Justin welby

‘If he can’t be in politics,’ the Archbishop of Canterbury tweeted last week after Tim Farron resigned the leadership of his party, ‘media & politicians have questions.’ So prelates now think complex theological concerns can be despatched within the Twitter limit of 140 characters. They cannot. Let me now unpack Dr Welby’s abbreviated consideration of this subject and examine what’s behind it, because the subject is of profound importance —and not only for Christians. Nobody has said Mr Farron can’t be in politics. He has been returned as MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale with the support of 26,686 voters. Farron himself, however, has doubted he should be leader of a

Oh dear. David Cameron’s done it again. It seems the Prime Minister can’t quite master the art of checking whether there are any cameras recording before he makes an indiscreet comment. Reuters report that Cameron has been caught on camera telling the Queen that the leaders of some ‘fantastically corrupt’ like Nigeria and Afghanistan will attend his anti-corruption summit. ‘We had a very successful cabinet meeting this morning, talking about our anti-corruption summit,’ Cameron tells the Queen. ‘We have got the Nigerians – actually we have got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain.’ When Cameron went on to describe Nigeria and Afghanistan as ‘possibly two of the most corrupt countries

I don’t think there is a Royal College of Public Relations, but if there were, it should teach a course based on a comparison between two stories last week. One concerned the Prime Minister and the other the Archbishop of Canterbury. Both arose from the paternity of the principals and, in both cases, the principals had not done anything wrong. Yet there the similarities end. David Cameron, and those working for him, spent the best part of a week fending off and then changing a story they found embarrassing. Justin Welby, and his much smaller staff, confirmed the truth of a potentially much more painful story in one go, bravely

We should be more generous to refugees, said Justin Welby in his New Year message. Is he saying that the government should let more of them in? If so, should he be more specific? Does David Davies, the Tory MP for Monmouth, have a point? He wrote on his website: ‘How wonderfully saintly it must feel to sleep at night with an easy conscience knowing you have roundly condemned the wicked politicians and bigots who worry about mass migration without actually having to take difficult decisions yourself and live with the consequences.’ But Welby didn’t condemn those worried about mass migration: he just reminded people that hospitality to outsiders is an

In the Spectator’s Christmas treble issue, Michael Gove speaks to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. Below are some outtakes from the interview. On the supposed decline of religious belief I don’t believe that that was then or is now an accurate perception. Church attendance in this country has fallen hugely both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the population. The number of Christians around the world has risen hugely since the nineteenth century and continues to rise at an extraordinary rate: it is over two billion now. So we’re seeing a change in the pattern of where the church is: the Anglican Communion is essentially global, as much

There was, of course, something very special about the House of Commons debate on Syria earlier this month. The moral challenge of how to face those who embrace evil without limits, the long shadows and sombre memories generated by military actions past, the divisions within parties and between friends, the wrestling with conscience that brought good men and women close to tears. The importance of what the House of Commons was being asked to authorise inspired outstanding speeches, most notably of all, Hilary Benn’s. While I was listening to the shadow foreign secretary, I noticed a hunched figure in the gallery also held spellbound by the speech, his head occasionally

Here are some observations from the ‘incendiary’ letter from the House of Bishops that has upset the Tories so much. ‘Our electoral system often means that the outcomes turn on a very small group of people within the overall electorate. Greater social mobility and the erosion of old loyalties to place or class mean that all the parties struggle to maintain their loyal core of voters whilst reaching out to those who might yet be swayed their way. The result is that any capacious political vision is stifled.’ ‘Instead, parties generate policies targeted at specific demographic groupings, fashioned by expediency rather than vision or even consistency. The art, or science,

Given the political parties are already well underway with their General Election campaigns, the Church of England couldn’t have waited much later to dispense its advice on how to campaign and what to campaign about. In this week’s Spectator, the Archbishop of York gets on with handing out some of that advice, telling me that politicians are behaving like men arguing at a urinal over who is ‘the biggest of the men’ and explaining why he’s edited what appears to be a pretty lefty collection of essays called On Rock or Sand? Firm Foundations for Britain’s Future. You can read the full interview here. That book includes a chapter from