Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T15:19:00.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Emergent Archiepiscopal Leadership within the Anglican Communion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2015

Martyn Percy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Each Archbishop of Canterbury has a distinctive style of leadership. To some extent, this will always be shaped and framed by prevalent contemporary cultures of leadership that are to be found within wider society. The paper examines and questions some aspects in the development of the current Archbishop of Canterbury's role. It argues that the combination of a certain kind of charismatic leadership, coupled to enhanced managerial organization, may be preventing the prospect of theological acuity and spiritual wisdom playing a more significant role in the continual formation of ecclesial polity in the Church of England, and across the wider Anglican Communion.

Keywords

Anglican CommunionarchiepiscopacycharismaChurch of Englandcultureecclesiologyinstitutionleadershipmanagementorganizationpolity
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Anglican Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 46 - 70
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1.

The Very Revd Professor Martyn William Percy is Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. He was, from 2004 to 2014 the Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon. He is a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, where he also tutors for the Said Business School, and writes and teaches on modern ecclesiology.

References

2. Shortt, Rupert, Rowan's Rule: The Biography of the Archbishop (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014).Google Scholar

3. See Andrew Atherstone, Archbishop Justin Welby: Risk-Taker and Reconciler (London: DLT, 2014).Google Scholar

4. Bermejo, Luis SJ, The Spirit of Life: the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Christian (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1989).Google Scholar

5. ‘Archbishop Visits Hong Kong’, 28 October 2013, available at: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5168/archbishop-visits-hong-kongGoogle Scholar

6. See P. Selznick, Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation (New York: Harper, 1957). See also Paul Avis, Authority, Leadership and Conflict in the Church (London: Mowbray, 1992), pp. 107–109.Google Scholar

7. Western, Simon, Leadership: A Critical Text (London: Sage, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Western, Leadership, p. 22.Google Scholar

9. Western, Leadership, pp. 80–126.Google Scholar

10. See Atherstone, Archbishop Justin Welby.Google Scholar

11. ‘Revealed: Archbishop Blindfolded by Rebels with Kalashnikovs on Jungle Mercy Mission’, The Daily Mail, 11 November 2012.Google Scholar

12. Western, Leadership, pp. 173–97.Google Scholar

13. This was, of course, the normal modus operandi of Archbishop Rowan Williams. While this led to some inertia, as well as failures, the strength of the model is that it can build collegiality in the medium and long term. Messiah leadership discourse, in contrast, tends to foster cultures of followership; and it marginalizes the critical voices that are essential for developing balance and breadth.Google Scholar

14. Western, Leadership, pp. 183–97.Google Scholar

15. For further discussion see Archie Brown, The Myth of the Strong Leader (London: Bodley Head, 2014).Google Scholar

16. ‘Rome, Constantinople, and Canterbury: Mother Churches?’, Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius at St Vladimir's Seminar, New York, 5 June 2008, available at: http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1357/rome-constantinople-and-canterbury-mother-churches.Google Scholar

17. On this, see Lewis Minkin, The Blair Supremacy: A Study in Labour's Party Management, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014). Minkin shows how Blair's leadership substituted consultation for personal charisma and executive authority.Google Scholar

18. Linda Woodhead, ‘The Vote for Women Bishops’, available at: http://blog.oup.com/2014/07/women-bishops-vote-vsi/Google Scholar

19. F. Parkin, The Marxist Theory of Class: A Bourgeois Critique (London: Tavistock, 1979), pp. 45–46; P. Sorokin, ‘What Is a Social Class?’, in R. Bendix and S.M. Lipset (eds.), Class, Status and Power (2nd edn; New York: Free Press, 1966), p. 90; T. Parsons, ‘A Revised Analytical Approach to the Theory of social Stratification’, The American Journal of Sociology 45.6 (May, 1940), p. 122.Google Scholar

20. See M. Percy, ‘Growth and Management in the Church of England: Some Comments’, Modern Believing 55.3 (2014), pp. 257–70.Google Scholar

21. Welby's background may be important here. The elitism of Eton and a privileged, though personally difficult childhood, coupled to his career in executive management, are important factors in shaping his ecclesial leadership.Google Scholar

22. See Elliott Jaques, A General Theory of Bureaucracy (London: Heinemann, 1976), pp. 344–347. Jaques argued that the church was an ‘association’, and clergy ‘members’, not its employees. Jaques argued that once clergy come to be regarded as employees in a manager-subordinate relationship, congregations become customers, and the sacred bond between laity and clergy becomes broken, and turned into one of consumer-provider. Jaques specifically praised those churches that promoted life tenure for clergy, because it guarded against centralised managerial interference, and protected the deep communal and personal ethos of the clergy-laity bond. Overt central control and monitoring by churches, argued Jaques, slowly destroyed local spiritual life, because the clergy would be subject to demands on two fronts. Namely, those targets and priorities set remotely by central management, and the local consumerist demands of congregations. The combination would erode public-pastoral ministry to the whole parish, with the clergy becoming demoralised and alienated.Google Scholar

23. The Labour Party was subject to similar dynamics under the leadership of Tony Blair: controlling structures that distanced dissent, coupled to charismatic leadership that gave vision, in the Weberian sense.Google Scholar

24. Report of the Lord Green Steering Group: London: General Synod Document no. 1982, 2015.Google Scholar

25. See https://churchofengland.org/media/2130591/report.pdf; see also http://cofecomms.tumblr.com/post/105362114252/the-green-report-a-response and http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/archives/006803.html#comments, Cf. M. Percy, ‘Are These the Leaders We Really Want?’, Church Times, 12 December 2014, pp. 14 and 31. (See also the Leader Article in the same edition). The Report on Resourcing Ministerial Education is currently work in progress. See:http://www.ministrydevelopment.org.uk/resourcing_ministerial_education.Google Scholar

26. Despite considerable ferment, the Green Report was not allowed to be debated at the February 2015 meeting of the General Synod. The censoring of the criticism of the Green Report is reported in Church Times, 13th February 2015, p. 3.Google Scholar

27. See, for example, J.L. Badaracco, ‘We Don't Need another Hero’, Harvard Business Review 79.8 (2001), pp. 120-26, and H. Mintzberg, ‘Rebuilding Companies as Communities’, Harvard Business Review 87.7-8 (2009), pp. 140–43.Google Scholar

28. John Webster, ‘The Self-Organizing Power of the Gospel of Christ: Episcopacy and Community Formation’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 3.1 (2001), pp. 69–82; and Richard Roberts, ‘Lord, Bondsman and Churchman: Identity, Integrity and Power in Anglicanism’, in C. Gunton and D. Hardy (eds.), On Being the Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), pp. 156–224.Google Scholar

29. See, for example, Stephen Pattison, The Faith of the Managers: When Management Becomes Religion (London: Cassell, 1997); Gordon Oliver, Ministry without Madness (London: SPCK, 2012).Google Scholar

30. See Augustine, On the Trinity 12.1-3; see The Trinity (trans. S. McKenna C.Ss.R.; Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1963).Google Scholar

31. Evagrius, ‘Chapters on Prayer’, in The Praktikos and Chapters on Prayer (trans. J. Bamberger; Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981).Google Scholar

32. D.W. Hardy, ‘Anglicanism in the Twenty-First Century; Scriptural, Local, Global’, unpublished paper from Society for the Study of Anglicanism at the American Academy of Religion, 2004, p. 5, quoted in Sidney Green, Beating the Bounds: A Symphonic Approach to Orthodoxy in the Anglican Communion (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014), p. 176.Google Scholar

33. See Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), and Gerald Arbuckle, Refounding the Church: Dissent for Leadership (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1993).Google Scholar

34. L. Mead, The Once and the Future Church (Washington, DC: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991).Google Scholar

35. See M. Percy, Modern Believing 55.3 (2014), pp. 257–70.Google Scholar