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Understanding Justin Welby

Understanding Justin Welby

By David W. Virtue DD
www.virtueonline.org
April 16, 2016

The Archbishop of Canterbury's recent revelation that his father was not who he thought he was but someone else, did not come as a shock, apparently, and Justin Welby treated the revelation with biblical insight, receiving near universal adulation for his stand and his support of his still living mother.

Kudos all round. That all three players, his natural father, his mother and his stepfather all had serious drinking problems with he, himself, nursing his ailing father till he died, speaks volumes about who Welby is, his compassion and love in the midst of a less than happy childhood.

A lot of people can identify with Welby's situation. Unnumbered children grow up in alcoholic and abusive homes, with many being scarred for life, while others rise to triumph over their awful upbringings to do great things. Some are strengthened by adversity and others destroyed.

Clearly there are scars left and behaviors learned that determine how one might function in society at a later date.

Welby's behavior and reconciliation skills both in the secular and religious realm reveal much about the man and what an alcoholic environment did to him.

Dr. Charles Zeiders, an Anglo Catholic, clinical psychology expert and author of The Clinical Christ, talks about Welby's attempts at reconciliation in the communion in these terms.

Here is what he wrote to VOL:

"It is well known that children of alcoholic parents are often conflict averse. In their personal lives they are at higher risk for so-called, codependent relationships, wherein they sacrifice their own welfare to unreasonable and even sick partners and friends. If such a person rises to leadership in a denomination or corporation, they are at risk for a people-pleasing style of leadership. During periods of organizational stability, such leaders do not injure the institution. However, when there is upheaval in matters of doctrine or crisis due to economic change, people-pleasing leaders represent a disaster for institutional survival. In churches, such leaders issue platitudinous, banal encyclicals, while tithing collapses in the face of inevitable ruptures into splinter groups. In corporations, the decisive reorganization from fast hiring and firing fail to occur, and innovation stalls, while the people-pleasing leader frets over keeping VP's and senior managers happy.

"Savvy Psychologists and knowledgeable Executive Coaches can help organizations with people-pleasing leaders survive crisis. Organizational leadership can be quickly bolstered by selecting a Suffragan, Archdeacon, or Board Member with an Aggressive-Decisive Leadership style; such deployment of a "scaffolding leader" helps to supplement the legitimate (but inadequate) leadership of the presiding people-pleasing leader.

"Only expert assessment by a Psychologist or Executive Coach can determine whether such a leadership style exists and what draconian amelioration is necessitated."

Given that the need for reconciliation grows out of a deep felt need he himself has, it is perhaps understandable that he wants everyone in the Anglican Communion working off the same page. This is laudable, but spiritually dangerous, when the issues are matters of eternal life or eternal damnation.

The gospel of our lord Jesus Christ will not be compromised for 'another gospel' (Gal. 1:8) and faux reconciliation attempts; the GAFCON primates have made that all too clear.

At some point Welby's deep seated need to reconcile all sides will collapse if it hasn't already begun.

Rowan Williams learned the hard way that he could not square the circle. His Hegelian methodology to keep the Anglican Communion together failed miserably. He could not find a synthesis to bring and hold the communion together, and when he saw the writing on the wall, he hi-tailed it out of the job as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge..

Welby will also receive the same fate (even as an evangelical, Williams was not) and have to deal with irreconcilable differences that cannot be glossed over, indaba-ed away or reconciled. He will have to choose which master to serve.

The GAFCON primates are not going to compromise with Welby and Western pansexuality, not now, not ever, despite The Episcopal Church's attempts to pour millions of dollars into ailing African provinces that see money as a way out of their troubles. But money comes with a price tag, and we all know what that is.

When the GAFCON primates meet in a couple of weeks in Nairobi, the ecclesiastical poker game could come to a screeching halt. An African royal flush will always beat Western four of a kind, especially if the four of a kind happen to be gay and lesbian card holders.

END

CORRECTION: VOL said that Rowan Williams had taken a positiion at Oxford. I was wrong. The position was at Cambridge University. The story has been corrected.

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