THE P RTAL
June 2014
Page 24
Who is
Justin Welby?
Geoffrey Kirk looks at the struggle
between Faith and Secularism
W
hat are
we to make of Justin Welby? You may think it a curious
question to be asked by one who has not long forsaken Anglicanism. But
it needs to be asked if for only one reason: that the British press, when they refer to ‘the church’, hardly ever
mean the Church. They mean the Church of England and all the baggage that it brings along with it.
So there is point in asking: who is Justin Welby? For in a battle on two fronts: between the Faith on the one
the answer to the question, whether we like it or not, hand, Godless secularism on the other and militant
Islam on the third. And it is increasingly clear, despite
will affect us all.
a Pope Francis groupie
Welby, it appears, along with Peter Stanford, Time
Magazine and even GQ, is a Pope Francis groupie.
That combination of adherents is one which would
give most people sleepless nights; but I suspect that
the former Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires
sleeps the sleep of the just. Nevertheless the fulsome
acknowledgement of the Pope as leader and role model
is new in Anglican ecclesiology – especially from one
who (in the quaint Anglican terminology) ‘is comi