IN 1990, the then Primate of Canada, the Most Revd Michael Peers, wrote to the Secretary General of the Anglican Communion, Canon Sam Van Culin, about the search for Archbishop Robert Runcie’s successor in Canterbury. Peers offered his views on some of the leading contenders, but also wrote more generally about the part played by the Archbishop in the Communion. He concluded: “I am not arguing that the Archbishop of Canterbury not be English, but that he be, and be seen to be, more than just English.”
Archbishop Peers’s comment indicates the challenge of the office of Archbishop of Canterbury, as seen from outside the Church of England. No non-English Anglican doubts that the preponderance of the Archbishop’s time will be spent on significant and important responsibilities in the Church of England — the General Synod, oversight of the Province of Canterbury, the public witness of the Christian faith in England, and so on.
But Anglicans around the world have traditionally looked to the see of Canterbury for leadership and guidance, and recognised its occupant as the personal embodiment of the Anglican tradition. When the Archbishop of Canterbury meets the Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch, it represents the symbolic meeting of Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy in a way that is not true of any other Anglican bishop.
Members of the Church of England cannot be faulted for insisting that the next Archbishop should make England a near-exclusive focus of his or her attention. Crises over safeguarding, sexuality, and institutional decline are an overfull agenda for even the most gifted prelate. How can the next Archbishop possibly spare time for the millions of Anglicans in other parts of the world, particularly when it seems as if many of those Anglicans want less and less to do with Canterbury?
Leaders of the Global Anglican Futures movement have declared that they no longer recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury as “the head, leader or spokesperson of the Anglican Communion” (News, 21 April 2023). More recently, they have taken to referring dismissively to the “Canterbury Communion” (News, 4 August) and asserting that it is possible, indeed desirable, to be Anglican and not be in communion with the see of Canterbury.
While these are straw men — the Archbishop has never been seen as a head or leader, but the more nebulous “focus of unity” — they are, none the less, resonant anti-colonial claims. An ongoing process led by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order (IASCUFO) to restructure the Communion to lessen the ministry of the Archbishop of Canterbury is moving slowly and attracting little notice in the wider Church.
Even those Churches that have historically been most supportive of the Communion are finding that institutional distress and decline are affording them less time and attention for global Anglican matters. The new Primate of Canada, the Most Revd Shane Parker, has suggested that his primary focus in the coming years will be the internal structure of his Church, with less time given to the international matters.
IN LIGHT of this, what can non-English Anglicans reasonably expect from the new Archbishop of Canterbury?
The Archbishop of Canterbury retains the ability to cast a spotlight on particular themes, whether in media appearances, speeches in the House of Lords, or elsewhere. Given the influence of British media on the English-speaking world, this spotlight can reverberate elsewhere in the world.
Archbishop Welby’s decision to make the Communion Forest a part of the 2022 Lambeth Conference has catalysed action in some Provinces. His earlier “war on Wonga” and broader focus on economic themes in his writing likewise was heard beyond the Church of England, even if the impact was more context-specific. An Archbishop who can articulate clear priorities and areas of focus can, through that clarity, offer guidance and direction that influence Anglicans — and other Christians — around the world.
AlamyArchbishop Williams with Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, at the State House in Harare, in October 2011
Given the need to visit dioceses, attend General Synod meetings, sit in the House of Lords, and attend to other requirements of the office, the actual number of days that an Archbishop of Canterbury has in a year to focus on his or her priorities is relatively limited.
But it continues to matter that the Archbishop spends some of these days outside of England, visiting other Christians. Archbishop Carey’s visit to displaced people in southern Sudan in the midst of the civil war in 1994 was a concrete message of the truth of St Paul’s teaching: if one part of the body suffers, all suffer. That visit has been long remembered and valued in Sudan as a tangible indication that being a Christian is about being part of something broader than oneself and one’s local community.
Likewise, the visit of Archbishop Williams to Zimbabwe in 2011, when the Church was consumed by conflict fomented in part by the government of Robert Mugabe, was a significant step in drawing that conflict to a conclusion. Visits such as these, and others, do not immediately bring peace and can be dismissed as ecclesiastical tourism by those back home, but the value of a carefully planned trip can be immense to those Anglicans who receive the Archbishop.
So far as the actual structures of the Anglican Communion are concerned, the new Archbishop will need to be judicious in deciding how much energy to focus on these matters. While GAFCON’s anti-colonial claims receive much attention, there are quieter (and more longstanding) post-colonial approaches to global Anglicanism which continue to percolate.
The Anglican Communion originates in the zenith of the British Empire when England was a metropolitical centre, enriching itself with the resources of its peripheral colonies. Try as the C of E might to make it otherwise, this colonial dynamic has long shaped global Anglicanism, even as the world’s economic and political centre moved westward across the Atlantic. But, as the world moves past its unipolar moment, into an era defined by multiple competing centres of power, a new Archbishop of Canterbury could offer support to, and learn from, those Anglicans who have been looking to this moment for some time.
In addition, the new Archbishop may do well to remember that the formal designation of the Lambeth Conference, the Primates’ Meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Archbishop him or herself as the “Instruments of Communion” is relatively recent, dating only to the 1980s. There are older gatherings or activities that have fallen away, such as an Anglican Congress, and newer ones, such as more regular electronic communication among Primates, that may — or may not — be more apt tools to give a sense of coherence to this global family of Churches.
There is space here for creativity, including, when necessary, moving beyond the somewhat timid proposals of IASCUFO. Whatever the approach, the new Archbishop may be best served by a willingness to give space and encouragement to the broader Communion to let it develop into the next phase of its life.
THE tenures of the past two Archbishops and popes have overlapped quite closely — Archbishop Williams with Pope Benedict XVI, and Archbishop Welby with Pope Francis. Each Archbishop formed a close personal relationship with their opposite number. Francis and Welby cooperated on common goals, and emphasised overlapping themes. Both wrote about the damage of existing economic models in the world, and jointly visited South Sudan.
The new Archbishop will take office not long after Pope Leo XIV. It seems likely that the standout political-economic trend that will dominate their time in office will be the growing strength of authoritarian populism, and the decline of the neoliberal economic order that dominated the post-Cold War period.
There is an urgent need not to return to some status quo ante, but to articulate a new model of living which addresses the concerns that have fuelled the populist rise, and finds a sustainable place for human life in the community of Creation. Pope Leo has already indicated that he intends to build on the ways in which Pope Francis gave voice to new approaches to human community in an interconnected world.
England has not been immune from these forces, and the new Archbishop will be compelled to address these issues, whatever the demands of the Communion. To the extent to which the new Archbishop can draw on a robust theological imagination, to speak genuinely from his or her specifically English context with a message that addresses these global trends — perhaps through continued partnership with Rome — his or her ministry can redound to the benefit of all Anglicans, wherever they are in the world.
As a non-English Anglican who still finds part of my Christian identity in a connection to Canterbury, I will be rooting for such an appointment.
The Revd Jesse Zink is Principal of Montreal Diocesan Theological College and Canon Theologian in the diocese of Montreal. His most recent book is Faithful, Creative, Hopeful: Fifteen theses for Christians in a crisis-shaped world (2024).
