From The Guardian-Today in St Paul's Cathedral, Justin Welby's election as archbishop of Canterbury will be confirmed by a commission of bishops. From that point, six weeks before his enthronement in his own cathedral, he will be archbishop in "spiritualities" and public expectation. Part of that expectation will be the leadership he exercises in the church and nation, an expectation which has already been strongly expressed. The dean of Liverpool says Welby "will make an excellent leader of the Anglican communion"; Ekklesia, a thinktank, says Welby "can offer the kind of leadership needed at a time when idols have been falling".
In many ways this is too trivial to note. We expect the "leaders" of our organisations to provide "leadership", and leadership is uniformly a good and necessary thing. Every human endeavour requires leadership: our politicians must be leaders for us to overcome our difficulties; sportsmen must be leaders for our team to win; financiers, journalists, school teachers – leaders all.
What's true in the secular world is also true within the Church of England. The Church Times, for example, has mentioned "leaders" and "leadership" (and very often in terms of the lack of both) 589 times in the three months since Welby's nomination. This hunger for leadership is palpable when compared with the way Rowan Williams was regarded. Even when he was in office Williams was criticised by a lay member of the synod for being "a godly, gracious and clearly very able person in many ways, but I don't think he's got the gift of leadership that the church needs at this present time. [We need] a clear Christian leadership."
More here-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2013/feb/04/archbishop-canterbury-justin-welby-disciple
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