EXTRA: Welby lost the dressing room

Bishop George Bell and same-sex blessings did for the Archbishop, writes George Pitcher

A version of this column appeared first in the Daily Telegraph

I can picture the scene at Lambeth Palace last week. The “Principals” were gathered around a huge, shiny table in the Pink Drawing Room (or was it Blue?) to assure their beleaguered Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, that there was no reason for him to do anything so vulgar as resign.

It was, after all, just a trifling matter that Welby was censured in a report just published for dragging his feet over the proper investigation of John Smyth, the grotesque churchman who violently abused countless young boys in his care and with whom Welby once ran Christian camps.

I can hear them intoning that this was a matter for the police, not the Archbishop, who anyway had quite properly apologised. Resign? Dear me, no. Time to move on. There was probably a synod speech to prepare or a youth centre visit to put in his diary.

Court out: Lambeth Palace gets vulgar

Well, now wiser counsels have prevailed and Welby, rightly, has stepped down. But it has to be said that, in one sense, those who told him to hold tight were right. The Archbishop isn’t like a cabinet minister or even a prime minister, to be hounded from office by outraged voters having lost the confidence of colleagues. Because the Church of England isn’t a democracy and he’s accountable to the Supreme Governor of the Church – that is, the King – not an electorate.

So most of his advisers couldn’t have cared less what’s said about him beyond the mediaeval walls of the Palace. This is a court, not a company with shareholders.

Welby the football manager

But there’s another view and it’s the one, thankfully, that’s prevailed. The grand, self-referential courtiers (full disclosure: I was sacked from their number in 2011 for being too common, talking to journalists and that sort of thing) won’t like this grubby metaphor, but Welby had become less like a mediaeval king than a football manager.

His club’s supporters – calling them fans would be a stretch – turned against him long ago for dithering ineptitude. Last weekend he lost the dressing room; in this case we might call it the vestry, as many priests were in open revolt and then one of his bishops, Helen-Ann Hartley of Newcastle, called for him to resign.

Helen-Ann Hartley sits in the House of Lords as one of the Lords Spiritual. Perhaps even more importantly, a member of the House of Bishops had openly called for Welby to step down. It was suddenly difficult to find anyone in holy orders saying anything other than he had to go, outside his self-serving coterie in Lambeth.

Lost moral authority

Had I still been at that Principals’ Table – and praise be I wasn’t – I like to think I’d have told him that he shouldn’t have had to resign, but that inevitably he would. I’m on the record as having said that since last week, so it’s not wisdom after the event. He’s a good man, I have no doubt, but he’d lost the moral authority that goes with the job, so he was damaging the institution he’d been called to defend and promote.

Admittedly, there was another available narrative and I’m guessing it was one that has been well aired in the dark and drafty corridors of Lambeth. Welby had to quit at the age of 70 by 6^th January 2026 anyway, co-incidentally the Feast of the Epiphany. Surely he could have limped on until then? They would have put it more elegantly as working through 2025 towards an orderly transition for the See of Canterbury.

But, again, that scenario required buttresses of support for him and it was impossible to see them coming from either the Anglo-Catholic or Evangelical wings of the Church. His grip of the issues that faced him was never sure. Two stand out particularly.

Cack-handed George Bell case

First, the cack-handed way that Lambeth dealt with a civil settlement of a case brought by a woman for historical alleged sexual abuse of her by Archbishop of Chichester George Bell, who died in 1958. On pitifully scant evidence, if any, Welby continued to claim there was a “cloud” over Bell’s memory, even as a widespread campaign – notably led by Charles Moore – sought to rehabilitate Bell’s reputation.

One of Welby’s spokespeople recklessly described Bell as a “paedophile”. He left Lambeth shortly afterwards, but today he is a bishop, which reveals much of the Church’s attitude to preferment. Go figure.

Doing the splits over same-sex blessings

Then there has been Welby’s handling of Living in Love and Faith, the Church’s policy drive towards same-sex blessings. He managed to alienate both wings of the Church, by joyfully rejoicing in the blessing of same-sex couples while stating that he wouldn’t conduct such ceremonies himself. A case of doing the splits for no good reason.

It had been expected that Welby might retire after the coronation of the King, at the top of his game, as it were. It’s long been known that he’s a depressive. It’s cruel, but he was nicknamed Unwellby in some more cynical Church circles.

So, for his own good, as well as for that of the Church, he is now going. He and we will be the happier for it.

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George Pitcher is an Anglican priest and a former adviser to Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams