![\"Sarah](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/imgsize-23456,msid-127782019\/sarah-mullally-confirmed-as-archbishop-of-canterbury-first-woman-to-lead-the-church-of-england.jpg\" "\\"The")
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The Confirmation of Election ceremony legally confirming Dame Sarah Mullally as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, at St Paul’s Cathedral, central London, Wednesday Jan. 28, 2026. (Jeff Moore\/Pool via AP)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Bishops still stood in a lineage traced back to the apostles. Baptism and Eucharist remained central. Vestments, altars, kneeling, and liturgical seasons stayed. The Mass was not reinterpreted. Cranmer rejected transubstantiation (bread and wine becoming blood and body) but preserved Communion as a sacred ritual. The choreography remained Catholic. The theology shifted Protestant. And some things were still hushed up.This hybrid identity became the Anglican formula: Catholic structure plus Protestant doctrine.Bishops, creeds, and hierarchy stayed. Papal supremacy and indulgences were swept under the rug.In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Church didn\u2019t stand still. A religious revival led by preachers like John Wesley pushed the idea that faith should be personal and emotional, not just ceremonial. This movement energised ordinary believers and eventually gave rise to Methodism. A few decades later, another group inside the Church went in the opposite direction. The Oxford Movement argued that Anglicanism should reclaim its older Catholic-style rituals, emphasising tradition, ceremony, and sacred continuity. <\/p>\n\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/photo\/imgsize-23456,msid-127782119\/the-henry-viii-problem.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
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At the same time, the Church remained tightly bound to the British state. Bishops sat in Parliament, monarchs ruled as heads of the Church, and political leaders were expected to belong to it. Religion was not just private belief. It was built into the machinery of government.The 20th century dismantled that certainty. Conservatives accused secularism of creeping in. The British Empire slowly faded and the Church adapted. In 1994, women were ordained priests. By 2015, women bishops were approved. The LGBT+ movement remains a question, though. Priests are not allowed to solemnise same-sex marriages, but same-sex couples can receive prayers of blessing. Abuse scandals continued to expose institutional failures.Into this turbulence steps Sarah Mullally, the first woman to hold the office in nearly 1,400 years. Her background as a nurse and administrator suggests a leader shaped as much by systems management as theology.The appointment also highlights England\u2019s constitutional theatre. The archbishop is formally appointed by King Charles III, relayed through Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has no theological role whatsoever. An atheist head of government advising a Christian monarch on a church appointment is the perfect embodiment of British satire.Reactions, as usual, were split. Many in Britain celebrated the progressive milestone. Conservative Anglican leaders around the world condemned it. The Vatican \u2013 which still doesn\u2019t ordain female priests \u2013 put out a bland statement. The kind you give when you see your colleague get promoted.For Sarah Mullally, symbolism is the easy part. Governance is harder. She inherits a church facing three blunt pressures: decline, division, and credibility. Attendance continues to fall in an increasingly secular Britain, leaving the Church culturally visible but spiritually fragile. Internally, evangelical conservatives, Anglo-Catholic traditionalists, and liberal reformers coexist in permanent tension over gender, sexuality, and doctrine. Externally, safeguarding scandals have eroded moral authority and public trust.<\/p>\n\n
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Choosing a New Bishop | Yes, Prime Minister | BBC Comedy Greats<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Perhaps the situation was best summed up by a septuagenarian Canterbury tour guide on her predecessors and his expectations: \u201cSome of them have been very good, some of them have been pretty bad. Some of them have been very contentious, and some of them ended up murdered. I hope it doesn’t happen to this one.\u201d As British a sentiment as one can get.Of course, Henry VIII \u2013 based on what we know about him \u2013 would have been horrified knowing that a woman was now in charge of the Church he had created. Sir Humphrey would probably nod and say that he had always backed having a woman in charge. Or at least, an inter-departmental committee backed the general idea. Hacker would probably wonder if it could get him re-elected.All things considered, it\u2019s hard not to smirk at the bathetic irony: an institution born because a man wanted to divorce his wife is now being led by a woman who will head one of the most influential Christian denominations in the world.<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Yes Minister, when Jim Hacker finds out that Italian terrorists have access to British-made weapons, Sir Humphrey Appleby tries to mollify him by pointing out it\u2019s not their department\u2019s…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-braking-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/the-breakup.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sochtimes.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Random](\"https:\/\/static.toiimg.com\/thumb\/msid-127781849,imgsize-144854,width-400,resizemode-4\/the-breakup.jpg\")
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