Yesterday's political outburst against the UK coalition government's policies took the Archbishop of Canterbury even further off piste than usual. For the unelected leader of the Church of England to stray into the territory of the legitimacy of an elected government's policy or action on the basis that it was not included in last year's manifesto was extraordinary.It also shows a lack of understanding of the need to react to the changing situations of the times rather than stick always to rigid doctrine, something with which the Archbishops' organisation and others similar seem to find extraordinary difficulty.
Perhaps the church leader is looking for distractions to take his mind off the state of his legitimate bailiwick,- the C of E itself which seems for ever entramelled, indeed obsessed, by the gender and sexuality of its membership, potential or actual. It grapples constantly with its historical mysogeny and the view that women are fine for procreration but not really the equals of men and only grudgingly accepts them as priests and certainly not yet anyway Bishops, or Heaven forbid(s) Archbishops. The church's theologians, the equivalent of its head office, examine for ever ancient theology, documents looking for new tealeaves or entrails which either justify its stance or show it ways off the hook though it seems to find enormous difficulty in finding and, even more, agreeing them. The more they look, dither and worry about whether some of their number march off to to Rome (why not let them if they decide they are in the wrong church ?-it's a free world),the more the head office diverges from the real needs of its endangered congregations. It also splits the organisation into two quite distinct parts. The first is the bit most people see and upon which they make their judgements,- the very valuable front line pastoral side doing a great deal of good around the world and ,by actions and example rather than doctrine, bringing in recruits and reaching out to believers and to non believers who at least begin to see the goodness of their actions. The second is the almost pure theological side which is the habitat of the Archbishop. Unlike the Pope, he is an infrequent world traveller and rallier of the faithful and indeed barred himself from air travel for a year as some kind of irrelevant green protest. The academic head office type group clustered around Lambeth and the great cathedrals is remote, theoretical and would more appropriately be based around a university type of institution. To the exasperation of many it isn't doing well in unifying, gaining friends or even laying out its stall coherently. This latest Lambeth Palace outburst adds to the shaking of heads and questioning of what the C of E is all about.
