Justin Welby to be Archbishop of Canterbury
Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham, has accepted the post of Archbishop of Canterbury, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
Sources have confirmed that the Eton-educated bishop will be announced as successor to Dr Rowan Williams as early as Friday, after the Crown Nominations Commission put his name forward to Downing Street.
It marks a meteoric rise for the former oil executive who has been a bishop for only a year, but insiders described Welby as “the outstanding candidate”.
Last night a spokesman refused to confirm his appointment. But it came a few hours after he pulled out at short notice from a planned appearance on the BBC Radio 4 discussion programme Any Questions due to take place in County Durham on Friday.
He also cut short a retreat with diocesan staff and returned to the capital where it is understood his wife is travelling down to join him tomorrow.
Earlier this week bookmakers stopped taking money on Bishop Welby after a flurry of bets on him being chosen.
Sources in Canterbury earlier attempted to play down the expectation, with one even suggesting that they had been “surprised” that it was not him.
Although one of the front-runners since the beginning of the process there had been doubts over whether Bishop Welby had been a bishop for long enough. He took over at Durham just a year ago having previously been Dean of Liverpool.
There were also questions over whether an Eton-educated Archbishop would be well received in some quarters.
It is thought that the questions played a part in delaying the final decision although it is also thought his family were reluctant to be drawn into the limelight.
Dr John Sentamu The Archbishop of York, was the early favourite for the post and and the Bishops of Coventry, Norwich and Liverpool were also widely tipped.
But the choice of the 56-year-old to lead the world’s 77 million Anglicans marks a decisive break with the past for the Church.
While his predecessors have drawn on long and distinguished careers as academics or clerics, his experience is of the world of mammon as much as God.
A former oil executive he gave up a highly paid career after feeling a “call” to the priesthood in the late 1980s.
“Something in me just said ‘this is what you should be doing’,” he recently explained.
He was able to draw on years of experience in oil exploration in troubled areas of west Africa, when his ministry led him to work in conflict resolution in the violent Niger Delta, where he narrowly avoided being shot dead.
At a time when the Church is grappling with the aftermath of the banking crisis, he combines – almost uniquely – an understanding of the working of the City with that of life in the inner city, gleaned as a parish priest and Dean of Liverpool.
He has used his seat in the Lords as a platform to challenge the “sins” of the multi-billion pound banks as much as the small-scale pay-day “loan sharks” he has seen at work on the North East – condemning the practice in the language of the Old Testament as “usury”.
Although educated at Eton and Cambridge and even a member of a Pall Mall club, he is seen as far from an establishment figure.
Theologically, he is unashamedly part of the evangelical tradition, upholding a more traditional and conservative interpretation of the Bible than some in the Church of England.
But he is also a strong advocate of more modern styles of worship.
Dr Williams is also due back in London tomorrow after almost two weeks abroad, visiting Papua New Guinea before attending a meeting of world Anglican leaders in New Zealand.
Speaking in Auckland yesterday, at what aides said would be his final press conference, he was asked for advice for his successor.
Quoting the theologian Karl Barth, he said that the new Archbishop should preach “with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other”.
He said that it was vital that whoever is named must be able to make his message relevant to modern life and “like” reading newspapers.
“You have to be cross-referencing all the time and saying, ‘How does the vision of humanity and community in the Bible map onto these issues of poverty, privation, violence and conflict?’
“And you have to use what you read in the newspaper to prompt and direct the questions that you put to the Bible: ‘Where is this going to help me?’
“So I think somebody who likes reading the Bible and likes reading newspapers would be a good start.”
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9662546/Justin-Welby-to-be-Archbishop-of-Canterbury.html
Profile: Anglican Bishop of Durham Justin Welby
By Mick Ord BBC Religion and Ethics editor
The man expected to be named as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, turned his back 0n a successful career in the oil industry to train as an Anglican priest.
If his appointment is confirmed, he will also bring experience of personal tragedy and of civil conflict in Africa to his new role leading 80 million Christians in more than 160 countries.
The Bishop of Durham’s rise to being on the verge of becoming the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury has been remarkably swift. He has been a bishop for little over a year and the 56-year-old became a priest only in his mid-30s.
The father-of-five emerged as a late favourite for the Church of England’s most senior post after enjoying positive media coverage, having started the contest as an outsider.
Justin Portal Welby was born in London on 6 January 1956 to Gavin Bernard Welby and his wife, Jane Gillian (nee Portal), who remarried after her husband’s death in 1975, becoming Lady Williams of Elvel.
Bishop Welby, who was educated at Eton and Trinity College Cambridge, spent 11 years as an oil executive and became group treasurer for FTSE 100 oil exploration group Enterprise Oil Plc prior to the biggest career decision of his life.
Former colleague Vivian Gibney recalls his diplomatic skills. “One of his main strengths is to find the way forward in negotiations… a solution that works for all sides,” she said.
“He is very good as seeing others’ point of view.”
As an oil executive, Bishop Welby was earning a six-figure salary back in 1987 but gave it up to train to be an Anglican priest. He took a degree in theology at Cranmer Hall in Durham, where he studied from 1989 to 1992.
“I was unable to get away from a sense of God calling,” he told business publication Money Marketing in a recent interview. “I went kicking and screaming but I couldn’t escape it.”
The life-changing decision followed a personal tragedy in 1983 with the death of his seven-month-old daughter, Johanna, in a car crash.
“It was a very dark time for my wife Caroline and myself, but in a strange way it actually brought us closer to God,” he said in a local newspaper interview last year.
Even while working as an oil company executive, Bishop Welby had become a lay leader at the charismatic evangelical Holy Trinity Brompton church in London. Later, after ordination, he became curate in the village of Chilvers Coton with Astley, near Nuneaton.
The Reverend Simon Betteridge, who was a church youth worker at the time, recalls an “enthusiastic, hands-on vicar”.
“The local authority had virtually closed down all the youth services and the church didn’t have any major youth project work,” he said.
“When Justin came he had a vision to provide a proper youth service which connected the church to young people in a deprived area. He was great fun and very energetic.”
In 2002, Justin Welby became canon at Coventry Cathedral. He also became co-director for international ministry at the International Centre for Reconciliation.
He already had experience of Africa from his oil days, but he was now to witness at first hand some of the horrific results of civil war. On a number of occasions he came close to being killed.
He was able to develop a deep understanding of the nature of conflict, as well as an admiration for the Nigerian people who, he says, retain their faith and energy in the face of terrifying odds – something he says continues to inspire him.
“You saw this practical vision, this willingness to overcome things that most of us would be traumatised by for a generation,” he told the BBC at the time.
In summer 2011, Justin Welby became Bishop of Durham, one of the most senior posts in the Church of England. At this year’s Synod he was involved in the negotiations to defuse a potential crisis over a vote on women bishops.
In a pastoral letter to his diocese on the issue he wrote how he was “committed to and believes in the ordination of women as bishops”.
He has been less forthright about his views on homosexuality. While he has rigorously defended the Church’s right to oppose single-sex marriages, he has also been keen to accommodate opposing views expressed from a position of deeply held faith.
Bishop Welby was recently appointed to the parliamentary commission on banking standards, which is looking into the Libor rate-fixing scandal. He has also written extensively on business ethics, including a 1992 book “Can Companies Sin?”
The Church will hope that his passion for resolving conflict and finding workable solutions will equip him for some of the huge challenges confronting the worldwide Anglican community over the coming months and years.
The current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said his eventual successor would need “the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros”.
For more on this story go to:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/0/19847046
