The Church of England is one step closer to appointing its first female Archbishop of Canterbury now that the Bishop of Norwich, Graham Usher, has ruled himself out.
As a member of the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) for the See of Canterbury, which is due to have its first meeting in May, Bishop Usher is ineligible for the post. After an election by the House of Bishops, he joins the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, as the second episcopal member of the Canterbury CNC.
Bishop Usher said last week: “Despite speculation in recent months, I have felt no sense of inner calling to be Archbishop of Canterbury. What has remained constant is God’s continued faithful call to serve the people and parishes of the wonderful diocese of Norwich, as well as the national and international environmental roles I have, all of which bring me much joy.”
The road to Canterbury is therefore now open for the female front-runner, the Iranian-born Bishop of Chelmsford, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani.
Her chances of being appointed to Canterbury this autumn got a significant boost in January when the Bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, ruled herself out in a television interview.
In an interview with ITV Meridian after the publication of her memoir, The Girl from Montego Bay, the C of E’s first female black bishop said: “You are definitely not looking at the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Who in their right mind would want to take on a role like that and in particular how we have just treated our Archbishop?”
She said she did not believe Justin Welby should have resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury after the publication last November of the Makin Review into the John Smyth abuse scandal: “I did not want Archbishop Justin to resign. I am very sad that he has resigned. I think that if we are not careful what we have done is to scapegoat one individual.”
Bishop Francis-Dehqani became a diocesan bishop in 2021, seven years after the then new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, had managed to persuade General Synod to agree to women bishops. Like other ambitious female bishops such as the Bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, she is not among the first generation of women bishops allowed into the House since 2014 and so does not have a sense of owing her position to male patronage.
She is a penetrating critic of the ‘Vision and Strategy’ programme which the Archbishops’ Council has been spearheading to try to reverse the C of E’s numerical decline through glitzy church growth initiatives.
In her plenary lecture last September at the Church Times Festival of Preaching at Great St Mary's in Cambridge, she said: “The language of Vision and Strategy risks ignoring the reality of frailty, brokenness, sin - all of which can of course be redeemed, but it risks missing the blessings in that which is small and vulnerable and marginal. It leaves us relying heavily on our own strength, instead of remembering that everything depends on our faithfulness and our reliance upon God.”
Breath of fresh air though she is in many ways, it is hard to describe her as a faithful teacher of the traditional Christian faith because she supports the revision of the biblical sexual ethic. In successive votes at General Synod since February 2023, she has consistently backed the introduction of services of same-sex blessings in parish churches.
It is a big thing for the Church to abandon its traditional sexual ethic. Witness the chaos that the abandonment of the Christian sexual ethic has caused in British society since the advent of the permissive society in the 1960s. Does the Church really want to see the broken lives that this moral mayhem has unleashed replicated in its congregations?
If as seems likely the Canterbury CNC does choose her, I am struggling to see how she could faithfully obey this exhortation in the Book of Common Prayer’s Order for the Consecration of an Archbishop or Bishop, as the Bible is handed to the candidate: “Give heed unto reading, exhortation, and doctrine. Think upon the things contained in this Book. Be diligent in them, that the increase coming thereby might be manifest unto all men. Take heed unto thyself, and to doctrine, and be diligent in doing them: for by so doing thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee. Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf; feed them, devour them not. Hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broken, bring again the outcasts, seek the lost. Be so merciful, that ye be not too remiss; so minister discipline, that ye forget not mercy: that when the Chief Shepherd shall appear ye may receive the never-fading crown of glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
