The tangled bureaucracy of appointing an Archbishop
Cardinals elected the new Pope within a fortnight but it will take almost a year to choose our next Archbishop of Canterbury. The beloved Anglican interregnum is intended to 'take soundings'. These are unproductive if held in an echo chamber. The chairman of the Crown Nominations Commission for the successor to Justin Welby, Lord Evans of Weardale, is an efficient and discreet public servant. But most of the large group of voting members, including both its C of E bishops (York, Norwich), come from the fastest-declining part of the Church, its liberal wing. Thanks to Welby's reforms, the commission now has no fewer than five members from the wider Anglican communion, only one of whom is from the burgeoning, usually traditionalist African churches (total membership c. 43 million). The others include an engineer from Argentina (total membership c. 22,500), a Maori hemp farmer and a bishop from the ever-shrinking liberal Church in Wales. Then come six elected by the mainly liberal General Synod and three from the ultra-liberal Diocese of Canterbury. Read the last's 'statement of needs' about 'the Archbishop we are seeking', to feel whither the wind bloweth. It orders the next Archbishop to get on well with his or her suffragan, the Bishop of Dover, who shoulders most of the diocesan duties, expressly emphasising the importance of this particular one, the liberal Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a protegée of Archbishop Welby. You would think she had the right of veto over any candidate proposed.
The statement also insists that the successful candidate 'has worked and will continue to work constructively with the Living and Loving in Faith Process' (LLF). This entirely liberal project, little known to the outside world, is the latest attempt to permit same-sex marriage in church. Opponents protest at the procedural sleight of hand which evades the rule that a change of doctrine can pass only with a two-thirds majority in all three houses of the synod. If pushed forward, LLF will split the Church at the February synod, with orthodox believers (the growing part of the Church) departing. LLF has been so beset by controversies that even its current chairman, the liberal Bishop of Leicester, Martin Snow, has recently resigned. It was beginning to dribble away. But if Canterbury's 'needs' prevail, it will jump back up again. Oh dear, things were so much fairer when a well-instructed prime minister – say, Harold Macmillan choosing Michael Ramsey – simply made the appointment himself. Without bureaucracy, the established Church sort of worked. With it, it sort of doesn't.
Last Saturday, we went to London for a lovely party to celebrate the 90th birthday of my ever-vigorous uncle by marriage, John Oliver, ex-Bishop of Hereford. It was held in a club in Pall Mall. On our walk to and from Charing Cross, we saw the following things: 1) About 30 dog-carts, drawn by horses trotting and occasionally cantering past. They were unpoliced and unstewarded, and dashed along, scattering pedestrians as they turned the corner at the bottom of Haymarket. I loved watching, but they were dangerous. 2) On emerging from the club, several people in morning dress and cavalry officers in ceremonial uniform having come from Trooping the Colour. 3) Thirty seconds later, 100 or so naked people, mainly men, riding bicycles as fast as they could peddle, some carrying Pride flags. The intention, I think, was genial, but the overall impression was genital, and repulsive.
The next day, at a party in the country, I met Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary. He told me about his ongoing campaign to dramatise the degradation of the public realm under Labour and brandished a photo taken the day before of two men, naked except for their shoes, smoking weed in the park opposite Apsley House. I wonder if they were two resting bicyclists. I later discovered that we had witnessed an annual event called the World Naked Bike Ride, 'a protest against car culture and oil dependency'. I agree with Mr Jenrick that a growing constituency are utterly sick of exhibitionists of all kinds who hog the public space and create what mayors call a 'vibrant' city. If he could persuade the teams of police currently deployed to arrest solitary women praying outside abortion clinics to clear this mess up, he might one day become prime minister.
Sir Geoff Palmer has died, professor of beer and first black professor of anything in Scotland. His obituaries repeated his story that when seeking a job in agricultural research at Nottingham University in 1964, he had been interviewed by Keith Joseph, cabinet minister and future mentor of Margaret Thatcher. In Sir Geoff's account, Joseph 'told me to go back where I came from and grow bananas'. When I first heard this story, I greatly doubted it [see Notes in September and October 2015]. Joseph, said Sir Geoff, was the Min of Ag representative on the interview panel. But Joseph was never an agriculture minister and knew nothing about agriculture. I was also assured by a former MAFF permanent secretary that it was against departmental rules for a minister to interview anyone for such a post. Besides, Joseph, whom I knew, was a scrupulously courteous anti-racist, the only member of Ted Heath's shadow cabinet to refuse to oppose Labour's Race Relations Act. Sir Geoff had got the wrong man. He hotly denied this, but never produced any evidence. Of course, I never doubted his claim that somebody said this unpleasant thing to him, but that person was not Keith Joseph. In further researches, I found a professor long associated with Kew Gardens with a very similar name. I wondered if this might explain the mix-up, but did not push the point in case this too would unfairly blame another. In fairness to Sir Keith's reputation, I think all Sir Geoff's obituaries should take the story down, as has Wikipedia.
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BBC News
a day ago
- BBC News
Armenia's PM accuses head of Church of fathering child in febrile political row
Armenia's liberal government has never been an ally of the deeply conservative Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC), but when Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan made extraordinary allegations against an unnamed senior clergyman, it blew open a deep divide."Your Grace, go fool around with your uncle's wife. What do you want from me?" said also accused the supreme spiritual leader - Catholicos Karekin II - of breaking his vow of celibacy and fathering a child, calling on him to resign. The BBC has approached the Church for comment but has not had a now the Church and government had found a way to co-exist, but the row threatens to split an already polarised Armenian society still further – and affect the outcome of next year's could also harm peace talks that have the potential to re-shape the entire region of the South Caucasus, after Armenia's bitter defeat in a war against Azerbaijan. Armenia is believed to be the first nation to make Christianity the state religion, after its king was baptised in 301AD. Although there is a separation of Church and state by law, the Armenian constitution recognises the AAC "as a national Church". The Church has not addressed the allegations but said the prime minister had sought "to silence its voice". It has reiterated that the government has no say in the matters of Church governance. If true, Pashinyan's allegation would make the Catholicos unfit for office. Under the Church's by-laws, only monks who took a vow of celibacy can be elected a Catholicos. On these grounds Pashinyan now demands Karekin's resignation, despite having no jurisdiction over the Church. He has presented no evidence but threatened to release has also attacked other senior clergymen, including accusing one archbishop of having an affair, with the extraordinary allegation of "fooling around" with his uncle's wife. The opposition parties and two of Armenia's former presidents, Levon Ter-Petrossian and Serzh Sargsyan, have rallied behind the Church and condemned Pashinyan's move against government's relationship with the Church deteriorated after the defeat in the 2020 war against neighbouring Azerbaijan, when Karekin II joined calls from various political factions for the prime minister to step down. Pashinyan stayed in power, and the Church became a prominent anti-government Karekin II demanded the right of return for the Armenians who fled Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan that it recaptured in prime minister's allies are unhappy with such interventions, as they contradict the government's position in the ongoing peace talks. Pashinyan pushes for a swift peace treaty that would see both countries drop mutual claims. But Azerbaijani media seized on nationalist opposition demands as proof that Armenia is not ready for Armenian Church has benefited from becoming a hub for dissent. With personal rivalries between the leaders of opposition parties, it is drawing in those disaffected with the analysts in Armenia suggest this might be a real reason for the government's sudden attack on the Church next general election has been scheduled for June 2026, and the anti-Church campaign could be a pre-emptive strike against the stronghold of conservative prime minister himself has linked his position to politics: "We returned the state to the people. Now we must return the Church to the people."When a powerful benefactor spoke out in support of the Church this week, the government swiftly moved against him. Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan threatened to "intervene in the campaign against the Church in our own way" if opposition politicians failed to defend later, his residence was raided and on Wednesday he was charged with "making public calls to overthrow the government". He denies the charge. The conflict between Armenia's political and spiritual leader is a highly sensitive matter far beyond its national borders, as the Church has hundreds of parishes in the diaspora, from Russia and Ukraine to Western Europe, the Middle East and America. While rumours about Karekin's alleged secret family have long circulated in tabloids, for years more serious accusations were being made by diaspora parishes. They alleged that Church leaders were extorting monthly payments and micro-managing dioceses that used to enjoy operational autonomy. In 2013, the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem accused Karekin II of having no spiritual values and only tending to its material wellbeing. The Church said the allegations were recently, Nikol Pashinyan has largely stayed above the fray. "It is my belief that government has no place in the Church's internal issues," he said soon after taking office in 2018. After years of respecting this pledge, the prime minister might have changed his the outcome of this row, it is likely to deepen polarisation in a society that has already been fractured, not just by political infighting, but by wedge issues over whether to be allied to Russia or the West and by tensions between the residents of Armenia and ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Spectator
2 days ago
- Spectator
The tangled bureaucracy of appointing an Archbishop
Cardinals elected the new Pope within a fortnight but it will take almost a year to choose our next Archbishop of Canterbury. The beloved Anglican interregnum is intended to 'take soundings'. These are unproductive if held in an echo chamber. The chairman of the Crown Nominations Commission for the successor to Justin Welby, Lord Evans of Weardale, is an efficient and discreet public servant. But most of the large group of voting members, including both its C of E bishops (York, Norwich), come from the fastest-declining part of the Church, its liberal wing. Thanks to Welby's reforms, the commission now has no fewer than five members from the wider Anglican communion, only one of whom is from the burgeoning, usually traditionalist African churches (total membership c. 43 million). The others include an engineer from Argentina (total membership c. 22,500), a Maori hemp farmer and a bishop from the ever-shrinking liberal Church in Wales. Then come six elected by the mainly liberal General Synod and three from the ultra-liberal Diocese of Canterbury. Read the last's 'statement of needs' about 'the Archbishop we are seeking', to feel whither the wind bloweth. It orders the next Archbishop to get on well with his or her suffragan, the Bishop of Dover, who shoulders most of the diocesan duties, expressly emphasising the importance of this particular one, the liberal Rose Hudson-Wilkin, a protegée of Archbishop Welby. You would think she had the right of veto over any candidate proposed. The statement also insists that the successful candidate 'has worked and will continue to work constructively with the Living and Loving in Faith Process' (LLF). This entirely liberal project, little known to the outside world, is the latest attempt to permit same-sex marriage in church. Opponents protest at the procedural sleight of hand which evades the rule that a change of doctrine can pass only with a two-thirds majority in all three houses of the synod. If pushed forward, LLF will split the Church at the February synod, with orthodox believers (the growing part of the Church) departing. LLF has been so beset by controversies that even its current chairman, the liberal Bishop of Leicester, Martin Snow, has recently resigned. It was beginning to dribble away. But if Canterbury's 'needs' prevail, it will jump back up again. Oh dear, things were so much fairer when a well-instructed prime minister – say, Harold Macmillan choosing Michael Ramsey – simply made the appointment himself. Without bureaucracy, the established Church sort of worked. With it, it sort of doesn't. Last Saturday, we went to London for a lovely party to celebrate the 90th birthday of my ever-vigorous uncle by marriage, John Oliver, ex-Bishop of Hereford. It was held in a club in Pall Mall. On our walk to and from Charing Cross, we saw the following things: 1) About 30 dog-carts, drawn by horses trotting and occasionally cantering past. They were unpoliced and unstewarded, and dashed along, scattering pedestrians as they turned the corner at the bottom of Haymarket. I loved watching, but they were dangerous. 2) On emerging from the club, several people in morning dress and cavalry officers in ceremonial uniform having come from Trooping the Colour. 3) Thirty seconds later, 100 or so naked people, mainly men, riding bicycles as fast as they could peddle, some carrying Pride flags. The intention, I think, was genial, but the overall impression was genital, and repulsive. The next day, at a party in the country, I met Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary. He told me about his ongoing campaign to dramatise the degradation of the public realm under Labour and brandished a photo taken the day before of two men, naked except for their shoes, smoking weed in the park opposite Apsley House. I wonder if they were two resting bicyclists. I later discovered that we had witnessed an annual event called the World Naked Bike Ride, 'a protest against car culture and oil dependency'. I agree with Mr Jenrick that a growing constituency are utterly sick of exhibitionists of all kinds who hog the public space and create what mayors call a 'vibrant' city. If he could persuade the teams of police currently deployed to arrest solitary women praying outside abortion clinics to clear this mess up, he might one day become prime minister. Sir Geoff Palmer has died, professor of beer and first black professor of anything in Scotland. His obituaries repeated his story that when seeking a job in agricultural research at Nottingham University in 1964, he had been interviewed by Keith Joseph, cabinet minister and future mentor of Margaret Thatcher. In Sir Geoff's account, Joseph 'told me to go back where I came from and grow bananas'. When I first heard this story, I greatly doubted it [see Notes in September and October 2015]. Joseph, said Sir Geoff, was the Min of Ag representative on the interview panel. But Joseph was never an agriculture minister and knew nothing about agriculture. I was also assured by a former MAFF permanent secretary that it was against departmental rules for a minister to interview anyone for such a post. Besides, Joseph, whom I knew, was a scrupulously courteous anti-racist, the only member of Ted Heath's shadow cabinet to refuse to oppose Labour's Race Relations Act. Sir Geoff had got the wrong man. He hotly denied this, but never produced any evidence. Of course, I never doubted his claim that somebody said this unpleasant thing to him, but that person was not Keith Joseph. In further researches, I found a professor long associated with Kew Gardens with a very similar name. I wondered if this might explain the mix-up, but did not push the point in case this too would unfairly blame another. In fairness to Sir Keith's reputation, I think all Sir Geoff's obituaries should take the story down, as has Wikipedia.
The Independent
3 days ago
- The Independent
Congress should be ashamed over helping Trump cutting foreign aid, activists say
The US Congress should be ashamed by its role in helping Donald Trump claw back billions of dollars in foreign aid funding already allocated to projects around the world, activists have said. The House of Representatives recently narrowly voted through a request to claw back $9.4 billion (£7bn) of funds – known as rescissions – with $8bn of that coming from foreign aid. It is the first step to making these cuts permanent. Programmes operating in 14 African countries have told The Independent they have been denied ring-fenced funding since Trump re-entered the White House in January and issued executive orders to slash aid spending, something HIV advocacy group, the Aids Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) has claimed was 'illegal' and 'immoral'. Each year, US legislators vote through a budget setting out what the government must spend on different activities. By not spending money already allocated by Congress on foreign aid projects, Trump had been acted beyond the powers of the presidency, said Prof Lawrence Gostin, a law professor at Georgetown University. A federal judge ruled in Marc h that Trump had overstepped in withholding funds and that his government owed aid recipients money for work done in the first few weeks of his presidency, before contracts were cancelled. That case is currently being appealed by the government. 'The president has no power to unilaterally withhold funding already allocated by Congress,' he said. However, using a 'rare vote of Congress to rescind the funds it has already allocated' allows Trump to withhold the promised money legally. 'And to its shame, the House of Representatives has done just that,' Prof Gostin said. The package of cuts must now go to the Senate for a vote before becoming law. It has been suggested that he Senate will pick up the bill next month, but may try to tweak the contents. Thursday's vote was a, 'pretty clear example that [lawmakers] are happy to roll over and give the president what he wants,' said Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC which sued the government. 'They still acted illegally and immorally,' Mr Warren claimed. 'This process does not change that'. Until it was allowed to expire at the end of March, the US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), which forms the backbone of the world's HIV response, set out in law that 10 per cent of its funds must be spent on orphans and vulnerable children. But since January, projects across Sub-Saharan Africa have not seen any of the promised funds, The Independent has learned, leaving vulnerable children without vital services to prevent HIV, access nutrition and report sexual violence. It's one example of the cuts which look set to become permanent, through claw backs of existing funds and a new budget proposed this month. Based on Trump's proposed budget for next year, the majority of specialised support for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) aside from basic medical treatment, are likely to be permanently excluded from receiving future US funds. These wider support services have been shown to protect children from contracting HIV and successfully link HIV-positive children to treatment. Project Hope in Namibia, which linked children in rural communities with HIV treatment and prevention, is another programme to have its OVC funding under Pepfar withheld since January. Early data showed children with HIV enrolled in Project Hope Namibia's programme were more likely to have the levels of virus in their blood brought down to undetectable levels – 96 per cent in January compared with 85 per cent the previous September. Suppressing the virus means they won't get sick or be able to infect others. 'They don't understand those programmes are lifesaving,' Leila Nimatallah, vice president of US advocacy group First Focus on Children, said. More than half of children with untreated HIV will die before their second birthday. 'Illegal and immoral' A State Department official said Pepfar continued to support 'lifesaving HIV testing, care and treatment' including for orphans and vulnerable children, but that all other services are currently being reviewed. But that's not how people working on the ground see things playing out. 'We will expect children to be dying who are not supposed to be dying,' said Desmond Otieno, project coordinator at HIV service the Integrated Development Facility in Kenya. The US has withheld money previously promised to IDF Kenya for services including medication counselling and psychological support since Trump took office, and the facility has already recorded deaths of children who were no longer able to access medication. 'That is the most outrageous [thing]' Mr Otieno said. The State Department spokesperson added that all foreign assistance programmes 'should be reduced over time' as they achieve their mission and move countries 'toward self-reliance". Project Hope in Namibia says its plan to make sure its services could be maintained by the local government by 2028 had been scuppered by the programmes abrupt ending, however. The process of transferring responsibility over including training up local staff will now be a lot harder, achieving exactly the opposite of this goal. Ms Nimatallah said she was calling on the Senate to 'reject this cruel rescissions package'. 'By passing this bill, Congress is taking back funding that it had already appropriated for the prevention of suffering and death of children under five from dirty water, infectious disease, and malnutrition,' she said, as well as funds 'set aside to protect Aids orphans from hunger and sex trafficking. 'The long and short of it is that the United States has turned its back on these children that it has promised to care for'.
