Alpha male

Just before stepping down as Archbishop of Canterbury, the late Robert Runcie told me — in a sotto voce conversation during the General Synod — that charismatic evangelical parishes such as Holy Trinity Brompton (‘HTB’) in South Kensington, with their American-style worship, near-fundamentalist teaching and smart social connections, posed more of a threat to the Church of England than divisions over women priests. I wonder how he would have reacted to the news that, 21 years later, an HTB man has been given his job.

Justin Welby, only recently appointed Bishop of Durham, is being translated to Canterbury with a minimum of fuss. His name just ‘emerged’; David Cameron, his fellow Old Etonian, had invited him to go to Lambeth before the media had even worked out who Welby was. Looking at the situation from the perspective of 1991, Dr Runcie (and I) might have said: ‘Aha! That’s how HTB works.