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THE DISASTROUS REIGN OF ARCHBISHOP JUSTIN WELBY
COMMENTARY
By David W. Virtue, DD
November 13, 2024
History will not be kind to Justin Welby, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.
His 12-year tenure as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the titular head of the Anglican Communion has been nothing short of disastrous.
He came in as an Alpha evangelical and departed a theologically compromised leader, alienating not only evangelicals in the Church of England, but millions of evangelicals in the Global South who looked to him for leadership, but found only weakness, prevarication, cunning, duplicity and subterfuge.
The moment it finally fell apart was his failure to uphold Lambeth Resolution 1:10 (Human sexuality is intended by God to find its rightful and full expression between a man and a woman in the covenant of marriage) at the last Lambeth Conference. He hemmed and hawed and chose climate change to pin his hopes of unity on. It was a debacle. Poor Global South Anglicans still burn wood. Poor people use less fuel. Solar is the luxury of wealthy mostly western nations. Oil still fuels cars and planes that richer nations use.
Emissions from aviation are a significant contributor to climate change and Welby racked up hundreds of thousands of miles on commercial jets pushing climate change.
It is profoundly ironic that the Archbishop of South Sudan one of the worst strife-ridden nations struggling with civil war and poverty vigorously opposed Welby at Canterbury calling for him to repent. Archbishop Justin Badi told Welby in clear unmistakable terms that Welby had betrayed the Anglican Church and that they no longer recognize him as the leader of the whole Anglican Communion. It fell on deaf ears. Welby carried on like nothing had been said.
Welby proceeded like a dictator convinced of his own righteousness and to hell with what the Africans thought. It should not be forgotten that on two critical issues - the persecution and slaughter of African Christians, Welby was mostly silent, especially Nigeria which has become the world center of Christian martyrs. In any given year, the numbers of Christians killed by extremist groups is rarely less than 4000. According to an April 2023 report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law, at least 52,250 persecuted Christians have been killed in the past fourteen years. Where was Welby when all this slaughter took place?
But God help an African primate who dared to speak up opposing homosexuality, Welby was all over him. Think Ghana where an anti LGBTQI bill found Welby flaring his pro-gay nostrils, resulting in a phone call to the primate railing on about homophobia and his lack of inclusion.
It is deeply ironic that Welby could not turn his own church around. Despite an elite club of evangelicals groomed to be the next generation of leaders, England is demonstrably secular and increasingly Muslim, with less than one million out of 57 million Brits who think Jesus and the Church of England relevant to their lives, even though the Church of England claims 27 million on the books. The fastest growing church in England has Nigerian origins.
What of the future? Who will replace Welby? Speculation abounds. You can see four candidates here: https://virtueonline.org/runners-and-riders-who-will-be-next-archbishop-canterbury I am reliably told that there is no solidly orthodox bishop enough to swing the church back to its biblical and reform roots. Those days are gone.
Can his successor whoever he or she is hold the fragile coalitions together even as it looks as though they are pulling the church apart? The task seems impossible. It probably is.
It is not outside the realm of possibility that an African Archbishop could be nominated to lead the communion. King Charles might "earn" eternal life if one was nominated whom he accepted.
Whatever happens the credibility of the office has been forever tarnished. The. Church of England is no longer the credible Mother Church to lead the communion.
Africa, Asia, and South American Anglicans do not need Canterbury to get to Jesus. That might be the most powerful message to emerge as GAFCON exposes the fallacies of a once powerful church.
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