Death and The Archbishop

By Richard N. Ostling

A tube led from the exhaust pipe to the front seat of the silver Toyota where an Oxford neighbor last week discovered the body of a distinguished English clergyman, Canon Gareth Bennett. The suicide of the university don and historian ordinarily might have been a sad but briefly noted counterpoint to the Christmas season. Instead, the tragedy was catapulted into prominence by the fact that only four days earlier Bennett had become embroiled in a stupendous furor in the Church of England. The uproar, it seems clear, drove him to his death.

The unlikely cause of all the consternation was the new edition of the venerable Crockford's Clerical Directory, a biennial reference book of statistics and short clergy biographies. But the reason the volume is avidly awaited is its authoritative essay on the state of the church. By tradition, the writer is anonymous, allowing him to cast aside habitual ecclesiastic politesse and speak with complete candor.

The latest author did just that, launching an unprecedented attack on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert A.K. Runcie, since 1980 Primate of All England and spiritual leader of the world's 65 million-member Anglican Communion (including U.S. Episcopalians). The Archbishop, a decorated tank commander in World War II who earned the name "Killer Runcie," was characterized in Crockford's as a spineless churchman who evinces no "clear basis for his policies other than taking the line of least resistance on each issue."

For good measure, the essay branded Runcie an "elitist liberal" who uses his influence to pack the hierarchy and bureaucracy with cronies and woolly- minded leftists. Increasingly, charged Crockford's, the Church of England is run by theologically vapid leaders who follow "what they think is the wish of the majority of the moment" and whose "moderately Catholic style . . . is not taken to the point of having firm principles." Meanwhile, declared the 16-page piece, few appointments go to biblical conservatives in the Evangelical faction or to liturgical and doctrinal traditionalists in the Anglo-Catholic wing, even though the two groups constitute a substantial portion of worshipers.

As banner headlines in the English press trumpeted the Crockford's affair, Runcie offered no response to the attack. Senior ecclesiastics instantly rushed to the primate's defense, observing that he had been anything but weak in criticizing Margaret Thatcher's treatment of the poor. The essay was excoriated as an exercise of "anonymous, gutless malice" by one furious bishop. "Scurrilous," snapped the realm's No. 2 churchman, Archbishop of York John Habgood. York had his own reason to complain: he and Runcie were yoked in condemnation by Crockford's. In fact, the essay was seen as a bid to derail the liberal Habgood, 60, as a successor to Runcie, 66, who many expect will vacate the see of Canterbury after presiding over a meeting of the world's Anglican bishops next summer. The essay was viewed as a conservative vote of no confidence to press Runcie into stepping down.

All these back-pew analyses depended in part upon who wrote the incendiary essay. Suspicions quickly narrowed to a handful of clerics with the requisite conservative opinions and insider's knowledge. Bennett fit perfectly. He was an ally of London's Bishop Graham Leonard, a champion of the Anglo-Catholics, and served on two powerful panels that set the General Synod agenda and nominated bishops. Bennett, who was known for his probity, vociferously denied he was the writer. But after his death the two lay officials who assigned the author admitted that they had selected Bennett.

The tragedy and accompanying speculation obscured much of the reason the essay had hit such a raw nerve. Traditionalists now constitute a surly minority among England's ranking churchmen, and their complaints are echoed by many within the dwindling ranks of Anglican churchgoers. The Church of England, as the Times observed in a lead editorial, is a "declining institution" that has become "uncertain about its public purpose and divided over its internal beliefs."

Robert Runcie's fate has been to preside over the church as it coped with a series of tempestuous issues. These have included the modernization of the Book of Common Prayer, women priests, remarriage after divorce, homosexuals in the clergy and the tendency of some bishops and theologians to scorn traditional beliefs. In each case, Runcie has tried to hold his church together as it lumbered toward liberalism.

If the intent of the leftward drift was to refill England's empty naves, the strategy has been an abysmal failure. When Runcie became primate, a paltry 2.7% of the population regularly attended Anglican services; slightly fewer do so today. Bennett's mistake was not in raising such unpleasant matters in public, with or without his name attached. It was in assuming that an Archbishop of Canterbury -- or any other individual -- could, merely by standing firm, reverse the powerful tide of change that has caused such anguishing problems for the Church of England.

With reporting by Roland Flamini/London