Anglicanism Is in Its Worst Crisis Since Henry VIII

Being the archbishop of Canterbury, the chief cleric of the Church of England, has always been a risky business. Modern incumbents are not likely to be murdered before their own altar, beheaded by Puritans, or burned as a martyr. But being the leader of 85 million believers in the world’s third-largest Christian group—the Anglican Communion—is still a tricky and frustrating job, as Justin Welby, who just resigned on Nov. 12, knows too well.

Welby’s resignation was prompted by a recently concluded review into the Church of England’s actions over its worst known abuser, John Smyth.

Smyth was not a priest but rather a lawyer, and a prominent leader in the Iwerne movement, which ran evangelical youth camps that were largely targeted at the British elite. In his public life, Smyth was a virulent homophobe who successfully prosecuted Gay News for blasphemy in 1976. In private, he was obsessed with sex, and he sadistically beat teenage boys and young men, often while naked himself, claiming that it was part of their spiritual discipline.

Welby knew Smyth, and the review questioned his account of being unaware of the abuse. But that’s hardly his only problem. The Smyth case goes to the heart of Anglicanism’s modern contradictions, and it has triggered a massive crisis of faith as well as calls by the Church of England’s second most important leader, the archbishop of York, for the role of Canterbury itself to change.

For liberals, it’s a sign of the inherent hypocrisy of conservative evangelism. “It’s very difficult to hold that set of beliefs and not be colluding with abuse,” Alison Webster, a progressive Methodist who worked for the Church of England for 25 years, told Foreign Policy. “It’s an authoritarian theology and a deeply sexist one.”

Like other religions, Anglicanism has been struggling with its past failures over abuse.

“Every time you tried to talk about it, nobody wanted to listen, and nobody really wanted to believe abuse could take place inside a Christian context,” Webster said. But after the exposure of other abusers from the 1990s onward, the Church had—slowly and painfully—developed a set of safeguarding norms.

Welby, formerly the bishop of Durham, came into office as archbishop in 2013 hoping to address past abuses and bring the communion together. But he didn’t have an easy task. Andrew Brown, a religious correspondent and the co-author of a book on the Church of England, told Foreign Policy, “Being archbishop was already an impossible job when Rowan [Williams, the previous archbishop] took it up.”

That impossibility stems from Anglicanism’s sheer reach. The archbishop of Canterbury does not have the same hierarchical power as Catholicism’s pope—but he is considered “first among equals” in a huge communion. The Church of England is proverbially a broad church, covering a vast range of practices and doctrines from Anglo-Catholic ritual to evangelical preaching. But the wider Anglican Communion—descended from the Church of England—is also geographically vast, spanning from Papua New Guinea to Boston.

That span is a legacy of the British Empire and the Anglican missionaries who accompanied it. The handling of Smyth fell firmly into the imperial tradition. A 1982 report, which stayed internal to the Iwerne movement, concluded that he had committed multiple “sadistic” and “evil” criminal offences. Nevertheless, the police were not notified. Instead, Smyth was reportedly encouraged to move to Zimbabwe with financial help from other evangelicals.

There he continued his abuses, until the Zimbabwean police became aware of his actions after the mysterious death of a 16-year-old boy in his care. He fled again, this time to South Africa, where he is believed to have abused more children before his death in 2018. English church leaders who knew of his abuses made little effort to reach out to their African counterparts to warn them, nor did they contact police when news of his abuses reemerged in 2013.

The dumping of an English abuser on Africa, with the collusion of English leaders, will only deepen African convictions that the mother church needs to repent.

“The church,” said Martin Palmer—my father, as well as an Anglican theologian and advisor to several past archbishops—“has never been able to handle the heritage of the plurality of empire.”

The split over homosexuality is the most painful division within that heritage today. The broadness of the Anglican Church traditionally included space for a lot of gay people, both as priests and congregants. Left to their own devices, parts of the church might look something like Anglican Communion’s Episcopal branch in the United States, which has long been supportive of LGBTQ+ rights, including by performing same-sex marriages since they were legalized nationwide in 2015.

In contrast, the African churches that make up the majority of the modern Anglican Communion mostly take a hard-line position on homosexuality that has put them directly in conflict with Western liberals. (The South African church, thanks in part to Desmond Tutu’s past leadership, is something of an exception.)

The Church of England has been left in an uncomfortable compromise position; it will not perform same-sex marriages, but it allows limited blessings and tolerates openly gay clergy—who still often feel discriminated against and targeted by their own church. Neither side is happy with this.

Welby’s own stance, neither condemning nor approving of same-sex relationships, pleased no one, and calls for his resignation came even before the Smyth report was released, both from conservatives such as Ian Paul and gay clergy.

But the Church of England is also the official religion of England and a key part of the national order. The archbishop of Canterbury crowns the monarch, who is the formal head of the Church of England. Bishops sit in the House of Lords. The archbishop thus has to serve an English public that is strongly in favor of same-sex marriage in a country where attendance at services has been declining for decades, while at the same time heading a global communion largely made up of conservative African churches whose membership is growing.

Welby’s answer was to double down on his own tradition of well-financed evangelism in the hope that the movement could revitalize the church in England. He defined himself as an “open evangelical,” embracing the enthusiasm of the tradition without rigid conservatism. But over his decade in office, church attendance fell by roughly a third, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, when Welby’s decision to shutter churches attracted heavy criticism. Rather than bringing new life to the church, Welby’s perceived favoring of evangelism widened its divides.

As an English scandal, the whole affair is also unsurprisingly intertwined with class. Smyth targeted students at Winchester College, one of the nation’s elite private schools, which has also been accused of colluding in the cover-up of his crimes. Welby is an Etonian, a former banker, and so posh that the last big story about him was his discovery that his biological father was Winston Churchill’s private secretary. The Iwerne camps that both Welby and Smyth participated in almost exclusively sought to convert the children of the rich and powerful—the same class that powers much of modern Anglican evangelism.

Welby’s successor will nominally be chosen by the king. In reality, King Charles III will pick the name given to him by the prime minister, who in turn will be working with a short list of two names given to him by an Anglican committee—one that now includes representatives from the global churches.

It may be difficult for them to agree on a name, especially one untainted by the Smyth scandal. But whoever they pick, the job will stay just as impossible.

Correction, Nov. 26, 2024: A previous version of this article mistakenly overstated the lack of contact between English and African church leaders on the Smythe case. It has been fixed.