Virginia Episcopalian Magazine Winter 2013 Issue | Page 21

A New Archbishop of Canterbury – With Virginia Ties
Ed Jones

He is a former oil company executive concerned
about corporate excess. He’s a product of England’s
most prestigious academic institutions – Eton and
Cambridge – who is renowned for his approachable
style and his self-deprecatory humor.

He’s a church
leader with a passion for
reconciliation who came
close to losing his life at the
hands of brutal Nigerian
militias. He has built a strong
network of ties among
Americans, thanks in part
to a sense of humor that
includes jokes about the
“War of 1812.”

The more you read
about Justin Welby, who
was selected this month
as the 105th archbishop
of Canterbury, the more
fascinating his story
becomes.

Welby’s meteoric rise
in the Church, just a year
after he became a bishop
and not even 20 after he
was ordained, has a special
resonance for me. I didn’t
fully realize this summer
when I edited his submission
to Center Aisle, the Diocese
of Virginia’s opinion journal
at the church’s General
Convention, that I was
massaging the words of the
next leader of close to 80
million Anglicans in more
than 100 countries around
the world. I count that
obliviousness as a blessing.

Of course, it’s unlikely
that Welby, the current
bishop of Durham in
northeast England, would

have objected, had I made
major revisions in his essay.
After being selected as
leader of the worldwide
Anglican Communion, which
includes more than 2 million
Episcopalians in the United
States, he wrote, “I don’t
think anyone could be more
surprised than me at the
outcome of this process.”

It will take all of
Welby’s renowned skills at
reconciliation and mediation
to lead the world’s third
largest religious body, a
community of faith wracked
by division over social
issues, many of them having
to do with sexuality. But
Welby sounds like just the
kind of leader to deal with
the division.

For starters, his personal
beliefs are well within the
center of the Church’s
thinking. He is in favor of
women bishops and against
the legalization of same-sex
marriage (though he hastens
to add that he needs to
listen attentively to those
who feel differently and that
he is “always averse to the
language of exclusion”).

When he is enthroned in
March, the latest leader in a
1,400-year-long succession,
Welby will bring a helpful
sense of urgency to these

Photo: Henry Burt

Bishops Welby (left) greats Bishop Johnston at a party
following Bishop Welby's consecration in 2011.

debates. In his piece for
Center Aisle, he wrote: “We
seem to spend a very high
proportion of our time
examining in more and more
grisly detail the reasons
and rationales for our
separation. Anyone involved
in these discussions has
become more expert than
we would wish on aspects of
human character (especially
sexuality) and is wishing
profoundly that we could
talk, think or be known for
anything else.”

Welby has a powerful
proposal for turning the
corner: start focusing
again on mission, from the
environment to economic
justice to war and peace.

Mission “causes us to
look outwards, away from
those things which divide
us,” Welby wrote in Center
Aisle, “and to find ourselves
shoulder to shoulder with
others with whom we
may disagr