Between 1999 and 2004, Sarah Mullally, the current Bishop of London, was director of patient experience for NHS England. One complaint dominated the feedback she received from inpatients: everyone hated the undignified hospital gowns that gaped open at the back. Mullally identified this as an issue that could be addressed easily and cheaply. Later on, the designer Ben de Lisi even worked with the Design Council to develop a better gown with side fastenings. Yet if you are unfortunate enough to have to stay in hospital today, you will almost certainly find that you are offered the old draughty gown. It turns out that in an organisation as large and complex as the NHS, with dispersed decision-making and obstinate staff, change is not as simple as identifying a problem and proposing a solution.
On 28 January, Dame Sarah Mullally will be clothed in the medieval vestments of the Archbishop of Canterbury. She takes the mantle at a moment when the Church of England has its arse hanging out. In towns and villages across the country, clergy are exhausted and demoralised. Parish churches continue to do much good work, but congregation numbers are declining and many dioceses are broke. The General Synod rivals the Westminster parliament as a forum for tribal warfare. According to the ecclesiologist the Revd Dr Paul Avis, there is ‘a pervasive sense of organisational incoherence, dysfunctionality, dishonesty and betrayal’. The C of E, he says, has not been in ‘such a bad place for centuries’.
Mandatory retirement at the age of 70 means that Archbishop Mullally has only six years to help the Church cover its embarrassment. That’s barely half the time her predecessor held the post. She will probably insist, as Justin Welby did, that the Archbishop is not the CEO of the C of E. If she wants structural and cultural change, and she has said that she does, she will have to find creative ways to do it.
In Welby’s case, that was through a literal ‘bully pulpit’. His fierce temper was legendary in the House of Bishops. The archbishop may not have much executive power, but he or she has convening power and also considerable powers of patronage. Around half of the C of E’s 40-odd diocesan bishoprics will fall vacant during her term. These are coveted jobs, and although she won’t appoint them directly, she will have substantial influence. More than anything, the Archbishop has the power to make headlines. What she says, for good or ill, will be reported around the world. That enables her to go over the heads of reluctant colleagues to appeal to the public.
Mullally has a number of things going for her as she begins the role. The first, as a member of the Archbishops’ Council told me this week, is that she is not Welby. She arrives with considerable goodwill, especially as she is the first woman to take on the post. That will buy her support in many parts of the English Church. True, there are large parts of the worldwide Anglican Communion where a woman in leadership is anathema, but, to be honest, those churches have already left the party in all but name.
Mullally has a number of
things going for her in the role. The first is that she is not Welby
In the Diocese of London, Mullally surrounded herself with ecclesiastical bruisers. At Lambeth Palace she will have a chance to rebuild the core team around her. However, she knows that most of the executive clout of the Church doesn’t sit in Lambeth at all, but with the ecclesiastical civil service across the Thames in Church House, Westminster. Welby’s tenure was dogged by endless tussles with its éminence grise William Nye, the Church’s Sir Humphrey. As a former royal courtier, Nye is a master of the art of making sure that as little as possible happens. Mullally may find, as her predecessor did, that she is driving the car with someone else’s foot on the brake.
Some commentators, including myself, had ruled out Mullally for the top job, because she would arrive dragging a poor safeguarding record from her years overseeing the Diocese of London. Church lawyers spent the Christmas season scrambling to get an outstanding complaint against her resolved so that she can take up the post with no points on her safeguarding licence. Bishop Sarah acknowledged that the complainant had been ‘let down by the processes of the Church of England’, which is episcopal code for ‘mistakes were made, but not by me’. It was no surprise when her friend and colleague Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, dismissed the complaint against her, given that soon it will be her job to pass judgment on disciplinary complaints against him. Both Archbishops will no doubt say that they are acting in accordance with Church law, but this self-referential disciplinary process is a bad look. Prioritising Church law over pastoral common sense is precisely the issue that led to the defenestration of Welby. The lawyers should not stand easy, as there are several allegations of mishandling of safeguarding in the Diocese of London under Bishop Sarah that may yet surface over the next 18 months.
Finally, there is the most neuralgic issue of all: the inclusion of LGBT+ people in the life of the Church at every level. Welby’s eight-year programme Living in Love and Faith was intended to find a way to reconcile the irreconcilable. It managed to unite conservatives and liberals, but only in their loathing of Welby. Mullally briefly chaired the group that was steering the process. She is liberal enough on LGBT+ inclusion to upset conservatives, some of whom will not even accept her legitimacy as a bishop. But she is not decisive enough to satisfy liberals, who find her slippery. In an earlier generation, this equivocation might have been an ideal quality in an Archbishop of Canterbury, but Mullally knows that the Church’s entire budget of patience over the issue has been exhausted by her predecessor.
Nobody expects Mullally to be able to nurse the Church of England back to full health. She is working with dispersed decision-making and obstinate staff, just as she was in the NHS. But she needs to be seen to make substantive progress on at least some of these issues, and soon. Otherwise, for the C of E, as with the hated hospital gown, the end will still be in sight.
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