“A DISCERNMENT process rather than a selection process” is how the chairman of the Canterbury Crown Nominations Commission (CNC), Lord Evans of Weardale, describes the search for the next Archbishop of Canterbury.
A former director-general of MI5 and a cross-bencher in the House of Lords, Lord Evans was appointed late last year (News, 17 December 2024) to chair the CNC. “From a duty point of view, I felt that it was the right thing to do, and so far it’s also been extremely interesting, and even, on occasions, joyful,” he says, interviewed for the Church Times on Thursday.
Brought up a Baptist, but confirmed as an Anglican in his twenties, Lord Evans attends the parish church in the village where he lives. As with many parish churches, it “brings together people from a variety of different traditions for worship together”, he says: something that he considers a strength of the Church of England.
It is also a characteristic that needs to be reflected in the next Archbishop, in his view: “They need to be somebody who can accommodate and help to thrive the diverse traditions within the Church.”
The part that he plays as chairman is to “help the commission to come to a common mind on the discernment of who we should be putting forward to the Prime Minister”, and this involves “enabling everybody to have their views heard and reflected”.
Members of the CNC are not, he hopes, “there as the delegate of their particular bit of the Church”, but, instead, “there collectively to understand what God might be wanting from a new Archbishop. And we should be coming, therefore, with open minds.”
He is also responsible for making sure that the processes decreed by the General Synod are followed, which was not straightforward when it came to the selection of the representatives from the diocese of Canterbury. The election of the Canterbury vacancy-in-see committee had to be rerun several times (News, 30 May), but Lord Evans is clear that there was “no malice aforethought” in what went wrong.
“I know that in the media there have been suggestions that this might be some cunning ruse by some particular party within the Church to try to maximise their influence, or something, but I don’t believe that was the case,” he says.
The election, eventually, was performed correctly; and he emphasises that it was “a Canterbury process”, although he “went down to Canterbury” in the course of it (a mission that was to “give advice and support”, a Lambeth Palace spokesperson said). Ultimately, the representatives were appointed before the first meeting in May.
“We’re on track” for a new Archbishop to be announced in the autumn, he says. The conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV might have been quick compared with the almost year-long process of choosing a new Archbishop, but there were benefits to the Anglican approach: “It’s a more open process, and it’s a more inclusive and consultative process.” And, appropriately for a “national Church”, the consultation included people outside of the Church as well as within.
The earlier-than-expected departure of the previous Archbishop, the Rt Revd Justin Welby (News, 12 November), also left the CNC process “more in the spotlight”, Lord Evans says, than it would have been had Bishop Welby continued in post to the end of this year, as originally expected.
The time between the start of the process and the CNC’s first meeting in May has not been squandered: since his appointment, Lord Evans has spoken to most of the diocesan bishops, “so that they can give their view as to the direction they want to go”.
The formal process will involve interviews further down the line, but this is not a case of “sizing up candidates against a set of criteria”. Instead, it is a “shared discernment process” of the CNC and those who might be the next Archbishop.
“I think being the Archbishop of Canterbury is an extremely difficult job, and anybody who is willing to take on that quite sacrificial role needs to be confident that God is calling them to it,” he says.
Lord Evans is candid, up to a point, about some of the identity-based questions that are on people’s lips. Could the next Archbishop be a woman? “Yes, they could,” he says. “There is no reason why a woman should not be appointed, but whether a woman will be appointed is another question.”
The public consultation (News, 8 May) “pretty clearly demonstrated that there are a lot of people who think it would be really good to have a woman Archbishop for a number of reasons, one amongst which is the safeguarding issues, but that is not by any means the only reason”, he said.
As the archbishopric has a mandatory retirement age of 70, some have speculated that the next Archbishop will be someone in their fifties, or early sixties. This is not, however, an “absolutely key issue”, Lord Evans says, and he acknowledges the arguments in favour of a “transitional figure”.
There are “a number of people whose names came up quite a lot” in the consultation, and this is being “taken in consideration” by the CNC, he says.
But the overarching message from the 11,000 responses to the public consultation is to have an Archbishop who can offer “real spiritual leadership” and will “speak in a gracious way, but an authoritative way, with a Christian voice, into the life of the nation”, he says.
At next week’s General Synod meeting, members will hear from an army brigadier, and be asked to think about how the Church might respond if the UK were to go to war (News, 27 June).
“We hope it won’t be the case, but there is a possibility that we could be talking about a wartime situation in the next ten years,” Lord Evans says. In his view, there would “no question” that, in such a situation, “the Church would have a very important role in providing support and comfort to people.”
As for the attributes that might be needed in a “wartime” Archbishop, Lord Evans said that the CNC “wouldn’t want to nominate somebody, if for some reason that would be a challenge they couldn’t rise to”; but he doesn’t see it as “one of the key issues”.
Lord Evans admits that he is “very far from being a church historian”, and has had to learn a lot about the processes of the Church of England since his appointment last year.
While acknowledging the benefits of an Established Church, he suggests that it is not necessary to being “successful in bringing the Gospel and giving people the opportunity to worship”, but adds a disclaimer: “I don’t have strong or developed views on establishment.”
Given his previous position as head of the Secret Service, it is unsurprising that Lord Evans is adept at saying only as much as he wants to say about the process, although it is clear that he is committed to communicating how it works: he is, as he points out, “giving interviews to the media to talk about this”.
In February, the Synod considered proposals for change in the way in which the CNC operates, including the removal of the secret ballot within meetings (News, 28 February), but opted to maintain it.
Lord Evans refuses to be drawn on what he thinks about the secret ballot: “I apply the rules as they are laid down by Synod . . . and what I think about that is neither here nor there, really.”
About the process as a whole, during which the names of those being considered are not publicly released, and CNC members are not permitted to talk about their deliberations, he prefers the word “confidentiality” to “secrecy”.
“We’re more likely to be able to reach the right point if this is done without those external pressures of speculation in the media,” he says.
