This issue might blow up surprisingly soon. London needs a new bishop, and there are rumours that a traditionalist candidate is being considered. Would the Church really risk antagonising the liberal majority, and prodding this dormant crisis into life?

Is there anything much to say about Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury? It seems that she is a very nice, Christian lady. She used to be Britain’s top nurse. Um, she is a brilliant manager. She is good at washing people’s feet, both for practical and ceremonial purposes. She has an awesome work-ethic. She can show emotion: she cried when telling the Church of England’s Synod about the micro-aggressions that female clergy suffer. She seems to embody the Church’s official line on the gay issue: in favour of greater inclusion, but not wanting to change the doctrine of marriage.

To help me out I have just read a very brief biography by Tim Wyatt. It was like reading a long essay about the merits of vanilla ice-cream. What stuck with me? Mullally grew up in Surrey; her family wasn’t very religious; they enjoyed going on bike-rides together. Um. As a student she attended a conservative evangelical church. She then became more middle-of-the-road, but she has seemingly never commented on this shift. Indeed it is not clear that she has ever said anything much at all relating to theology – nothing that Wyatt thinks worth recording anyway. There is no mention of any theologian who has influenced her, not even C.S. Lewis. Her devotion to the Church is not in doubt, but does it have an intellectual side at all?

This mini-biography is part of a new book called Archbishop Sarah Mullally and Ten Urgent Challenges For the C of E; after Wyatt’s sketch ten other Anglicans share their thoughts. All the essays are friendly: all the writers are liberals, urging her to be bolder on this or that issue, from climate to trans.

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