Justin Welby’s time as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury is drawing to a close, forced to resign after the publication of a damning report into a safeguarding scandal. But even before his unprecedented resignation, his 11 years at Lambeth Palace had been momentous and historic for the Church of England, and the global Anglican Communion he also serves.
Justin Portal Welby, born on 6 January 1956, studies theology and trains for the priesthood at Cranmer Hall and St John’s College, Durham.
Ordained at Coventry Cathedral.
Vicar of St Michael and All Angels, Ufton, in the Diocese of Coventry.
Canon residentiary of Coventry Cathedral; sub-dean and Canon for Reconciliation Ministry.
Dean of Liverpool.
Appointed Bishop of Durham, one of the most senior clerics in the CofE.
Named as the next Archbishop of Canterbury, despite serving as a bishop for only a year.
Formally installed as archbishop.
A campaign Welby began at Durham the previous year to cap the interest rates payday loan companies can charge, often characterised as “the war on Wonga”, is pushed home. This is the first intervention that brings Welby to the attention of the wider public.
A pivotal report on church growth, From Anecdote to Evidence, is published, warning that if the church does not find a way to win back younger worshippers it will cease to exist, but also collating best practice from parishes which are experiencing growth.
Legislation allowing female bishops is passed by the General Synod of the CofE at the second time attempt. The first, in 2012, just before Welby took office, failed narrowly to meet the required supermajority. Welby hails the achievement and oversees the appointments of the first swathe of female bishops in the coming years.
Partly inspired by From Anecdote to Evidence, Welby launches an ambitious programme called Reform and Renewal to try to kickstart growth in the church. This would overhaul how funds were handed out (creating new pots of money to pay for contentious “church plants”), boost numbers coming forward to train as vicars, seek to unleash the lay members of the church, streamline and simplify bureaucracy, and identify and train rising stars for future senior posts. It sparks a huge round of debate and controversy within the church and synod.
The Daily Telegraph reveals that Welby’s biological father was not Gavin Welby, his mother’s husband, as he had believed all his life, but Sir Anthony Montague Browne, Winston Churchill’s private secretary, with whom his mother — then an alcoholic — had a brief fling. Welby had collaborated with the newspaper by giving a DNA sample to verify its reporting, and embraced the revelations openly, declaring his identity was found not in his DNA but in Jesus.
Shortly after the height of the 2015 refugee crisis, a family of Syrian refugees fleeing the civil war in their home country come to live in a cottage in the grounds of Lambeth Palace. The resettlement acts as a pilot of a new community sponsorship scheme, which Welby champions.
Channel 4 News reveals the decades of abuse by John Smyth, a conservative evangelical leader in the Iwerne camps movement. Welby had also attended and spoken at Iwerne camps and was an acquaintance of Smyth. Following the revelations, Welby insists he had no idea Smyth had been viciously beating dozens of boys in his garden shed until reports reached Lambeth Palace in 2013.
After three years of consultations and local discussions around sexuality and marriage, the House of Bishops brings a motion to the synod concluding that the traditional doctrine of marriage between one man and one woman should be upheld. However, following an unusual backlash, the synod refuses to sign off on the bishops’ conclusions, throwing the plans into disarray. In response, Welby issues a call for a “radical new Christian inclusion in the church”, and further reflection on how to bridge the deep divides evident from the synod debate. This moment is the genesis of what became the Living in Love and Faith project, a six-year exploration of theology, science and ethics around sexuality and marriage.
Welby sparks a storm by suggesting a cloud continued to hang over the name of George Bell, a 20th-century Bishop of Chichester who had been accused long after his death in 1958 of child abuse. An independent review concluded the CofE had rushed to judgment in agreeing to pay Bell’s accuser compensation, when evidence for his guilt was thin.
Welby is the final witness at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’s investigation into the CofE. He said he was deeply ashamed of the church’s record on safeguarding and at how many clerics had abused people.
The archbishop tells the synod that the church is still “deeply institutionally racist” during a debate over apologising for the lack of welcome shown to ethnic minority Christians who arrived in Britain as part of the Windrush generation.
As the nation goes into lockdown during the Covid pandemic, Welby tells vicars that not only must they shut their church buildings to the public, they also cannot go inside them alone to livestream services to their congregants at home. This sparks an enormous row within the church and Welby later expresses regret for the ruling.
At the height of the pandemic, Welby secretly begins volunteering at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, as a chaplain.
He supports the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, in launching a new Vision and Strategy for the CofE, hoping to make the church “simpler, humbler and bolder”, with members who are younger, more diverse and acting as “missionary disciples”.
Prompted by the new Vision and Strategy, a pressure group called Save the Parish is formed in opposition to Welby’s reform efforts, calling for money to be funnelled away from flashy new church plants and back to traditional parishes. Later that year, it succeeds in electing a large number of supporters onto the General Synod.
After years of criticism from a concerted campaign by George Bell’s defenders, Welby retracts his previous statement that a cloud still hangs over the bishop’s reputation.
In his Easter sermon, Welby attacks the Johnson government’s plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda as immoral and ungodly. His strongest criticism yet of the Conservative government provokes a loud backlash from Tory MPs and ministers.
Welby hosts and oversees Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of all Anglican bishops from around the world. The conference is dominated in the build-up by questions over whether the gay spouses of bishops would be invited, and by potential boycotts by conservative bishops in protest. A draft resolution that would restate the Anglican Communion’s opposition to gay marriage was redrafted after a backlash to acknowledge that the different churches could not agree and many already allowed gay unions.
Welby leads the state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II, the first Archbishop of Canterbury to do so for a monarch for 70 years.
Six years after it started, Welby leads the bishops of the church in their response to the Living in Love and Faith project: offering gay couples for the first time the chance to be blessed in a church service, but reiterating the official doctrine restricting marriage to straight couples only.
Conservative Anglican leaders at a conference in Rwanda declare they no longer recognise Welby’s authority as the “first among equals” and de facto head of the Anglican Communion. Among other things, they have been angered by the archbishop’s support for gay blessings in the CofE.
Welby leads the coronation of King Charles III, which includes new roles for interfaith non-Anglican representatives for the first time. He tells the world the theme of the new reign will be service.
The church’s Independent Safeguarding Board is disbanded after relationships between the advisers and the hierarchy break down. Welby attempts to defend this decision at a meeting of the synod, but in a show of defiance members instead invite the sacked advisers to speak from the podium.
Long overdue, the Makin Report into the Smyth scandal finally reports back. It concludes that while Welby was probably not involved in the conservative evangelical cover-up in the 1980s that allowed Smyth to move to Zimbabwe and start abusing boys again, he failed to ensure reports of the abuse were properly referred to the police and investigated by the church after 2013. Welby initially refuses to resign, but after mounting pressure agrees days later to quit, on 12 November.
