The next head on the block

Has Justin Welby's resignation just set up a dangerous precedent?

Hello! What a week it has been in the church news world. No doubt you’ve all read plenty about Justin Welby’s historic resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury, but this week I’ve tried to analyse why he felt he had no choice but to give in to vociferous campaign against him, despite clearly saying when the Makin report was first published he did not think it was a resigning matter. Will the strange new coalitions formed among church activists to topple Welby now turn their attention to others criticised by Makin? And we also explore what comes next, and the strange process to choose a new archbishop - a process which itself is already deeply contested and full of controversy and bad blood before it even gets going.

For light relief (!), you could then move on to my latest podcast, an interview with the world-renowned Christian scientist Francis Collins, who helped steer America through the pandemic with lightning fast vaccine development, and rather than thanks got death threats from …