So the bookies who are busy offering odds on the runners and riders in this unusual race…have nevertheless installed the 52-year-old Bishop of Coventry, Christopher Cocksworth, as favourite. Unknown on a national stage, his great advantage appears to be that, on the see‑saw principle, he is the favoured Evangelical candidate.

The role of Archbishop of Canterbury is, by common consent, a poisoned chalice. The challenge is to balance the various dogmatic factions within the Church of England at the same time as holding together the disparate worldwide Anglican Communion of 80 million souls.

But, as a titular leader, the occupant of Lambeth Palace has no means of imposing his will. Unlike the Pope, with his formal teaching authority, the archbishop has to rely on persuasion and goodwill and that, as recent incumbents have found to their frustration, only gets you so far.

The thanklessness of the task extends to the process now under way for choosing the 105th archbishop to succeed Dr Rowan Williams when he retires in December. Because of long-standing divisions within the Church over such issues as gay marriage and women bishops, whichever candidate’s name emerges this autumn, it is guaranteed to offend a good proportion of Anglicans.

What is making the job even harder is that there can no longer be any passing of the buck to the prime minister. Traditionally, bishops were appointed from a list of two by 10 Downing Street, because the Church of England is established and the prime minister acts on behalf of its Supreme Governor, the Queen. That leeway has proved controversial, as when in 1990 Margaret Thatcher picked the outsider George Carey as a way, it was alleged, of snubbing his predecessor Robert Runcie, who had vociferously criticised her policies.

In 2007, however, Gordon Brown set up the Crown Nominations’ Commission (CNC) so as to hand responsibility back entirely to the Church. The 16 members of the CNC will choose a “preferred” candidate for David Cameron to rubber-stamp. A second “appointable” name will only be provided in case unexpected problems arise with the first.

“The new arrangements are being tested at a time when the Church is more polarised now than at any time in its recent history,” says Andrew Carey, a columnist in the Church of England Newspaper and son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury. “The controversy around the appointment of [the openly gay] Jeffrey John as a bishop in 2003, and his subsequent withdrawal, and then the decision to go ahead with women bishops, have only deepened the divisions during Rowan’s time as Archbishop. These issues now hang over the Church like a stalactite.”

Carey is broadly on the Low Church or Evangelical wing of the Church of England. At the other end of the spectrum, the novelist and churchgoer Kate Saunders shares his pessimism about any “unity” candidate emerging. “We sometimes pride ourselves as Anglicans on being a broad church, and that does have many benefits, but the downside is that we can never agree with each other, even on the most basic questions, such as whether we are essentially a Protestant church or a reformed Catholic church. And that debate goes all the way back to the Reformation.”

In more recent times, the chosen method for keeping the various factions of the Church content when selecting an Archbishop of Canterbury has been to alternate High Church and Low Church appointments. Or Catholic and Evangelical, if you prefer those terms (labels are another thing Anglicans disagree on). “The appointments have been a kind of see-saw,” says Glyn Paflin, deputy editor of the Church Times, vade mecum of the Anglican establishment, “but you can only describe it in that way in the most general of terms. So in this rotation George Carey is labelled as ‘Low’, but then as Archbishop he visited the ‘High’ Marian shrine at Walsingham.” So, after the High Rowan Williams, the CNC should, in theory, be seeking an Evangelical.

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