Bish Spotting

As I think I may have mentioned before, if keeping up with the latest news is your thing, you are looking at the wrong blog.  Still, the news does filter through, even to me, and one of the big religion-oriented stories this week has been the impending resignation of Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury. 

Now, on the one hand, of course, this is neither here nor there.  The ABC leads a small bloc in the House of Lords, and is in theoretical control of the theoretical official religion of the UK, but he has little actual power.  Even if he did, who gets the role clearly has little bearing on the truth (or otherwise) of the beliefs held by members of that faith. 

And yet... the Church of England seems riven between the 'liberals' and the 'evangelicals'.  Williams may have been somewhat ineffectual and uncharismatic, and he may have been prepared to hide his liberal leanings in order to appeal more to the fundamentalist wing of the church, but at least he wasn't actively pushing it to be more intolerant.  There is really little guarantee that the next incumbent won't be a positive menace to society. 




And besides, it's always more fun to follow an election process when you know who you should be cheering for. 

The Guardian has an interesting article on some of the contenders to be the next ABC- Dr John Sentamu (AB of York) seems to be the clear favourite. 

Now, Sentamu has done some admirable things.  But his record on, for instance, gay rights is mixed at best.  He has spoken against the Ugandan 'kill the gays' law (Sentamu is Ugandan by descent), yet refused to sign the Cambridge Accord, which declared support for very basic human rights for gays in the UK.  And he has been vocal in his championing of 'persecution of Christians in the workplace', which usually translates as failure to give legal sanction to Christians imposing their faith on others. 

Should Sentamu become ABC, we can look backward to a return to the bad old days of Carey's incumbency.  The question then would be whether that would reinvigorate and already aggressive fundamentalist section of the C of E, or simply drive the religion ever further from the public mainstream?  Or both?