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Archbishop Justin Welby: Risk-taker & Reconciler

Reviewed by Edward Carter.

Andrew Atherstone wrote a hurried first version of this book two years ago, just as Justin Welby’s nomination as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury was announced. Although this updated edition contains more detail, it is still essentially factual and biographical with very little interpretation. It is also unauthorised, so uses a mixture of information in the public domain and some recent private interviews with friends and acquaintances of Welby, conducted by Atherstone.

The pace is well-judged and the content engaging – I read the book very easily at a few sittings. Things that stood out for me were the way Welby did not enjoy his College training experience (p.68), his links to the sacramental tradition (p.101), his approach to difficult situations (p.127), his leadership methods of bringing about change which connects to the ‘risk’ theme (pp.144-146), and his approach to reconciliation (which incorporates his idea of ‘good disagreement’) (p.226).

Atherstone sketches out skilfully how Welby’s unusual background in the City of London has shaped his ministry. This is described in terms of enterprise and ‘getting things done’, as well as his ability to hold together competing interests and opinions in a positive manner rather than merely as damage-limitation. By coincidence, while I was reading this book I happened to be at a meeting of the Church of England’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group which Archbishop Justin attended. In that particular setting, the ‘enterprise’ and ‘risk’ themes were particularly stressed by him in a way that is very rare in church circles, so it is good that Atherstone’s book brings this out strongly.

The comments, however, which may be the most significant in the whole book are on p.187, where Welby is described as being ‘comfortable in his own skin’, and genuinely enjoying the job of Archbishop. It is here that the contrast with his predecessor is most striking, and although Atherstone wisely does not attempt to interpret how important this theme might be, there is enough of a hint that this feature of Welby’s personality and background will shape his years at Canterbury. Hopefully a subsequent more interpretative biography can do this in due course.

Finally, Atherstone does well to make his last and twelfth chapter, ‘Speaking for Jesus’, into a reminder that Welby is robustly orthodox and evangelical as a Christian. My guess is that, as we look back in twenty years time, we will be pondering the links between Archbishop Justin’s time at Canterbury and the earlier rise of ‘Radical Orthodoxy’ as a theological tradition, and making connections with Stanley Hauerwas’s work on ethics and ecclesiology. This is all beyond the scope of Atherstone’s book, but he sets the scene well.