MOST FIRST days on a job start with filling out paperwork, meeting your manager and being shown around the office. On March 25th Dame Sarah Mullally will pick up a crozier and sit on two of Canterbury Cathedral’s thrones. Dame Sarah should savour the magic of the moment, which marks the symbolic beginning of her tenure as the 106th—but first female—Archbishop of Canterbury. Her job may be almost impossible.
The church is already under severe strain. Some of the Anglicans Dame Sarah now leads do not believe that the church can be led by a woman. An experiment to introduce blessings for gay couples has created an alliance of conservatives led by a powerful evangelical church, Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB). The Church of England continues to be dogged by concerns about how it handles abuse. In February the Bishop of Lincoln was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault.
Inside, the church is aflame with overlapping factionalism. Liberals fear HTB is taking over (its rock-style worship draws in young people); traditionalists are fighting tooth and nail for more parish funding; conservatives fret that the church has become too woke. Outside, it is a moribund relic. Leaked policy plans suggest that the Green Party would “disestablish” the church, removing its special status and privileges, including the automatic right of 26 bishops to sit in the House of Lords. Only 700,000 people attended a service weekly in 2024.
Dame Sarah is trying to approach these challenges in listening mode. But finding time to reflect will be hard. A 140km pilgrimage along the “Becket Way” from London to Canterbury was meant to be a “profound act of spiritual preparation”. Even this was interrupted. On March 18th Dame Sarah dashed back to the Lords to speak against decriminalising abortion up to birth.■
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