from Religion Media Centre
Later this month, the Crown Nominations Commission is expected to decide the name of the next Archbishop of Canterbury, who will be the spiritual leader of the Church of England and head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The new archbishop will inherit a church wrestling with disputes over sexuality, safeguarding failures, financial shortfalls, declining congregations and a fractious global fellowship of churches.
Panellists at our media briefing agreed that the appointment must be a unifying figure, someone whom each warring faction in the church can live with, and someone not obsessed with internal church matters, but able to address social, economic and political challenges in wider society.
There are 17 people able to vote on the Commission and agreement has to be reached by two thirds, but the group is said to be finely balanced and there is speculation the final decision may rest on just one vote.
For the record, the frontrunners were named as the Bishops of Bath and Wells, Chelmsford and London. But speculation over this appointment is traditionally a fool’s errand, with outsiders often pulling through, and among those names so far are Gloucester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Dover, Lancaster, Salisbury, Leicester, and St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.
View the briefing again on our YouTube channel and listen to the podcast through links here.