No one ever believed Justin Welby was infallible. But the extent to which he was fallible, and an abject failure as a supposedly “Christian” leader, was astonishing even by historical standards, as one of the worst bishops in the history of the Anglican Church resigns as Archbishop of Canterbury:
The Archbishop of Canterbury resigned today after Sir Keir Starmer said the victims of the Church’s most prolific child abuser were let down ‘very, very badly’.
Justin Welby said he was standing down after a damning report found his failure to act meant that ‘abhorrent’ serial abuser John Smyth was never brought to justice.
In a statement, Dr Welby said: “Having sought the gracious permission of His Majesty The King, I have decided to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury. The Makin Review has exposed the long-maintained conspiracy of silence about the heinous abuses of John Smyth. When I was informed in 2013 and told that police had been notified, I believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow. It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024.”
Allowing women to become bishops and openly supporting their ordination was just the most obvious of his many errors of leadership. And the idea that, as the head of the organization, he could simply leave Church discipline to the state police was not only downright risible but caused every clerical grave in England to begin rotating rapidly. It’s not an accident that the same sort of Churchian leaders who support female leaderships are so reliably tied to a) supporting aberrant sexuality, b) endorsing unrepentant sin, c) refusing to hold the guilty accountable for their crimes, and d) sex crimes.
Whatever creatures like this Welby truly worship, it is observably not Jesus Christ.