Introduction
The emerging British Empire – not formed until the second half of the nineteenth century – is partly what enabled the Church of England to move from being a national church to becoming a global Communion. The expansion of Anglicanism was both an ordered and untidy affair; simultaneously systematic and unsystematic. But the purpose of this essay is not to elaborate on how one national church has become a global Communion. We need simply note that, now, the Anglican Church has around 80 million followers – a ‘household of faith’ that comprises 38 provinces, 65,000 congregations and is spread across 164 countries. After the Roman Catholic Church, it is the most widespread denomination in the world. The Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader of Anglicans worldwide. The office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, has, therefore, undergone a significant transformation over the last 150 years. Since the more formalized formation of the Anglican Communion – arguably to be dated from the first Lambeth Conference in 1867 – the office of the Archbishop has essentially moved progressively from being one of straightforward primatial ecclesial authority within England to that of primus inter pares, globally.
Each archbishop, since the nineteenth century, has sought to inhabit this role, naturally mindful of the ecclesial issues, global politics and cultural challenges that were facing both the national church and wider Communion. In recent times, Rowan Williams sought to foster listening and mutual learning between warring factions on the divisive issue of human sexuality. An irenic style was a hallmark of his primacy. But this had some downsides. As Rupert Shortt notes, Rowan's distaste for management and strategy, coupled to his tendency to agonize inwardly at the expense of decisiveness, led to a lack of firm leadership in several key areas.Footnote 2 In contrast, his predecessor, George Carey, sought to bring a distinctive kind of ordering and organization to a complex institution, and for the purposes of enabling a keener focus on evangelism throughout the national church and wider Communion. It is perhaps still too early to say exactly what Justin Welby's legacy will be (although some possibilities are lightly sketched in the conclusion to this article). But like each archbishop before him, his own style of leadership is, inevitably, shaped by the prevailing grammars and cultures of leadership to be found in wider society.
Since becoming Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013, Justin Welby has brought a distinctive style of leadership to the office. So far, Archbishop Welby seems to be more of a strategist – one who sets targets, and works out routes to reach them.Footnote 3 Some opine that this has something of a ‘Blair-ite’ flavour. This is generally meant favourably, albeit cautiously: for example, perhaps placing ‘pragmatism before principle’, managing diversity, and an emphasis on the primacy of personal mission. One should always counsel caution in comparing archbishops to British prime ministers. Nevertheless, the comparison may have some partial validity in at least three areas.
First, a warm, charismatic and personal style of leadership that cuts through established party lines and tribal divisions. Justin has already shown himself to be adept at this, and significant rapprochement has been achieved on divisive issues where the earlier, irenic styles of his predecessor seemed not to have made much progress. Second, the energy and fresh dynamism of the archbishop sets a tone across the wider Communion. This can be enabling and inspiring, and generates positive ‘spiritual capital’, creating a climate of possibility and expectation. Third, the capacity to be directive and decisive enables the church to shift in its self-understanding. Instead of being captivated by a sense of impasse and undecidability, it now appears that deadlocks can be broken, and the church move forward more confidently. So, comparisons to Tony Blair's style of leadership have some partial validity.
But there are also comparisons to be made that are perhaps more ambivalent. Early on in Justin's primacy, he set himself the ambitious and eye-catching target of visiting every archbishop within the Communion, and each in their own country. Thirty-eight Primates to see in two years is a tall order, to be sure. These visits were, however, to be very much a ‘personal’ mission. The officers and infrastructure and representation of the machinery of the Anglican Communion have tended not to travel with him.
Many of these visits simply consist of the archbishop and his wife, Caroline, travelling to stay in the home of an archbishop overseas. The personal and warm tone of this initiative should not be underestimated. But it carries risks. Briefings on potential pitfalls in local contexts might be hard to come by if you travel without advisors. (Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that gaffes and avoidable errors have been made.) This problem cannot be corrected if the pattern of visits continues as it is currently configured. Advisors are there to help direct and target meetings with key people, and help avoid meetings and encounters that might be ill-advised. They also spread the workload, and help manage the exposure and energy of a busy archbishop. Without them, the attendant risks will be greater.
Arguably, however, the biggest risk of the ‘personal visit’ is the implicit message it sends across the Communion – one wholly unintended, I suspect. For it places the accent firmly on ‘who’ – the personal charisma, capacity and character of this archbishop – rather than the ‘what’ he represents. Part of the secret ingredient of Blair's likeability and electability lay in his ability to persuade voters to direct their gaze towards him, and trust him personally, rather than the Labour Party he represented, or to dwell upon the messy contingencies of party-political in-fighting, or the potential influence of the Trade Unions. Hence, ‘Vote Blair’, and not ‘Vote Labour’. Tony Blair, in other words, began to personally embody those likeable and electable qualities that were drawn from socialist principles; but he was not necessarily asking voters to invest in those same party-political principles that lay behind him as leader.
Now, this dynamic is hardly unique to Blair. Similar things could be said about recent American presidents. The issue here is not, perhaps, personal charisma, but rather the amount of it in relation to the body being led – it is a question of balance. It is simply that case that in certain socio-political cultures we tend to place more trust in charismatic figures that embody particular qualities of leadership, rather than institutions – which can, by comparison, seem to be sluggish, divided and wasteful. But this dynamic, if it indeed exists, is more of a problem in ecclesiology – and specifically in this case, for Anglicans. For we need our archbishops – present and future – to really engage with the institution that is the Communion, in all its complexity. A ‘personal communion’ between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the 38 other Primates is undoubtedly important, and a fine platform on which to build. But it is only one element in enabling the Communion to cohere.
The risk of starting and stopping at a drive towards a ‘personal communion’ between the archbishop and primates is that the Communion itself further disintegrates into a set of warm reciprocal relationships – which is not, of course, a theology of the Communion. The next step down this road would be not to call and convene a Lambeth Conference again. (After all, is it not just a tiresome and cumbersome institutional apparatus that simply gets in the way of getting things done?). This is where a theology of the Communion might help. The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen the Anglican Communion at subsequent Lambeth Conferences argue on divorce, contraception, sexuality, gender and other issues. But in truth, all denominations squabble – it is a sign of life and vibrancy.
As Luis Bermejo SJ points out in The Spirit of Life, all our creeds were formed through fractious meetings that were rooted in controversy. Christians – and perhaps especially Anglicans – sometimes forget that the Holy Spirit works through meetings (often taking a long time, and over many years); it is how we arrive at truth. Bermejo SJ argues that there are four stages of ecclesial life: communication, conflict, consensus and communion.Footnote 4 Issues in the Anglican Communion tend to get refracted through this four-fold process. This is how the Holy Spirit moves the church; it is not the case that only the last of these stages – communion – is the ‘spiritual’ stage. The work of the Holy Spirit is also manifest in conflict – helping the church to be pruned and refined. Thus, Anglicans agree on what the Bible says – but not always on what it means. The polity is often more relational than propositional – Anglicans can sometimes be characterized as more interested in how we disagree, and a little less in what we actually disagree on.
Paradigms and Polity
Bermuda and the Caribbean might almost serve as paradigms of polity at this point. Many people assume that Bermuda is part of the Caribbean. The images of the islands, and to which the public are mostly exposed, seem to suggest the warm, balmy climes of the Antilles that nestle between North and South America, and off the Mexican and Central American coasts. But in fact, Bermuda is closer to North Carolina and Nova Scotia than it is to Miami in Florida. It is a group of remote islands in the North Atlantic. Bermuda is also the oldest remaining British Overseas Territory. Its first capital, St George's, was established in 1612 and is the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World.
And as one might expect from such a quirk of history, the Church of England is still, in some sense, ‘established’. St Peter's, the parish church, is the oldest Anglican Church in the New World. Bermuda's Anglican ‘establishment’ – though unique – is perhaps comparable, in part, to that of the Channel Islands. But it is different from the Channel Islands insofar as the Diocese of Bermuda is, today, one of six extra-provincial Anglican churches relating directly to the Church of England, and overseen by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Anglican Church of Bermuda comprises a single diocese consisting of nine parishes, and although a part of the Anglican Communion, is not part of any ecclesiastical Province.
The Caribbean is quite different. Politically, it consists, as a region (identifiable, though with contested boundaries), of an area that stretches from Grand Bahama Island in the north to Curaçao in the south, and French Guyana in the east to Belize in the west. Even ignoring the many Central and South American nations that border the Caribbean Sea (whose cultural and linguistic heritage sets their history out of the scope of the region) there are a total of sixteen independent or sovereign states and nine island groupings that remain dependencies (in one form or another), of the United Kingdom, France, USA and the Netherlands. There are at least eight currencies in circulation. If one includes the South and Central American Caribbean countries, the total number of nation states and dependencies is 35. In Anglican terms, some of these countries are part of groupings of dioceses in the Episcopal Church of the USA (TEC): Haiti or the Dominican Republic, for example. Others are part of the Province of the West Indies, which includes Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago. The current Archbishop of the Province resides in Barbados, which is an independent sovereign state. It is a complex zone – politically, ethnically and culturally – and ecclesially.
Archbishop Justin visited the Province of the West Indies in August 2013. Or, more accurately, he visited the presiding archbishop in Barbados. The other bishops were invited – quite late on – to join this meeting. But few of the Caribbean bishops made it. For some, it is not even their Province, as they are part of TEC. For others, the distances – several hours of flight to Barbados – made the journey at such short notice far too difficult. True, the gesture of the visit is worthy. But one could not, in all sincerity, claim to have ‘done’ or ‘ticked the box’ on visiting the Province. One territory visited within thirty-plus nation states and dependent territories, only leaves time for a few personal conversations. One cannot engage with the complexity of the Province in any depth. Seeing one presiding archbishop in their own country, Barbados, could be akin to travelling to Brussels, seeing the European Union president, and claiming to have ‘done Europe’.
But given the complexity of this Province, it is difficult to see how a single personal visit can cover the ground adequately. Indeed, it might risk more harm than good. Even the name of the Province is potentially awkward for colonial and post-colonial identities. From 1958 to 1962, there was a short-lived country called the Federation of the West Indies composed of ten English-speaking Caribbean territories, all of which were (then) British dependencies. The West Indies cricket team continues to represent many of those nations. The very name of the Anglican Province reflects this experiment in post-colonial organization. But it did not last long politically, or economically.
So what are the potential hazards of these ‘personal’ visits? First, they might be too ‘light touch’, and risk confirming some rather impressionistic views of the provinces of the Communion. A recent trip to Hong Kong was valuable – the newest and smallest Anglican province, consisting of three dioceses (Hong Kong Island, East and West Kowloon) and a missionary diocese (Macau).Footnote 5 But however good the visit was, it took less than 48 hours, and could not possibly begin to engage with the complexity of the Province and its multifarious ministries. Second, and following on from this, the visits exchange a deep engagement with institutional density and complexity for a briefer meeting construed of personal warmth. While this has a value, it is too fleeting. Third, and again sequentially, it is not clear how this ‘strategy’ – if that is what it is – really helps the Communion cohere. One simply cannot substitute exchanges of personal warmth for those that deal with the gritty business of engaging with institutional diversity, complexity, differences and disagreements that characterize the Communion. For that, there cannot be an easy alternative to meetings – often tense, slow and well-represented ones (so yes, expensive and difficult to organize) – which enable the Communion to both know and own its identity. This is why, of course, Lambeth Conferences, for all their many faults, have a value. Because they confer upon the Communion an obligation to meet with their differences, and work through – in fellowship – the things that both bind us together and cause division. Such features of ecclesial life cannot be skirted around. As Archbishop, Justin is himself one instrument of unity in the Communion. But the other conciliar entities that offer unity and communion are necessarily different as they are complementary.
Ecclesiology – Institution, Organization and Leadership
So what is at issue here? It probably lies in understanding the nature of the body that is the church, or the Communion, and appreciating that it needs a kind of leadership that may be less obvious to the secular, commercial, corporate sectors one usually finds in business. The church is not simply an organization struggling to cope with the complexity of cultural change. It is, rather, an institution. The distinction is a vital one to comprehend if one is to address the kind of archiepiscopal leadership that might be required. Here, the contrasts between organizations and institutions, and usefully characterized in the early work of Philip Selznick, might be helpful in understanding the nature of the church.Footnote 6
Selznick argues that organizations primarily exist for utilitarian purposes, and when they are fulfilled, the organization may become expendable. Institutions, in contrast, are ‘natural communities’ with historic roots that are embedded in the very fabric of society. They incorporate various groups that may contest with each other over the very nature of the institution and its values. Following Selznick, a church is much more like an institution, thereby requiring a particular kind of moral leadership from its ordained leaders (including character, compassion and wisdom), rather than (mere) management.
For Selznick, the very term ‘organization’ suggests a certain rudimentary bareness; a kind of lean, no-nonsense system of consciously coordinated activities. It refers to an expendable and rational instrument engineered to do a job. An institution, on the other hand, is more of a natural product of the prevailing social needs and pressures – effectively a responsive, adaptive organism. This distinction, claims Selznick, is a matter of analysis, rather than of direct description. It does not mean that any given enterprise must be either one or the other. While an extreme case may closely approach either an ‘ideal’ organization or an ‘ideal’ institution, most living associations resist such easy classifications. They are complex mixtures of both designed and responsive behaviours. But assuming the Communion and its churches are more akin to an institution than an organization, this of course requires an extensive investment of time. There can be no quick fixes in the church. Those conversations that are moral and theological need to engage with the reality of complex institutional life.
Thus, and according to Selznick, organizations tend to use ‘tools’ or means as they reach for definite goals; and their leaders deliver on this, in target and performance-related ways. The institutional leader, in contrast, is primarily an expert in the promotion and protection of values. And in one sense, this distinction between organizations and institutions can act as a helpful aid in reflecting upon and discerning the contrasting attitudes in the wider Communion. Put bluntly, is the Anglican Communion an inefficient, tangled and complex body that needs to be reshaped organizationally? Or, is it an institution in which its tangled and complex structures are, in fact, part of its very identity and value? It is neither fully one nor the other, of course. But on balance, a church – even one single local one, let alone a complex Communion of 65,000 congregations in 164 countries – is far more akin to an institution than it is to an organization.
But how is something of such complexity to be led? One of the more creative and prescient writers in this arena is Simon Western.Footnote 7 Western argues that ‘leaders are authentically transformational … they increase awareness of what is right, good, important and beautiful …’Footnote 8 Western believes these common characteristics of leadership have expressed themselves in three primary forms of discourse during the twentieth century. He proposes a fourth, but the three main ones identified are Controller, Therapist and Messiah.Footnote 9 Controller discourse is aligned to social management, and the progeny of early twentieth-century scientific rationalism. The focus lies in efficiency, with transactional behaviour that rests on finding a balance between rewards and deprivation. Therapist discourse is a later development in the twentieth century, highlighting personal growth and well-being, and individual concern. Finally, Western suggests that the latter decades of the twentieth century saw the emergence of Messiah discourse. With the elevation of leader over and against managers, Messiah discourse validates charismatic and visionary leadership in the face of uncertain environments for institutions. Messiah discourse feeds off the tensions between salvation and destruction, and hope and despair. Typically, the discourse promises order from chaos, and pitches charismatic authority against institutional ennui, promising a ‘third way’ forward, which will be transformational. Typically, it sits light to detail, and stresses heroic feats and redemptive, visionary outcomes (e.g., ‘we can't go on as we are – we must move forward if we are to be faithful to the vision and succeed’, etc.).
This latter form of discourse is clearly a prominent ‘accent’ (no more) in Archbishop Welby's rich, blended style of leadership.Footnote 10 There is a considerable tendency for the media to play up to the Messiah-Hero motif, in an almost Boy's Own fashion. The Daily Mail reported on Archbishop Welby as follows:
'Soldiers with machine guns circled in helicopters as rebels blindfolded Justin Welby, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, bundled him into a speedboat and took the mild-mannered Old Etonian into the heart of Nigeria's darkness. Although in extreme danger, the bespectacled father of five remained ‘completely relaxed’, according to a colleague who was with him on the peace mission for a church body.
On another occasion, fresh from negotiating with Al Qaeda operatives, Welby was arrested by the Nigerian army. As he heard shouting and pounding footsteps of soldiers storming up the stairs, he spoke calmly down the phone to a colleague. ‘I'm going to count to ten and when I finish, they'll be here. Don't worry, I'll leave my phone on, so I can be traced,’ he crisply informed Canon Dr Stephen Davis, who was on the other end of the line in Britain. He then completed the countdown, placed the muted phone in his pocket and passively accepted the rough shoves of his captors as they bundled him out of the building.
Only hours later the former oil executive was located and released at the embarrassed behest of the Nigerian authorities, desperate not to lose one of their most prized peace negotiators. That incident, in 2005, was just one of an array of extraordinary secret acts of courage which mark out Justin Welby as a remarkable resolver of conflicts. Dr Welby has had to shake hands with warlords, negotiate with kidnappers and endure multiple arrests in some of the most dangerous warzones in the world, where the slightest mistake could have seen him lose his life…’Footnote 11
Similar ‘heroic’ tales have also been reported by the media since Bishop Welby became Archbishop. The alleged refusal to take a brief from Lambeth Palace staff (‘I'll run my own diary, thank you’), and apparently handing back the carefully prepared schedule that had been devised for his first three years in office. Or the veiled threat to the General Synod of what might happen if the vote on the Measure to ordain women to the episcopate was thwarted again. The media have invested in something of a trope: a heroic leader who gets things done; who cuts through red tape; that does not spend time in stuffy meetings, but gets out and about; a man of action, not merely words. (A kind of ecclesiastical ‘Action Man’, in fact.) As with all media creations, it is hard to discern the difference between image and the reality; the media highlights preferred tones and accents – boundary lines are often blurred. But there are dangers, here, in accepting the plaudits that the media might pour upon a hero. It can become difficult to maintain a necessary balance under these conditions – to be yourself, and the person God calls you to be, indeed.
Western acknowledges that Controller, Therapist and Messiah discourses are not mutually exclusive. bishops and archbishops will inevitably be under some pressure to conform or relate to all three – offering control, therapy and heroic forms of liberation in equal measure. However, Western believes that leadership within institutions needs to pass through these three discourses and enter into something altogether more holistic and engaged. He acknowledges that the search for leadership models and ideas is now driven by several factors: the need to find solutions to changing social, political and economic conditions; the need to sustain the ‘leadership industry’; enormous social pressure to modernize (‘new sells, old doesn't’); and some compulsion to establish perpetual relevance, leading to what Marx dubbed a ‘commodity fetish’ – the institution, once commodified and marketed, starts to take on an identity that bears little relation to its original purpose.
Western proposes, in place of the three models outlined above, a discourse of ‘eco-leadership’.Footnote 12 Inevitably, perhaps, this ‘model’ emphasizes a variety of traits that are already apparent and emerging in twenty-first century leadership studies, but which perhaps especially draw on our contemporary cultural absorption with organic, natural and sustainable concepts. Thus – and somewhat against the Messiah discourse – Western identifies the ‘post-heroic discourse’ which emphasizes ‘the genuinely human … [drawing] on all their humanity, intelligence and emotions … remember[ing] what they know from their experiences’. Leadership spirit is also identified as a trait, and in particular the capacity of the leader to ‘learn from the middle’.Footnote 13
So here we could say that Western's plea for the leadership of institutions is more for a portfolio of skills and charisms that may be familiar to those who are deep reflective practitioners: self-awareness, spontaneity, holistic, reframing, vocational, vision and value led, reflexive, compassionate (feeling with) and engaged. Correspondingly, a deep systemic understanding of the institution that is being led is required. Or, and for our purposes here, leadership might be the cultivation of heightened ecclesial intelligence, and its visionary application. It cannot just be predominantly the super-hero or messiah at work; there must be balance. The form of leadership (for institutions) that Western therefore advocates is one that is ecologically sensitive. Western quotes John Donne here: ‘no man is an island entire of himself; every man is part of the main’. Western understands that:
solutions in one area may create problems in another … short-term gains may have immediate benefits, but may have longer-term consequences … [thus] there are interdependent parts which make up a whole … it is about connectivity, inter-dependence and sustainability …Footnote 14
Western's stress on inter-dependence, connection and sustainability might serve as something of a warning for institutions that might be inclined to invest too much in ‘messiah discourses’ of leadership. Some wariness seems appropriate here. Because for all the good that any messiah can do for a body in crisis, the solutions proffered often don't engage with and redeem the whole of the institution. The experience of charismatic leadership often feels transformational while in motion. But the eventual reality is often somewhat different, and can lead to deeper forms of disengagement, and ultimately disenchantment.
Emergent Archiepiscopacy
To be sure, one of the key issues for bishops and other senior office holders in the Anglican Church is the way in which symbolic authority has become attenuated and strained in recent times. This may be rooted in the difficulties of resolving disputes on gender and sexuality, and the solutions which, however well-meant, have tended to legitimize fissure and fracture. This weakens the symbolic sense of the church and its leadership, and it undermines the possibility of immediate and close access to authentic confidence, since the representational role of the church is to some extent guilty of deconstructing itself. That said, there is sufficient within Anglican identity and practice to permit both implicit and explicit forms of the church coalescing around leadership, even if there is a recognition that the church is bound to a series of creative tensions: problems that can be resolved, and some dilemmas that are endemic within Anglican polity, and cannot be resolved, but are rather meant to be encountered as tense framing mechanisms that give the church both its boundaries and freedom, its order and its non-order. So meetings or gatherings – even those that are lengthy and long-established – often carry important theological cadences within them, even when they appear to be ‘unproductive’ for long periods of time. Christianity is rooted in corporate meeting – it is what makes us corporeal.
Arguably, the Church of England is currently over-managed, with spiritual judgment and theological wisdom increasingly subordinated to multiple layers of executive management-led domination. Yet the danger of charismatic authority hastily and clumsily cutting through these same layers of management is that the narcolepsy of the whole institution is still not awakened to the danger it was in, and new dangers it now faces. Indeed, the institution finds that neither the layers of managerialism nor the singular sharpness of charismatic authority that now purports to cut through them to get to the heart or the core of the purpose of the body, are what the institution actually needed. What the body of Christ does need is this: to be comprehended. It needs its complex anatomy to be understood, before either more management is added, or charismatic authority cuts it away. It needs deep, rich leadership and not just dramatic, heroic feats of rescue. The risk of the ‘rescue rhetoric’ – as with all forms of messianic leadership – is that short-term gains eventually yield longer-term damage. Like steroids, the mass and bulk of the body is quickly restored, and perhaps improved. But like steroids, long-term dosage brings other dangers. All styles of leadership carry potential hazards. The questions are: what are the potential hazards in the current style of archiepiscopal leadership? And how can these be addressed, and where possible, corrected?
For most senior leaders in the church, including archbishops, this is no easy task. The church, like any institution, can often feel like it is mired in a kind of sludge of its own making. There is much floundering between patience and decision-making, and between learning from (or sifting through) the slurry of ecclesial life and achieving some kind of clarity. The sludge is, of course, a ‘given’. Just as Christ gives himself to the Church and God gives Christ to humanity – the Word made flesh – so leaders struggle with the received nature of the body they are working with. Of course, the church is not a clarified and settled organization; its genius lies in its contestability, and even ambivalence. Indeed, the ‘sludge’ may be part of what God intended. From the moment that the Risen Jesus first establishes the company of witnesses through the outpouring of the Spirit (‘then he breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit”…’ – Jn 20.22) the church moves outward, and each local expression of the church continues to witness to that same Risen Christ. The consequence of this is that church is founded on something that is received – not something invented or haphazardly discovered, then organized.
This places a special demand on all Christian leaders, but most especially those called to a ministry of oversight. For the communion that is at the heart of the continuity and shape of leadership is not merely one of temporal affinity, secular reasoning, or even of sharper and more definite control. It is, rather, the recognition that what we receive – a complex institution – we also pass on.Footnote 15 That there is a rich interdependence in leading, for the leaders can only be those who have been led. This is fundamental to the life of the church, the transmission of the gospel and the vocation of oversight. As Rowan Williams commented, in a paper given to a conference in New York on archiepiscopacy during 2008:
This, of course has implications for our understanding of the bishop's ministry. If it is true that, as Tertullian said, ‘one Christian is no Christian’, then by the same token we should be able to say, ‘one bishop is no bishop’, and so ‘one local church alone is no church’. A bishop is not an individual who ‘represents’ the local church as if he is empowered to speak for its local identity like a politician for his constituency. The bishop is above all the person who sustains and nourishes within the local church an awareness of its dependency on the apostolic mission, on the gift from beyond its boundaries – and he does this, of course, primarily and irreducibly as the celebrant of the ‘Catholic oblation’. Hence, again from the earliest days, the clustering of local churches and their bishops around metropolitan sees which represented the channels through which the gospel came to be shared; and hence the insistence (an insistence that might almost be called fierce in many instances) that bishops received ordination from their neighbours in the metropolia under the leadership of the local primate – and hence too the seriousness of communicating Episcopal election by letter to the region, and the severity of the sanction of removing a bishop's name from the formal intercession list…Footnote 16
So, one archbishop on his own is ‘no archbishop’. We Christians are persons in communion; and as Anglicans, we are Churches-in-Communion. So a sole hero on a personal mission is, per se, not a helpful archiepiscopal model – in the long term. Primacy, then – a further and specific calling in oversight – is about being one of the signs of the continuing reality of a living and active tradition, which is shared as a gift, and continues to be received, reified and re-lived in the church. This is why it is problematic if a local church innovates or interprets to such an extent that it cannot share what it has received with its neighbours. And here the role of episcopacy and primacy – in terms of leadership – is sometimes to challenge or limit the amount of local innovation in order to preserve and promote catholicity. This is not to make light of one of the tasks of the church, namely to live out the gospel faithfully in a specific context. But it is a reminder that the local assembly and its chief pastor (i.e., archbishop) are bound to pass on what they have received, and not merely to adapt and innovate in order to address a set of contemporary pragmatic issues, no matter how (seemingly) worthy the missiological urgency may appear.
It is for this reason, perhaps, that even apparently innovative, heroic initiatives – such as Archbishop Justin appointing the Revd Dr Tory Baucum, Rector of Truro Church in Fairfax, Virginia, as one of the Six Preachers of Canterbury Cathedral – is rather double-edged. Tory Baucum is a member of the Anglican Church in North America – ACNA – which does not derive its episcopal oversight from the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (TEC), Katharine Jefferts Schori. True, the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is ‘in the Anglican tradition’ – but it is not part of the Communion. The church claims to have 29 dioceses and almost 1,000 congregations, serving more than around 100,000 members across North America. The Anglican Church in North America is affiliated with the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FOCA), but is not a member of the Anglican Communion, and is, in effect, a rival to the Episcopal Churchin the US and the Anglican Church of Canada. Friendly relations, however, do exist with other parts of the Anglican Communion. The ACNA is in ‘full communion’ with three member churches in the Anglican Communion: the Church of Nigeria, the Church of Uganda, and the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan. It has also received recognition and support from the Global South Anglican churches, an organized grouping of 24 Anglican Communion provinces. Archbishop Welby clearly hoped that through this he would promote ecclesial ‘reconciliation and unity’. But the heroic gesture – if indeed that is what it is – risks the identity and composition of those who sense that a gesture such as this might eventually be counter-productive.
This gesture undoubtedly enables warmer relations with bodies within the Anglican Communion, such as GAFCON – the Global Anglican Futures Conference, which some would argue is a ‘virtual’ Province in all but name. And the Archbishop's bridge-building here is well-motivated, clearly. Yet this reflection takes us to the heart of the paradox in senior church leadership: both framing and creating capacity. Creating capacity – vital and necessary if the body is to live, move and have its being – emerges from a vision for how that development might take place. It needs space, and a generative vision that longs, with the Spirit, for the children of God to come into their own. At the same time, there is a framing dimension (a constant dynamic in Christian leadership), which necessarily delimits the amount of innovation and change that can take place, since the body must, in the future, still be faithful to what it has received – to what it was, is and will be.
Conclusion
The traditional Anglican Trilateral is usually to be understood as scripture(s), tradition and reason. The Anglican quadrilateral in the nineteenth century, serves a different purpose. The trilateral is a form of theological method (capacity-orientated?), and the quadrilateral a set of ecclesial markers (framing?), with the combined matrix in contemporary ecclesial life having both a clear and nascent identity in Anglican polity. The fourth point of negotiation in the quadrilateral – ‘the historic episcopate, locally adapted’ – is often translated into ‘experience’ or ‘local culture’. It is this that makes the Anglican Communion so difficult and demanding to preside over. However, that is not the ‘problem’ to be fixed; it is an inherent dynamic of the dilemma of communion. To try to fix it would be also to break it.
Clearly, the Anglican Trilateral – a theological method for addressing and resolving tensions and hermeneutical disagreements within the Communion – cannot be replaced by a set of personal qualities that any individual archbishop may embody. To be sure, it is undoubtedly a blessing to have an archbishop that can offer something of a ‘personal trilateral’, which to some extent the current Archbishop of Canterbury has. That ‘personal trilateral is’, first, a warm, charismatic and personal style of leadership that cuts through established party lines and tribal divisions; second, energy and fresh dynamism; and third, a capacity to be directive and decisive. Granted, adeptness in negotiation and forms of reconciliation are also to be welcomed too. But the spiritual capital of the Anglican Communion is substantial, layered, historic, dynamic and given – so not an object or subject to be moulded by one person's gifts or character. The great danger for an archbishop who is (probably, through no fault of their own) – cast in the lead role by both the media and many in the church as the ‘heroic’ and perhaps ‘messianic’ leader who will deliver the Communion from its crises – is that the need for relatedness gets replaced by relationships. The two are different.
Relatedness requires the whole institution, in all its complexity, to work with and through the office and role of archbishop. It is slow and reticulate work. This is both the gift and burden of a multifaceted compound institution. Lambeth Conferences, the ACC, or a meeting of primates, provides a platform for complex and conflictual conversations to be conducted. Any heavy accent on (personal) relationships, however, does something different in this context. It moves quicker, to be sure; but at a cost. It tends to demarcate between followers and resistors. Both of these categories are problematic in ecclesial polity. Detractors speak with just as much prophetic prescience as those who are seemingly collaborative. Prioritizing relationship over relatedness will also inadvertently form cabals and inner circles of followers, who will typically ‘buy into the vision’ – while leaving other groups left out in the cold, who hold to other, no less valid truths. It will form alliances – even a significant critical mass – of powerful supporters.
There is already some evidence of Archbishop Welby's ‘inner circle’ having some morphological resonance with Tony Blair's so-called ‘kitchen cabinet’. There are additional problems to note here. It is common for this form of leadership to create a very small tight-knit group of ardent loyalists, and then develop a larger devoted cadre. This is often done through off-the-record briefings and seemingly indiscreet remarks that are seeking wider fealty. But this is generally a sign of weaker leadership searching for security and allies, and a sign of a weak institution that entertains this behaviour pattern. As a short-term tactic it often gains considerable traction. In the longer-term, it disenchants and alienates, while the cadres and elite become both increasingly powerful and paranoid. It constitutes poor ecclesial practice, and less than wholesome discipleship.
This kind of leadership lacks self-awareness, and flows from unconscious forms of anxiety, which in turn is rooted not in humility, but rather in over-confidence over-compensating for unacknowledged insecurities. It will lead to many feeling dis-counted and un-consulted. This is why the ‘eco-leadership’ championed by Western is preferred to ‘heroic’ models. Eco-leadership respects the character of the body it works with, and any transformation in transitional times through such leadership will only ever be a by-product of the character and multiple intelligences (i.e., emotional, theological, institutional, etc.) of the leader. Heroic modes of leadership, in contrast, tend to problematize or demonize the present state of an institution, requiring followers to reject what they have known and trusted in exchange for something new. The recent promotion of ‘Fresh Expressions’, ‘Pioneer’ and ‘Re-imaging Ministry’ form perfect vehicles of rhetoric and topoi for practitioners of heroic leadership.
In short, the quick results achieved through the exercise of personal charisma and organizational verve can, unintentionally, cause significant long-term damage to the institution as a whole. But by the time this is realized, the leader has invariably moved on.Footnote 17 Linda Woodhead, commenting on styles of leadership among the recent Archbishops of Canterbury, follows Troeltsch's distinction between ‘church’ and ‘sect’. The former ‘has fuzzy boundaries and embraces the whole of society’; the latter ‘has hard boundaries and tries to keep its distance from society’. She claims that until quite recently, the Church of England has been the former – a church ‘by law established’ for the whole nation. But since the 1980s, ‘the Church has veered towards sectarianism’:
In the 1960s and ‘70 s the Church of England was travelling with society in a broadly liberal direction, with prominent Anglicans supporting the liberalisation of laws relating to abortion, homosexuality, and divorce. But after Runcie, Anglican leaders made a U-turn … Under the leadership of ++Rowan Williams and ++John Sentamu, the Church of England campaigned successfully to be exempted from provisions of the new equality legislation, took a hard line against homosexual practice and gay marriage, and made continuing concessions to the opponents of women's progress in the Church ….
Although Archbishop Welby supports women bishops, he remains opposed to same-sex marriage and assisted dying, and takes very seriously the relationship with African churches and their leaders. The sectarian fringes of the Church remain influential, and the bishops remain isolated from the views of ordinary Anglicans. The Church as a whole creaks under the weight of historic buildings, unimaginative managerialism, and sub-democratic structures…Footnote 18
So in terms of the overall leadership of the Church of England, understanding the socio-political, economic and cultural changes over the last century that have affected the control and management of institutions might be important. Frank Parkin, Pitrim Sorokin and Talcott Parsons distinguish between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and the transformation of the capitalist class into the managerial class, and the identification of vested interests in ownership.Footnote 19 Thus, the patrician, landed-gentry who once occupied important Sees and Deaneries in the Church of England gave way to a new capitalist class in the Edwardian era, which in turn was quickly transformed into the managerial class of the post-war era. Ministry in the Church of England, and the emerging training and education that now shapes individuals as clergy, has increasingly focused on executive management and growth, and steadily marginalized theological wisdom.
One by-product of a tightly controlled and dominant executive managerial class, and the focused targets which the Church of England is currently shaped by and pursuing (i.e., management and growth),Footnote 20 is the inevitability of an emerging charismatic leader, who as well as presiding over organizational structures, also serves as a compensator for the clergy and laity now dominated by management structures. Both English archbishops currently correspond to this pattern. Both have been able to establish a charismatic leadership style that is supported and enabled by layers of executive managerial culture.Footnote 21 Indeed, the two collude; they leave each other alone, largely, but can call on one another for mutual support as required. This largely leaves both managerial hegemony and charismatic leadership free to dominate in different ways: one rules through controlling and regulating structures; the other is left to improvise, and deploy visionary rhetoric that heightens expectation and maintains momentum. Both appeal to the rhetoric of ‘enabling’, but also have the capacity to dominate and control those who believe they are being liberated.
The net effect of this behavioural pattern is beginning to emerge. The current English archbishops are now functioning much-like corporate chief executives within their respective provinces, and nationally. The role of a diocesan bishop is thereby reduced in scope to that of an area manager, left with targets, aims, objectives and outcomes set by executive managers, and endorsed by ‘visionary’ archbishops. The bishops, as area managers, are further controlled through tightly regulated training processes. In all this, the parish clergy are reduced to the status of local branch managers, thinly stretched in resourcing, but made to chase the (unreachable) targets set by the area managers. Incentives and rewards (i.e., preferment, additional resourcing, etc.) are offered to those who deliver.Footnote 22
Yet this alliance of executive managerialism and ‘heroic leadership’ – beguiling as it is – only further distances wisdom, critical reflection and theological acuity from the very centre of rich theological and spiritual discourse, and the ensuing governance that flows from within the church, which is precisely what is needed to enable ecclesial institutions.Footnote 23 It goes without saying that the bulk of control rests with an executive authority vested in elite executive managers. The number of charismatic leaders permitted to act as a balance and compensator to managerial control will, in turn, be policed and restricted by that ruling elite. Furthermore, those permitted to join the elite will need to be ‘on message’, and therefore unable to indulge in theological or prophetic wisdom that might challenge the status quo. At present, the signs point to Archbishop Welby becoming a wholesale proponent of executive managerial culture, just as surely as he was a product of that culture as an oil industry executive, prior to ordination.
A recent Task Force on theological education, dominated by lay people from the financial world, and excluding current theological educators, simply recommended ‘deregulation’ as the way forward for theological formation and training. The recent (September 2014) Lord Green Report – entitled Talent Management for Future Leaders and Leadership Development for Bishops and Deans: A New Approach – was primarily sponsored by the archbishop, and emerges out of a Task Force reporting directly to him.Footnote 24 The report pointedly embraced, and wholly uncritically, secular executive managerial culture and rhetoric as both salvific and necessary medicine for the church. The Task Force excluded theologians, and academics from the field of leadership, educational and vocational studies. The Task Force lacked any semblance representative balance – no ordained women, for example, formed part of the core group; or any person with an ethnic background that could have contributed to discussions on pedagogy, formation and leadership from other cultures. The report process pointedly excluded any serious consultation with the wider church. Executive managerialism and ‘heroic’ forms of leadership (now clothed in very ‘alpha-male’ rhetoric), however, justified all of this on grounds of expedience.Footnote 25
‘Leadership’, for all the investment currently placed on the term in the contemporary church, is not a word that appears in the New Testament. Neither does ‘executive’ or ‘manager’. So the emergent style of governance that the archbishop seems to be so keen to promote – at least in the Church of England – may benefit from some deeper biblical, ecclesial and theological reflection. One is tempted to ask what the uncritical promotion of leadership and management can add to the Ordinal that shapes much of clerical praxis and identity. Of course, it could be that the focus on leadership and management is inimical to normative patterns and channels of ecclesial governance. Currently, and under the Archbishop's leadership, there are several Task Groups, all grappling with apparently intractable problems that have dogged the church for decades, are addressing key issues. The groups have wrestled with talent management, discipleship, simplification, financial equity, resourcing ministerial education and national church structures. Yet these Task Forces sponsored by the Archbishop have largely worked outside synodical structures, as well as at some distance from the Archbishops' Council and the House of Bishops.Footnote 26 Senior managers at Lambeth Palace adjudged not to be ‘on message’ have been firmly moved aside. Little, it seems, can stand in the way of the heroic leader and a preferred cadre of executive managers. Yet, while this may cause significant problems in the governance and shaping of the Church of England, there is little sign, so far, that Archibishop Welby's method will carry over into any non-English Provinces.
There are sufficient critiques of ‘heroic’ kinds of leadership in business, organizations and institutions to raise concerns in the church over the emerging pattern of Archbishop Welby's archiepiscopacy.Footnote 27 There are considered theological critiques of episcopacy that can be drawn upon too.Footnote 28 There are also numerous more popular and polemical works that are rooted in critical practical theology.Footnote 29 The issue for archiepiscopal leadership is how to engage with such interlocutors. If ignored, it does of course become possible to ‘macro-lead’, with heroic leadership patterns tending toward distancing the necessary critical voices within governance that help to season the character of wisdom.
In Justin Welby's early months as primate, much was made in the media of the apparent similarities between himself and the new pontiff, Pope Francis – especially in their warm and immediate rapport with their followers, and their apparent amiable accessibility. But their leadership styles have quickly bifurcated. Pope Francis, in contemplating changes to the practice of the Roman Catholic Church, seems to canvas widely, and listen carefully. The archbishop, in contrast, seems to move quickly, with few signs of broad consultation. The former model is rooted in genuine humility: the Holy Spirit speaks through all the church, so all must listen attentively. This theological worldview helps preserve true catholicity; but it can mean achieving ecclesial consensus or direction is an elusive, slow and stuttering process. The latter model is unduly over-confident, and tends towards being overly directional and non-consultative. And even though this latter mode of leadership appears to make significant ground quickly, catholicity is quickly eroded through the alienation, marginalization and disenchantment of other values. As the old African proverb goes, ‘if you want to travel fast, go alone; if you want to travel far, go together’.
For the Church of England, there is a serious theological issue bubbling away in all of this. Augustine argued that the human mind could be divided into two; not left and right, but upper and lower. The higher part of the mind was the contemplation of God, and the lower for calculation and reasoning.Footnote 30 A fourth-century monk – Evagrius of Pontus – went further, and argued that there is something called nous – a kind of spiritual and intuitive intelligence, which only arises as the mind is in communion with God.Footnote 31 It is this, I think, that the current executive managerial processes of the Church of England lack – and perhaps even wish to eviscerate from ecclesial governance. And it is this theological nous that charismatic and heroic forms of leadership may be slightly tempted to shun too, as theological wisdom could easily include a critical discourse that checks both the power of executive management as well as captivating, individualistic forms of heroic leadership.
As Daniel Hardy noted, ‘the greatest threat to Anglicanism today is … that the personal will (what each person wants) and the will of sectional interests in the Church are displacing love for truth. By the logic of Coleridge's own aphorism, the result can only be a downward spiral to self-love.’Footnote 32 Correspondingly, the inherent ‘dynamic tension’ of the church is not something it needs rescuing from; rather, this is precisely what needs valuing and cherishing. The dynamic tension that is inherent within the church acts as a counter-balance to claims of perfection and truth. That same inherent dynamic tension also keeps open that essential space for the Holy Spirit to teach the church new things. The risk of a singular, heroic-charismatic leader emerging who believes that they embody the claims of church – even in the name of orthodoxy – is that truth and love become both personalized and individualized, with the ultimate risk being the development of a kind of sectarian narcissism. The only way to counter this is to embrace demanding theological density and diversity as a gift to the church. That same density and diversity constitutes a sign of God's all-encompassing breadth and wisdom (which no one person or group can either own, or be said to embody); and is a foretaste of the teeming life and vitality of the Kingdom of God.
So, it becomes hard to avoid a form of ecclesial narcolepsy if the church unintentionally mutes the acuity of its theologians – those who might have the necessary foresight and urgency to call the church back to some more self-critical reflection. The revolutionary patience that Ched Myers argues for, or the loyal dissent advocated by Gerald Arbuckle,Footnote 33 can lose their place and value within a managerially shaped ecclesial body that is also dominated by singular forms of compensating charismatic leadership. As Loren Mead predicted in The Once and the Future Church, chasing targets and investing in (so-called) ‘evidence-based indices of success’ – prioritized by executive managers in the church – is in fact a sign of weakness and failure in the church, and does not, as many suppose, represent a salvific or visionary-missionary horizon.Footnote 34 Such foci inspire a few, but will disenchant many, corroding both morale and identity.Footnote 35 So a key issue for Archbishop Justin Welby will be the extent to which theologians – especially those with critical voices and dissenting wisdom – are allowed to also help shape the current church from the centre, in this new era of Archiepiscopacy. It is still not clear that the archbishop might recognize these dynamics, understand them, and act; but the early signs are not promising.
To be sure, there are multiple ironies here. But let us return to Bermuda. It stands alone, and is not part of a collective Anglican Province. The danger of a warm ‘personal communion’ with the archbishop becoming the person rather than an instrument of unity for configuring the Anglican Communion, is that Bermuda will cease to be the anomaly it is, and instead become normative. Provinces are local expressions of the inherent diversity and consequential tensions embedded within wider Anglican polity and praxis. A close, personal relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury may be helpful, but it does not resolve the essential dilemma of relatedness that lies at the heart of Anglicans’ dense, mature ecclesial polity. The individualization and personalization of leadership – especially in roles within complex institutions – carries significant risks. Consequently, if a pattern of charismatic-heroic leadership and ‘messiah discourse’ is nurtured, we will soon discover that, rather like the proverbial Bermuda Triangle, some things will mysteriously start to disappear. We won't quite know where they went to in this new, emerging ‘personal trilateral’, which seems to rest on a quite singular heroic-messianic discourse, and the ever-increasing hegemony of executive managerial power vested in a small elite cadre who have pledged uncritical fealty. But miss them, we will.
