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Being the archbishop of Canterbury is, I would assume, never an easy job. In addition to being both bishop of the diocese of Canterbury and the chief religious figure of the Church of England, they also hold a seat in the House of Lords and on parliamentary committees, and lead the global Anglican communion made up of churches in 165 countries – and they have to work Sundays!
Incoming archbishop Dame Sarah Mullally will have the added task of restoring faith in the church’s safeguarding processes after the child abuse coverup scandal that forced her predecessor’s resignation. And, she will have to steer the church on big questions of sexuality and gender, which threaten to permanently fracture a divided community. That’s one daunting to-do list.
As the first woman to hold the role, Mullally will also have to deal with the fact that conservative branches of the church, both in England and around the world, think women shouldn’t be priests. And this isn’t a matter of just telling them to deal with it – the church’s governance structure allows individual parishes to refuse the ministry of women priests. As Sharon Jagger, expert in gender and the church, writes: “The Church of England must now deal with an extraordinary situation: the archbishop of Canterbury will not be able to preside over communion in [hundreds of] churches.”
Ahead of the Conservative party conference, leader Kemi Badenoch said that her party would pull the UK out of the European convention on human rights. The ECHR has become a hot button issue for politicians, with those on the right arguing that staying in the convention overrides the will of the people, particularly on immigration and deportation. Here, we look at a decade of polling to find out
what “the people” actually think.
And Labour has moved to restrict “repeat protests” – but as our expert has found, repetition is exactly the thing that makes protests successful.
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