Why the new Archbishop of York will lead the Church of England even further into the lunacy of wokeness

The Church of England has a new Archbishop of York and a problem on its hands. Or to be more accurate, the problem it already had – senior bishops who speak entirely in progressive jargon – has just got infinitely worse.

Archbishop Stephen Cottrell made the headlines even before he was enthroned last week, when he ‘revealed’ that Jesus was black. This came as news to everyone except the far left, race-baiting fanatics of Black Lives Matter, who enjoy dabbling in bizarre ‘Afrocentric’ history. Perhaps Cottrell picked up the idea from them: he seems completely obsessed with racism, especially of the imaginary variety that supposedly poisons the Church of England.

In this week’s Holy Smoke podcast I talk to Dr Gavin Ashenden, a former chaplain to the Queen, about the implications of this disastrous appointment, which means that for the first time in the history of the Established Church the sees of Canterbury, York and London are all occupied by intellectually challenged bureaucrats with an adolescent enthusiasm for wokeness.

All this is very depressing, though in the case of Cottrell there’s a certain amusement to be derived from his comic lack of self-awareness. Indeed, as you’ll hear, I couldn’t keep a straight face when reading out his platitudes. I never thought I’d be reduced to helpless laughter by an Anglican bishop’s reflections on ‘interconnectedness’…