Yes, yes, the NHS is the national religion and all that but seriously?
Sarah Mullally, the first female archbishop of Canterbury, is a trailblazer with invaluable NHS leadership skills
We tend not to think of the NHS as being well led now, do we?
The 63-year-old is a person who understands the levers and cogs of a historic institution such as the Church of England or a national institution such as the NHS.
She’s a bureaucrat.
The real and enduring impact of Anglican churches is felt in villages, towns and cities across the UK, across the world, where people gather to pray, run food banks, host AA meetings, reach isolated elderly people, invite parents and toddlers to play, and offer shelter for people who are hungry or homeless.
The challenge for the established church, praying for every soul, not just those who come to Sunday services, is to get our doors open, keep them open, welcome everyone without exception and never allow the church to become a cosy club of the already initiated.
Not much there about the fear of hell and damnation, is there?
The Rev Lucy Winkett is rector of St James’s Piccadilly and priest in charge of St Pancras church, Euston Road, and a writer, broadcaster and musician
She is an answer to the prayers of all those who long for change in society
Lucy Winkett
Orthodox member of the lanyard class is going to change everything, is he?
Wimmins ruining another men only space (clergy).
The Church really doesn’t learn, does it ?
Welby was an oil company middle manager who found God and now we have a NHS administrator.
At least she has a half reasonable hairdo.
The Church is truly the Tory Party at Prayer : it is full of wets and liberals who are preventing proper policies from being implemented that might save them from oblivion after years of mismanagement.
Watch the Africans break away completely, now.
The CofE is more the Green Party and Lib Dems at Prayer…
I think Otto’s point is that that is the very definition of the post-1997 Tory party.
Then it’s hyperbole.
No it isn’t Theo.
There is a universe of difference between what happens at the grass roots of the Church and the intentions and deeds of those in charge.
It is an exact mirror of the modern Conservatives.
I despair at the pronouncements of the Church’s hierarchy and how out of touch with reality, let alone the congregations, they are.
It is this capture by the Marxists of both institutions that are driving people away.
You cannot put a fag paper between the Libs and the Tories on many issues.
The libertarian Jesus cartoons spring to mind
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Very good, Bongo!
Having contributed to the ongoing woke clusterfucks that are the NHS and the CoE can we expect her to eventually turn to her true spiritual home, the bbc?
Hmm, she’d have to become a disabled lesbian first, but who knows?
I suppose she’s just glissando-ing from one failing religion to another. I’m sure Islam will beat private healthcare in the race for supremacy, even if TTK does eventually get HIV…
Segueing, shirley? And that depends on whether TTK is, er, active or passive, which doesn’t really bear thinking about.
Considering his public statements I can make a pretty good guess which role he plays.
Exactly the sort of handwringing dripping wet no-mark who has been destroying the Church for decades.
I know the high-minded and rational atheists here don’t care about that, but the alternative to Christianity in Britain is not high-minded rationality, but ‘progressive’ lunacy, the Cult of Net Zero, and Islam. Even Richard Dawkins seems to have realised this.
As a high-minded, rational, empirical agnostic, I entirely agree. Chesterton was right, and of all the candidates for belief, Anglicanism is probably the most benign. When it’s Anglicanism, that is, and not “spiritual” progressivism.
… Anglican churches … where people gather to pray, run food banks, host AA meetings, reach isolated elderly people, invite parents and toddlers to play, and offer shelter for people who are hungry or homeless.
There is no mention of preaching the gospel of salvation or the administration of the Holy Sacraments. Maybe that’s the problem.
This is the Observer’s view, not that of the Church Times. My parish church does preach the Gospel and administer sacraments as well as pray: its earthly actions to give practical help to those in need are a secondary consequence of prayer.
The problem, in this case, is with “The Observer” not the CoE.
The Germans have the term naechstenliebe, which we would translate as ‘love the neighbour’ or brotherly love or philanthropy.
It has become a core function of the CofE, especially since the 19thCent.
It is a consequence of belief in the Gospels, rather than of prayer, I think.
But also it was a direct result of competition from the Evangelical Protestant sects that grew in the 18th Cent. A sort of godly arms race.
She was selected to Rub the Global South’s* Nose in Diversity.
*Africa.**
**Otto’s right. They’ll be off any day now.
The Presbyterians are right. Church bureaucrats – priests, bishops, Popes – tend to be pretty dismal samples of humanity. The best people in the congregations will almost always be more impressive. So let the congregations – via the Elders – run things. Scrap the hierarchy. It’s entirely surplus to requirements.
I’m confident Jesus would agree if he ever got his head round the idea of a “Church”.
Mind you, Christianity looks to be on the way out. Maybe Christianity-adjacent superstitions will survive – Mormonism, Roman Catholicism, and so on. If they do survive it will be by the sword. After all, He is reported as saying “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Nae priests, nae bishops, nae hierarchy! In my sect we have “the lady with the key to the meeting room” and nothing else. 🙂
Pet hypothesis on this: once people stopped dying at a younger age, something that is so rare that we are rarely touched by it, religion disappeared for all but the old.
Go back to the 19th century, death was common. Loads of people died making Box Tunnel, mining, in childbirth, they died in wars, died of starvation. You had to think about your eternal damnation or otherwise.
All of this is so incredibly rare, so few of us are touched by it, that it isn’t a collective thing.
On top of that, the charity of the church was replaced by mostly, people being richer, not starving, the welfare state.
The CofE is mostly a redundant institution. Like, who runs museums nowadays. Or who conducts the Proms. Or who is Director General of the BBC, when everyone is watching Netflix. It’s why there are more women being ordained than men. Men go where the action is, and move off when there’s somewhere better. Social media run by men, newspapers run by women.
Good point. It’s something I keep pointing out, the human psych hasn’t got used to population age profile dynamics changing like this:
1861:
0- 9 25% ***************************************************
10-19 19% **************************************
20-29 15% ******************************
30-39 12% *************************
40-49 10% ********************
50-59 7% ***************
60-69 5% ***********
70-79 2% *****
80-89 0% *
90-99 0%
2021:
0- 9 8% *****************
10-19 10% *******************
20-29 9% *******************
30-39 11% *********************
40-49 11% **********************
50-59 16% ********************************
60-69 16% *******************************
70-79 12% ************************
80-89 6% ***********
90-99 2% ****
“Go back to the 19th century, death was common. Loads of people died making Box Tunnel, mining, in childbirth, they died in wars, died of starvation. You had to think about your eternal damnation or otherwise.
All of this is so incredibly rare, so few of us are touched by it, that it isn’t a collective thing.”
As I said at the time, my theory of the society’s reaction to Covid was that it was driven by a sudden realisation for tens of millions that they could die in a few weeks or months time, something they had never had to even contemplate, as death below the age of 70 has become increasingly rare. And that the people probably most affected by this fear were the people of the age that pretty much run everything, the 50 to 70 somethings. They collectively sh*t themselves and decided that everything must be done to stop this awful prospect, and being in charge of State apparatus were in a position to make that happen.
NHS eh? In a couple of years there’ll be a waiting list to get into a church. No shortage of pews though I expect.
She was Chief Nursing Officer, managing nurses who are one of the good bits of the NHS, not waiting lists for visits to doctors.
You are thinking of that intrepid breed, the practice receptionist, not practice nurses
The Church of England is just a version of the Buffs or the WI. It’s not a religious institution.
The new Archbishop of Canterbury has warned against “hostile” or “threatening” language on immigration as she acknowledged concerns from communities which she said feel “overlooked and undervalued”.
How compelling. Please step on the pyre.
Right Steve. I think we passed the “acknowledging concerns” stage some time ago.
More proof (if any were needed) that any organisation that becomes feminised at a management level will inevitably fail. It can survive large numbers of women at the coal face level, but once women enter the management structure it will slowly descend into disfunction and failure. I am absolutely convinced that if you replaced every woman in the NHS management structure with a man, and made zero other changes the result would be a massive step increase in productivity.
With the exception of a few women I’ve met who were damned goo in senior roles I agree. What we’ve learned in the past few decades is that management and politics by Kum Bah Ya doesn’t work.
In all of the things I’ve read and heard about her nobody has mentioned whether or not she believes in God.
Belief in God is not a requirement – apparently.
But I do agree that the comments seem somewhat out of touch. To be frank, once you get past the upper parts of the diocese level, then you find the fundamental problems with the CoE. What level towards the top of the diocese marks the threshold depends a lot on the nature of the senior incumbents – thankfully our previous bishop retired a while ago and was replaced by someone less out of touch.
Communist social clubs. Almost all of them.