Scrutable

And it's a dame!
Well actually we won't have one until January when the election will be formally made, and enthronement follows in March. So the post will have been vacant for over a year. One thing you have to say about the white smoke method, it's a lot quicker. Sarah Mullally is currently Bishop of London. She is married with two grown-up children.

Like her predecessor, she did other things before becoming a vicar. In her case, she has been Chief Nursing Officer for England, and was ordained during er period holding that post. We shall have an archbishop who has considerable practical experience of ministering to the sick.

There's no mention of it in the announcements, but of course it has been much speculated that likely a critical qualification for the job this time has been the least possible baggage in terms of failing to protect congregations from known child abusers, and the like. Which has been considered to be quite a major constraint given the widespread institutional failings in that direction. They have been, perhaps, lucky if someone as senior as Bishop of London was found to have satisfied that requirement. We can be sure that the bloodhounds will now be looking for what they can find in that direction pretty quickly.

The choice of a woman, who additionally played a major role in facilitating the blessing of same-sex partnerships in church, seems to be a clear sign that the English bit of the Anglican church has given up on placating more conservative wings of the Anglican Church in other countries. Good.

The feminist in me thinks about bl..dy time while the atheist in me doesn't give a sh.t what the Church does.

Of course many of the African churches are objecting but however much they threaten schism, they never do it.

The CofE is dying on its arse anyway, this will not make it more 'relevant'.

Tessa K wrote: Sun Oct 05, 2025 10:08 am The feminist in me thinks about bl..dy time while the atheist in me doesn't give a sh.t what the Church does.

The church has had a marked tendency to bring itself into disrepute over the last several decades, at least. I used to be somewhat heartened this hastened its shrinkage to irrelevance. But other churches have expanded in its wake, and some of these are just as disreputable, sometimes more so.

My greatest concern is how the church possesses so much of our architectural heritage, often possessing by far the finest building of many settlements. It is increasingly difficult to know how we should respond to this glut of relatively little used large ancient buildings, and associated art works, many of them suffering a degree of disrepair, as the church itself shrinks towards irrelevance.

Meanwhile in other first-time-a-woman news, we have Takaichi Sanae, new prime minister of Japan. But she sounds about as feminist as the various female candidates to be leader of the Conservative Party over the last several years.

IvanV wrote: Sun Oct 05, 2025 2:21 pm

Tessa K wrote: Sun Oct 05, 2025 10:08 am The feminist in me thinks about bl..dy time while the atheist in me doesn't give a sh.t what the Church does.

The church has had a marked tendency to bring itself into disrepute over the last several decades, at least. I used to be somewhat heartened this hastened its shrinkage to irrelevance. But other churches have expanded in its wake, and some of these are just as disreputable, sometimes more so.

My greatest concern is how the church possesses so much of our architectural heritage, often possessing by far the finest building of many settlements. It is increasingly difficult to know how we should respond to this glut of relatively little used large ancient buildings, and associated art works, many of them suffering a degree of disrepair, as the church itself shrinks towards irrelevance.

Meanwhile in other first-time-a-woman news, we have Takaichi Sanae, new prime minister of Japan. But she sounds about as feminist as the various female candidates to be leader of the Conservative Party over the last several years.

I agree, the architecture needs preserving, the part of Christian history that should be, along with the music and art. All of which are about human imagination and skill, not the God part.

GAFCON, an association of mainly African Anglican churches formed in 2008 to resist liberal moves by the C of E, has announced it will no longer recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury as the church leader. Apparently that is a unilateral announcement by the Archbishop of Rwanda, and it will have to go to a meeting of that grouping next March, so perhaps not quite definitive yet.

And, on the same day, the C of E announced it is stopping trials of blessing services for gay couples. It says that is because it needs to go through proper democratic processes which require a 2/3 majority. But in all likelihood it is to try and keep GAFCON on board.

By entertaining coincidence, when I just opened Wikipedia to look up GAFCON, I got a QW25 - Queering Wikipedia 2025 - banner across the top for the first time.

So, they all succeed in bringing themselves into disrepute as usual, and new AofC has hit an immediate stumbling block for attempting to escape that, before she is even formally chosen. As all previous AofCs with reforming intent have done.