenging few days that I ever had in my 22 years in the BBC.
This explains why I feel on tenterhooks about the timing of the announcement of the next Archbishop. Rumours fly, of course: “The Crown Nominations Commission has a shortlist”; “There are no less than four women on it”; “This will be the end of the Anglican Communion”; “The choice will be delayed until next year”; “It will be announced before the end of the month.”
My guess, and it only is a guess, is that the announcement will come sooner rather than later, and that the media will pour in immediately with questions about safeguarding and scandal, gay marriage, and splits. I feel exhausted already. Time for St Teresa’s prayer: “All things are passing, God never changeth. Patient endurance attaineth to all things; who God possesseth in nothing is wanting; alone God sufficeth.”
