Once again, the Church of England was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, below, its relatively new leader, denounced the demons of payday lending, vowing to defeat them with the church’s own credit unions. Yet almost instantly it emerged that his own organisation had played a role in their creation through its huge investment funds.
For those of us who take little interest in this declining institution beyond wondering how it remains an established church in our multi-cultural age, it is just the latest farce involving bungling bishops and clerical contortions.

Yet this weekend, even Catholic-born atheists such as me are forced to concede that the current resident of Lambeth Palace is emerging as one of the most distinctive voices in the country. His deft political touch, sharp media abilities and displays of decent humanity could even help restore his church to the role expected by its followers after decades during which it failed to capitalise on its centrality to national life.

Read it all.

So how will Justin Welby handle that tension? Rowan Williams’ decade in Lambeth Palace was occasionally difficult and often controversial, with the outgoing Archbishop wearily wishing his successor “the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros.” Where Williams ”“ a Doctor of Philosophy ”“ began to irritate politicians and some parts of the press with his interventions, perhaps Welby’s background gives him a surer platform from which to speak?

“It gives me a public profile which is slightly different, but apart from that I have no more or less authority than Rowan Williams,” he insists. But there is, he admits, a clear difference. “I certainly have a less strong background in philosophy and ethics as a professional discipline”¦ certainly more experience of what happens in practice when you try and apply these things. And you need both.”

But how did that career in oil train him for the work he does today? Welby pauses. “I’m often asked that question. I never know the answer.” But the answer is this: Welby understands the world beyond the church.

Read it all.

The Church of England’s ethical finance chief has defended its investment policy despite its stakes in businesses blamed for pollution, tax dodging, animal cruelty and child labour.

“Life is not perfectly good or perfectly bad,” Edward Mason said after it was revealed that the Church had been unwittingly bankrolling the payday lender Wonga. “Everything is a mess.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has ordered a review of the Church’s multibillion-pound investments to identify inconsistencies with its moral teachings.

Read it all (subscription required).

…for many people in Britain the brutal question of money is becoming impossible to ignore, particularly if you have run clean out of it. Yet only someone who is truly confident around cash flows and interest rates would dare to pledge, as the Archbishop did last week, that the Church of England will back a chain of non-profit credit unions that would one day “compete” payday lenders such as Wonga out of business.

No good intention goes unpunished: just a day after that splendidly hopeful promise came the revelation that the Church of England’s pension fund itself had invested in Accel Partners, one of Wonga’s key financial backers. This was, I think, supposed to be the point at which the Archbishop was caught pitching a large stone from the door of a glass cathedral, but it somehow didn’t turn out that way. On Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday morning he openly admitted that the revelation was “very embarrassing”, and indicated that he would re-examine the Church’s decisions about its investments.

At the same time, he explained how morally complicated such choices could sometimes be: should an investment in a hotel chain, for example, be wholly disallowed simply because, like most hotels, they offered pay-per-view pornography? By the end of the interview, there was the sense that the unruffled Archbishop had treated his audience like adults.

Read it all.

…before we laugh at the foolishness of the Church, we should reflect on how we are all implicated in this hypocrisy. Many of our pensions schemes and banks are invested in this billion industry built on the backs of the poor.

Welby’s courageous leadership on the issue of usurious lending practices is in stark contrast to the supine political leaders of all parties who have consistently failed to address the problem of legalized loan sharks. And Lord Maurice Glasman is exactly right to point out the challenge Welby’s action poses to the Labour Party and the left more generally. Through the leadership of Compass, Stella Creasy MP, London Citizens and the indefatigable Damon Gibbons – who since 1999 has worked on this issue through the Debt on your Doorstep campaign – some are starting to wake up to the nightmare that the kind of exploitative financial practices Wonga represents.

The silence of many on the left should be a source of deep shame, as usury is a profound challenge to all those committed to strengthening democracy and challenging oppression. Read it all.

The head of the Church of England said on Friday he was embarrassed to find out that his organisation had invested indirectly in a short-term loan company which he had vowed only days earlier to drive out of business.

The discovery of the relatively small investment was a major setback for Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, after he launched a scathing attack on “payday” lenders who charge high interest rates on short-term loans that are typically repaid when borrowers receive their wages.

But the former oil executive and a member of Britain’s Banking Standards Commission said he would push ahead with his campaign to compete with, and eventually render obsolete, a business he labels “morally wrong”.

Read it all.

Prince George is expected to be baptised by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Autumn. Traditionally royal babies have been baptised in a private ceremony in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace; but some news reports suggest that a more open service at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle is being considered.

The British Monarch’s position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England (or, rather, the English Monarch’s position ”“ Scotland was a separate country at the time) dates back to Henry VIII’s declaration that he, not the Pope, was head of the Church in England. Henry retained the title Defender of the Faith that Pope Leo X had bestowed on him for his outspoken attack on Luther’s 95 Theses. This title, Fidei Defensor in Latin, has been part of the English monarch’s official titles ever since.

Read it all.

First the Archbishop of Canterbury’s systematically-misleading statement: “We’re not trying to legislate Wonga out of business; we’re trying to compete Wonga out of business.” We should be thankful for that we have for Archbishop no Regius Professor of Obfuscation but a man who speaks as we speak in the street. Any reasonable person hearing his plain declaration of intent would conclude that the Church of England is about to compete with the payday loan company Wonga by offering clients lower interest rates on their repayments. Not so. The Church isn’t actually going to lend any money but only to make premises available for the use of credit unions. After the systematically-misleading statement, the scandal: it turns out that the Church itself is an investor in Wonga.

Read it all and there is a clarification from the Archbishop of Canterbury here

The Church of England has admitted it invests in one of Wonga’s key financial backers, a day after the Archbishop of Canterbury revealed his plans to take on the payday lender he describes as “morally wrong”.

The church, which claims to have a strong ethical investment policy that explicitly bans companies involved in payday lending, invests in Accel Partners, the US venture capital firm that led Wonga’s 2009 fundraising, the Financial Times has learnt.

A Lambeth Palace spokesperson said: “We are grateful to the Financial Times for pointing out this serious inconsistency of which we were unaware. We will be asking the Assets Committee of the Church Commissioners to investigate how this has occurred and to review the holding in this pooled investment vehicle.”

Read it all (if necessary another link is there).

In the past, Archbishops of Canterbury were expected to attend the birth of a future sovereign. On this occasion, Archbishop Welby blessed the new royal heir not at the Lindo Wing of St Mary’s Hospital, but from a respectful distance.

“I am delighted to congratulate the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the arrival of their baby boy,” he said on Monday evening. “Along with millions here and around the world, I share in their joy at this special time. May God bless this family with love, health and happiness in their shared life ahead.”

Earlier that day, he concluded a speech at Featherstone High School, Southall, with the suggestion that the audience “remember the Royal Duchess of Cambridge, who, in this heat, has gone into labour”.Read it all.

The archbishop of Canterbury has told Wonga that the Church of England wants to “compete” it out of existence as part of its plans to expand credit unions as an alternative to payday lenders.

The Most Rev Justin Welby said he had delivered the message to Errol Damelin, chief executive of Wonga, one of Britain’s best-known payday lenders, during a “very good conversation”.

“I’ve met the head of Wonga and we had a very good conversation and I said to him quite bluntly ‘we’re not in the business of trying to legislate you out of existence, we’re trying to compete you out of existence’,” he told Total Politics magazine.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has described both the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby and recent attacks on Muslims as “evil acts” by those who seek to “spread hate and cause division”.

“The attacks on minority ethnic groups across the country that there have been over the last few weeks are inexecusable, unacceptable and a scandal to a tradition of hospitality in this country of which we should be deeply proud and which has contributed far more to us than it has taken from us,” he told an inter-faith audience gathered at Featherstone High School in Southall, west London.

He added: “I want, as I have already done, to acknowledge the pressure that our Muslim friends and colleagues have faced over the last few weeks. There have been terrible attacks, I know that the vast majority of those in this country and especially people of faith would join me in condemning utterly any act of violence against anyone because of their faith.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has described the naming and shaming of bankers in the wake of the financial crisis as “lynch mobbish”.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby admitted sympathy for former bankers when hearing evidence as a member of the Banking Standards Commission.

He admitted “thinking, ‘I’m not sure I would have been very different,’ rather than thinking how bad they were”.

Read it all.

The trouble is, the Church may talk about transforming communities, but it often ignores some of the most serious social injustices in this country.

This failing was obvious in a briefing that was given on welfare reform and the Church for this week’s Synod meeting. Prepared by Philip Fletcher, chairman of mission and public affairs, it stated that the Church has “a prophetic duty to point out that God’s priority for the poor and vulnerable is not being adequately reflected in the life of the nation”. A fair enough observation, but Mr Fletcher only focused on benefit cuts in his paper, which described the “state’s withdrawal from its obligations to the poorest”. He didn’t point out that other government policies ”“ such as taxes and planning laws ”“ can have just as much of a crushing effect on the vulnerable.

Anglican bishops may have written angry letters about the benefit cuts. But they haven’t complained about the political laziness driving up the benefit bills ”“ the laziness of those politicians who are lacking the will or wit to build enough homes, thereby leaving poor families in dire straits as rents continue to rise. Government research has also revealed that carbon taxes and other well-meaning but damaging policies are adding £172 to average annual energy bills. Benefits are often a cover for political failure as they pay for higher bills caused by bad policy.

Read it all.

Babies make for drama. It really doesn’t make any difference where they are born or who are the parents: They always bring drama. When our first was born, she was so early we had not worked out where the hospital was. We drove around at six in the morning asking people and feeling rather stupid.

I doubt that will be the case for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. They are such an impressive couple. No doubt the plans and preparations will be perfect. Yet, there will still be drama.

Part of the drama is the sheer hope they bring. Babies cause us to look to the future hopefully. When this baby is old, it will be the 22nd Century. Yet he or she will be able to tell children about a great grandmother she knew ”“ who served in the Second World War.

Read it all.

…it did happen to him, in New Court, Trinity College, during the evening of October 12, 1975. At Eton, he had “vaguely assumed there was a God. But I didn’t believe. I wasn’t interested at all.” That night in Cambridge, though, praying with a Christian friend, he suddenly felt “a clear sense of something changing, the presence of something that had not been there before in my life. I said to my friend, ‘Please don’t tell anyone about this’, because I was desperately embarrassed that this had happened to me, like getting measles.”

Since then, there have been long periods with “no sense of any presence at all’’, but he has never gone back on that night’s “decision to follow Christ’’. This is not his doing: “It’s grace. Grace is a reality: feelings are ephemeral.”

To understand the change in Justin Welby’s life, you need to know what happened before.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, in a recent speech said the following:

“In some things we change course and recognize the new context. Revolutions change culture. In others we stand firm because truth is not set by culture, nor morals by fashion. But let us be clear, pretending that nothing has changed is absurd and impossible.”

This statement raises the question, “What beliefs can we as Christians, in our efforts to evangelize, maintain and what can we allow to be compromised?”

Watch it all.

Following fresh turmoil in Egypt, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have sent a message of ‘committed solidarity’ to Pope Tawadros II and Bishop Mouneer in Cairo.

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have joined the call for prayers for unity, reconciliation and an end to violence in Egypt.

Archbishop Justin Welby and Archbishop Dr John Sentamu wrote to the Coptic and Anglican leaders in Cairo today, pledging their ‘committed solidarity’ amid the recent turmoil in the country.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is in talks with Pope Francis about a new initiative that would link the Anglican Communion with the Vatican in the fight against poverty.

It is understood that the plan, which emerged from meetings between Archbishop Welby and the Pope in June, will focus on how both Churches can work together to help those in poverty around the world.

Read it all.

The statement we heard at the beginning of this debate was, I know, to all of us ”“ as has been said ”“ absolutely agonising. And what it says above all is that, for us, what we’re looking at today is far from enough. We are opening a process, continuing a process in many ways, that will go far further than we can imagine. The reality is that there will always be people who are dangerous who are part of the life of the church. They may be members of the congregation; we hope and pray that they will not be in positions of responsibility, but the odds are from time to time people will somehow conceal sufficiently well. And many here, as the Bishop of Herefordshire said, have been deeply affected, as well as the survivors who have so rightly brought us to this place. Many other people here have been deeply affected and badly treated. So we face a continual challenge and reality. This is not an issue we can deal with; it is something we will live with, and must live in the reality of ”“ day in day out, for as long as the church exists ”“ and seek to get it right.

Read it all.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has used his first presidential address to the General Synod to call on the Church to recognise that the “cultural and political ground” in Britain is “changing”, and to “accept that there is a revolution in the area of sexuality, and we have not fully heard it”.

Speaking on the first day of the Synod meeting in York, on Friday evening, Archbishop Welby said that he was “not proposing new policy”, but spoke of the “notable hostility” to the Church’s current position.

“Anyone who listened, as I did, to much of the Same-sex Marriage Bill second reading debate in the House of Lords could not fail to be struck by the overwhelming change of cultural hinterland; predictable attitudes were no longer there,” he said.

Read it all.

The social context is changing radically. There is a revolution. It may be, it was, that 59% of the population called themselves Christian at the last census, with 25% saying they had no faith. But the YouGov poll a couple of weeks back was the reverse, almost exactly, for those under 25. If we are not shaken by that, we are not listening.

The cultural and political ground is changing. There is a revolution. Anyone who listened, as I did, to much of the Same Sex Marriage Bill Second Reading Debate in the House of Lords could not fail to be struck by the overwhelming change of cultural hinterland. Predictable attitudes were no longer there. The opposition to the Bill, which included me and many other bishops, was utterly overwhelmed, with amongst the largest attendance in the House and participation in the debate, and majority, since 1945. There was noticeable hostility to the view of the churches. I am not proposing new policy, but what I felt then and feel now is that some of what was said by those supporting the bill was uncomfortably close to the bone. Lord Alli said that 97% of gay teenagers in this country report homophobic bullying. In the USA suicide as a result of such bullying is the principle cause of death of gay adolescents. One cannot sit and listen to that sort of reality without being appalled. We may or may not like it, but we must accept that there is a revolution in the area of sexuality, and we have not fully heard it.

The majority of the population rightly detests homophobic behaviour or anything that looks like it. And sometimes they look at us and see what they don’t like. I don’t like saying that. I’ve resisted that thought. But in that debate I heard it, and I could not walk away from it.

Read it all.

Archbishop Justin said today the Church of England must “take great care” to listen to voices of suffering in the Middle East, including shrinking Christian populations, in his first published comments since returning from the region last weekend.

But he said we must contribute “as servants, not coming with some grand idea of solution.” He urged the Church to take inspiration from the dioceses in Cairo and Jerusalem which “punch far above their weight, and do it by love expressed in action.”

Injustices across the region, and the fears felt by many communities, must be confronted, but “in keeping with these wonderful dioceses, confronted with love, humility, and service,” he said.

Read it all.

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has responded to criticism that he ignored Palestinian Christians during a five-day visit to the Holy Land….

Press reports last week suggested that some Palestinian Christians were angry that, during a visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Archbishop Welby did not visit Nazareth or Bethlehem. He did, however, meet Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Read it all.

Speaking about today’s seminar, Archbishop Justin said: “The Church of England was at the beginning of national education of this country and continues to be crucial to its flourishing. Today, bishops and diocesan board of education chairs have worked together to develop a vision for the future of church schools which will continue our mission of transforming every part of our society.

“It is obviously true that good schools help produce an educated workforce. But the Christian vision is a far greater one. It is about setting a framework for children as they learn which enables them to be confident when faced with the vast challenges that our rapidly changing culture brings to us.

Read it all.

Justin Welby has begun the search for a new director of communications as he seeks to overcome the negative headlines that accompanied his first trip to the Middle East.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s failure to visit Bethlehem or Nazareth last week prompted fury among Palestinians, overshadowing the entire journey. He is now to advertise for the post as part of a root-and-branch reordering of his team.

Read it all (subscription required).

On World Refugee Day we are urged to remember the millions of people who have been forced from their homes and homelands, out into a world that is unfamiliar, frightening and dangerous. This year we are especially asked to consider the impact on families who must care for each other despite having left behind every source of comfort and security. Under these desperate pressures families can find themselves pulled apart, creating deep suffering that doesn’t just hurt now, but wounds generations to come.

Providing sanctuary to the stranger has always been a core Christian value. Every day churches around the world care for people who have been forced into becoming ”˜strangers’. They offer a welcome to people who have been robbed of their homes, their societies and their cultures.

Read it all.

[The]…Rev Matthew Reed from the Children’s Society writes that the Church of England, which is so deeply embedded in our communities, could be the ”˜transformational agency’ in our nation. As a church we are incredibly well-equipped to help change not just the lives of children living in poverty, but the society which currently prevents so many children from flourishing. ”˜This is our time,’ he writes; I share this conviction.

For me, two things are now needed. First, we must be confident in our faith that Christ is the source of all goodness. So it’s necessary for us to develop our own personal spirituality, as well as our communal spirituality, so that this encounter with Jesus is driving our understanding of what is right and good. The other is that we need to be confident, but also gracious and wise in how we share that knowledge ”“ so that we influence society in a way that people can hear, rather by the succumbing to the (all too human) temptation to try convincing people with our words alone, rather than our actions.

I am more optimistic about the Church than I have been at any other time in my life. Something is shifting; a spiritual hunger is starting to emerge. In so many ways this is an extremely difficult time for us as a society. But is it also a great opportunity to show people who Jesus is by how we live our lives.

Read it all.

Pope Francis hinted today in his first meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury that he realised the establishment of the Anglican Ordinariate had not always been easy to comprehend.

But he told Archbishop Justin Welby he was “grateful” for “the sincere efforts the Church of England has made to understand the reasons that led my predecessor, Benedict XVI, to provide a canonical structure able to respond to the wishes of those groups of Anglicans who have asked to be received collectively into the Catholic Church”.

In a public address, following private talks that last just over 30 minutes, Francis said he was “sure” the Anglican Ordinariate, erected in 2009, would “enable the spiritual, liturgical and pastoral traditions that form the Anglican patrimony to be better known and appreciated in the Catholic world”.

Read it all.

Overcoming divisions between Anglicans and Roman Catholics will require a “self-giving love” characterised by “hospitality and love for the poor”, the Archbishop of Canterbury said on Friday, at his first meeting with Pope Francis.

Archbishop Welby, accompanied by his wife, Caroline, met Pope Francis at the Apostolic Palace on Friday morning, after meeting the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch. The Archbishop and the Pope had a private conversation, after which they gave public addresses and attended a service of midday prayer together.

Read it all.