Archbishop of Canterbury election 2012

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I had the perception a few months ago that ++York's star was a bit on the wane for these purposes. Was that true, and if so, is it still true now?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What is Justin Welby like? I've been hearing more about him lately.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

He speaks very highly of you, however.

He couldn't answer the official role of the Queen in the Church of England (It was pre-Internet).

It's not going to be Chartres.

Is there any senior cleric in the Church of England who is not on some level outright disqualified or a just plain bad choice?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Is there any senior cleric in the Church of England who is not on some level outright disqualified or a just plain bad choice?

Their career choice would suggest otherwise.

Har har. Be serious.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Is there any senior cleric in the Church of England who is not on some level outright disqualified or a just plain bad choice?

Their career choice would suggest otherwise.

Har har. Be serious.

I am.

Classy.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Is there any senior cleric in the Church of England who is not on some level outright disqualified or a just plain bad choice?

Their career choice would suggest otherwise.

Har har. Be serious.

I am.

Classy.

Note that I am referring specifically to the clergy of the Conservative Party at Prayer in their modern post-gentlemanly days, and am by no means making any sort of statement on the other member churches of the Anglican Communion.

Duly noted. In that case I more or less agree. I'm given to understand that Church of England vicars and more junior bishops are often (not always but often) more or less respectable. But you're right that it is hard to be respectable and a senior Church of England cleric.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So the Crown Nominations Commission has met, and one assumes made a decision. Now we play the waiting game.

...ah, the waiting game sucks; let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Saw the words "Bishop of Durham" in a Guardian article and my heart soared, until I read more closely and found out it's the new guy that's being rumored to be the frontrunner.....such a shame...

You might like Justin Welby, actually. I don't like him much, but I'm also not yet entirely familiar with him.

Obviously he's not nearly as much a heavyweight as his predecessor, though.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Saw the words "Bishop of Durham" in a Guardian article and my heart soared, until I read more closely and found out it's the new guy that's being rumored to be the frontrunner.....such a shame...

You might like Justin Welby, actually. I don't like him much, but I'm also not yet entirely familiar with him.

Obviously he's not nearly as much a heavyweight as his predecessor, though.

Regardless of theological views, I think Wright would have been a fine choice for the job had he not retired. As someone that strongly backed Williams but has a pretty firm foot in the evangelical world, and just as a thoughtful and winsome communicator, I think he could have done a lot of good for the image of the position.

Also regardless of theological views, I agree with you, although he wouldn't have been my absolute first choice. Then again, very few of these people would.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Fingers crossed for Sentamu!

Nobody in the Church of England likes Sentamu except some of the laity. He's admittedly less bad than some of the other options.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Seems that no candidate has emerged yet. This one is set to last for quite a while.

I was given to understand that the CNC had deadlocked between two, which if true is definitely worrying, especially if one of them is ++York (in which case, good on whoever's blocking him!).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm in support of that.

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Sunday Times has it they're down to +Ebor, +Dunelm, and +Norvic. I'd obviously vastly prefer the latter even if only as a caretaker.

The Mail, similarly but with an important difference, seems to have heard that they've realized none of them can stand +Ebor and are deadlocked between +Dunelm and +Norvic...

Mail commenters, meanwhile, are crying out for the not-quite-schismatic former +Roffen of all people, and somebody going by the handle 'Downtrodden Taxpayer' is claiming that +Rowan Cantuar is secretly agnostic. Stay classy. Of the actual real candidates, their favorite is of course the one who writes in the magazine that introduced the world to the Page Three Stunna.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

According to the Times, +Dunelm seems to have secured the spot for one choice. The deadlock is between +Norvic and +Ebor for the other slot.

Despite the poor optics of his having been an Etonian and an oilman, +Dunelm is probably the best of the conservative options and one of the less bad of all the options, so I'm tentatively optimistic for now.

ETA: More sources are claiming that Welby is the first choice.

This is inane. It's becoming obvious or at least entirely overwhelmingly CW that +Dunelm is going to be +Cantuar (the fact that they seemed able to agree on him speaks volumes even though there does technically have to be a vote as to which of the two eventual names goes first). Apparently some shady bookies have him at 1/10 odds. The rest of this is I think just going to be an ordeal unless something falls through somewhere.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Increasingly firm 'not +Ebor' consensus, I'm hearing from some of my Episcopalian brethren that they've heard that +Norvic and +Liverpool are back in the offing, maybe +Coventry as well? Huh.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

On what basis do you say that? The people doing this selection are by and large exactly the sort of constituencies in the Church of England that don't like him very much. The specific and in some circles admitted desire to avoid him means that if he somehow ends up at +Cantuar it will be out of perceived lack of any better options and desire to cut losses by doing something vaguely populist.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Thomas Beckett will always be the Archbishop of Canterbury to me.

Sigged.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Slightly embarrassed that I spelled his name wrong though.

'Beckett' I believe was for some time an acceptable spelling.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Rumors afoot there may be movement within the next few days. I'll believe it when I see it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The Torygraph is already calling him 'just another Left-wing establishment bureaucrat'. That was fast.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

He seems like one of those compromise candidates the C of E loves so much. Sort of traditionalist, except when he's not. Sort of liberal, except where he's not. An improvement over Rowan, but that's not saying much.

I think it's actually saying quite a lot (and also untrue), but he's definitely somebody on whom it's very easy to be more or less neutral or unmoved and I do think that was partially the point.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

He seems like one of those compromise candidates the C of E loves so much. Sort of traditionalist, except when he's not. Sort of liberal, except where he's not. An improvement over Rowan, but that's not saying much.

I think it's actually saying quite a lot (and also untrue), but he's definitely somebody on whom it's very easy to be more or less neutral or unmoved and I do think that was partially the point.

Rowan, and his "mechanism," really turned me off.  I'm at least somewhat sympathetic to the view that gay bishops is something that is unacceptable to parts of the Communion, but I do not want Canterbury to even hint at the idea that it has some sort shadowy, but formal, authority over the ECUSA.

I know that there are parts of the Communion that object, but they don't have a veto over us (or we of them).

That's entirely fair, and was one of my (otherwise relatively few) problems with Rowan as well. I certainly think and hope Justin might be somewhat better on that front; it's on matters of theology and dogmatics where he's not much to my taste and Rowan was very much so--which I suppose isn't really what I realistically should be judging ABCs on, so...

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Not that I wouldn't love to see an internal putsch of some kind in the Church of England right now, but I doubt it's going to happen.