Six Views on the New ABC Justin Welby

Over at ABC  Religion and Ethics is an article assessing the prospects for Archbishop Justin Welby and what his ministry might do for the Anglican church in contrast to the former ministry of Rowan Williams and the concurrent ministry of Pope Francis I.

Contributors include Andrew McGowan (no, not the Scottish one), Michael Jensen, Bruce Kaye, Elizabeth Oldfield, Muriel Porter, and Samuel Wells.

According to McGowan:

Pope Francis’s striking simplicity makes more of a contrast than was probably intended or anticipated with his predecessor’s aestheticism, or his intellectualism; his election was nevertheless a vote for giving priority to the Gospel and to the heart of the mission of the Church, as means to guide necessary institutional reform. Justin Welby’s election may similarly be read as a reaction of sorts against Rowan Williams – in this case, again an intellectual has been succeeded by a perceived manager and pragmatist, but the transitions from liberal Catholic to moderate evangelical, and from introvert to extrovert, are more prominent. Welby’s evangelicalism is real but tempered, and represents perhaps the best position from which an Anglican leader can try to speak – if not quite to the growing fundamentalist edge as well as to the voluble liberal side, then to many between them.

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