THE field for the 106th running of the Canterbury Stakes are a long way from coming under starter’s orders — they haven’t even entered the parade ring — but speculation about form and prospects received an impetus this week with a 4000-word feature in The New Statesman on the race to succeed Archbishop Welby.
Double-plus Cantuar:, as we Latinists know him, will turn 70, the compulsory retirement age, on 6 January 2026, and so, barring a plea from the King to stay on, a new archbishop must be chosen by the Epiphany after next. Who will be the wise men (and women) who arrive bearing their gifts for the Anglican Communion? The Statesman named three: Norwich, Chelmsford, and Leicester.
That the field seems so thin at this stage reflects, in part, the belief that Archbishop Welby’s successor must be under 60 in order to have a good crack at it. That reduces the 37 serving diocesan bishops to 15 (bad luck, York and London). Canon Giles Fraser told the Statesman that he was “at Ladbrokes hovering with my £5”, torn between the “mainstream . . . safe pair of hands” of the Rt Revd Graham Usher (Norwich) and the “exciting bet” of Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani (Chelmsford), who “has a story that’s quite compelling”. The Rt Revd Martyn Snow (Leicester) was the other name tipped by the magazine, having taken on the possibly unwinnable task of discerning a way forward on Living in Love and Faith.
None of the three will be grateful for being preferred. The magazine said that the principle of nolo episcopari, not wanting to be seen to want the job, still applied, even though it has been 167 years since Anthony Trollope wrote that it was “so directly at variance with the tendency of all human wishes that it cannot be thought to express the true aspirations of priests in the Church of England”.
Trollope wrote that in relation to Archdeacon Grantly’s being denied his expected inheritance in Barsetshire because of a change of Prime Minister while the Bishop was on his deathbed. The atheist Sir Keir Starmer, to his possible relief, will not have to decide, thanks to Gordon Brown’s having given up the Prime Minister’s prerogative in 2007. Previous political leaders relished it. “It makes all those years of reading Trollope seem worth while,” Harold Macmillan said over choosing Michael Ramsey in 1961. Geoffrey Fisher tried to talk him out of his choice, arguing that he had known Ramsey as a boy at Repton. “You may have been his headmaster,” Macmillan shot back, “but you weren’t mine.”
WHILE 70 is too old to remain a Lord Spiritual, the Government has rowed back on its electoral pledge to make other members of the House of Lords retire at 80, to the possible relief of the newly minted Baroness [Margaret] Hodge of Barking, who took her seat in the upper chamber on 4 September, four days before her 80th birthday. There has been no stay of execution for the 92 hereditary peers, however. A Bill was introduced last week to remove them.
This led to a letter in The Times from Lord Warner, former chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, calling for the 26 bishops to be removed from the red benches. “No other country, apart from Iran, provides an automatic right for clerics to sit, speak and vote in their country’s parliament,” he wrote.
This was supported by Canon Ian Gomersall, who wrote that removing bishops from the Lords would give them “more time to focus on their diocesan duties at this time when the Church of England is in significant decline”, while Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, the Green Party peer, wrote in The Guardian that letting them vote on legislation did not make sense to her, though she conceded that she “likes the moral authority bishops bring to debates”.
Canon Chris Sugden disagreed with Lord Warner, however, writing in The Times that, people in Britain, in contrast with Iran, could freely disagree with the opinions of bishops, and that the airing of their non-politically aligned views in Parliament was preferable to hearing those of some peers appointed by political parties.
MEANWHILE, isn’t 70 or 80 rather young for a religious leader to retire? The New York Times, on Monday, noted the 100th birthday of Russell M. Nelson, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who has been alive for more than half of the lifespan of the Church itself. When he was born in Salt Lake City, Utah had been a state for just 28 years, and there were fewer than 600,000 Mormons in the world. Membership now stands at 17 million.
Mr Nelson, described as “prophet, seer and revelatory”, gave up skiing at 93 when he became the leader of the Church founded by Joseph Smith, and missed last year’s General Conference after a fall the day before his 99th birthday, but is otherwise still going strong. His presumed successor, Dallin H. Oaks, is a mere 92.
Eleven of Smith’s 16 successors lived until they were 87 or above, and The New York Times reported that a survey of mortality had found that male Mormons lived almost ten years longer than white men in the general population. Perhaps there is something to be said for a religion that bans alcohol, tobacco, and coffee.
Patrick Kidd writes the Diary column in The Times, and is a churchwarden of All Saints’, Blackheath, in London.
Andrew Brown is away.