A resigning matter?

Justin Welby resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury as a result of the conclusions of the Makin report into the activities of John Smyth, a lay reader and preacher in the Church of England, as outlined in this previous blogpost https://bit.ly/4fIhr2V Welby was criticised in this report for his ‘lack of curiosity’ when informed of the claims made by some of Smyth’s victims.

There was absolutely no need for Welby to resign. The beatings for which Smyth was responsible took place before Welby was even ordained as a priest, and nearly four decades after he was appointed Archbishop. The beatings against the young men, who were almost all over the age of 18, were consensual based on the belief that this form of chastisement would purge them of their sins and make them better Christians. None of the beatings took place on church premises, or under the auspices of the church. When informed of these events Welby correctly assumed that any investigation would be a matter for the police. In any case he would have had many more important and immediate matters to attend to, than to agonise over events from the distant past that should be of only a very peripheral concern to the church.

Welby was succeeded as archbishop by Sarah Mullally. It is highly probable that she was appointed primarily because she is a woman. In a widely shared photograph in the media, she is shown proudly handing an award for ‘interfaith cooperation’ to a Pakistani Muslim cleric. At the time this ceremony caused some media controversy as the wife of the cleric is standing next to him fully veiled with only her eyes visible. A second woman, believed to be his daughter, is also present heavily masked.

In her confirmation ceremony as Archbishop Sarah Mullally opined that the issue of misogyny needed to be ‘brought into the open’ and committed herself to doing so. It would be difficult to witness a more glaring example of misogyny than the way these two women were dressed, but as criticism of their appearance would be considered as ‘Islamophobic’ in the warped liberal mindset, she stayed silent.

More seriously it soon emerged that the Muslim cleric had voiced some opinions that were toxic to even the most deluded liberal apologist for regressive Islamic practices. He had honoured the 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden with the title ‘Sword of Allah’ in response to Salman Rushdie being awarded a knighthood. He called for restrictions on freedom of speech after the murder of journalists at Charlie Hebdo. He considered that it was only ‘common sense’ that men would rape women if they wore ‘very few clothes’.

Following these revelations Sarah Mullally rescinded the award. However, no apology has ben given, and no explanation offered as to why she failed to investigate the cleric’s repulsive views, given that they could easily have been discovered after only a cursory internet search. If anyone is guilty of a ‘lack of curiosity’ it must surely be the current archbishop. However, it can be safely assumed that she will not be following Welby’s example by offering her resignation. To do so would be to surrender to the misogynist forces that have supposedly held her back in her journey to the archbishopric. Nor will Channel 4 be instigating the kind of selective simplistic one-sided campaign they pursued against Welby.