Sentamu dismisses newspaper claims
on Thursday, 30 November 2006 at 7.13 pm by Simon Sarmiento
categorised as Church of England
Speaking on a local radio station in York, the Archbishop of York has dismissed newspaper gossip that he wants to take over as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Archbishop denies Canterbury tale
What is he talking about? See here, and also here.
It is yet more press guff, looking out for knocking copy, which is a good guy bad guy game (Sentamu=good, Williams=bad) and the subtext that the English English (as in Williams) have lost religion and we need it from abroad (new English).
If Sentamu was where Williams was, the stresses and strains would be precisely the same. Williams stands in the middle of the road, looking at the kerbs back and forth, and gets run over, and Semantu would be (assume) more on one side of the road, and get run over.
Sentamu is a good media operator, and Williams isn’t. The media find Williams immensely frustrating, whereas Sentamu can use the media and so they prefer him. Also, his arguments are more clear and easy to put into journalistic language
I do think that handling the media is pretty much essential in today’s world.
The sad part is that this presupposes a choice between them, when we actually need both. We need a man of Williams’s academia and a man of Sentamu’s fearlessness. Each can then balance the other. His stance against the deChristianizing of British society balances out Williams’s inherent passivity on those issues. His approach to the “BA Cross wearing” issue went too far, and contained some unnecessary fear mongering that tends to weaken his more valid arguments in this area. By implying that we must be all one or all the other, the press is missing the point. Sadly, it’ll play… Read more »
Isn’t Williams Welsh – not sure he would be happy to be “English-English” Also – supposing we do need people from abroad to lead our churches – no shame in that. There should be that interplay of Africans coming here, us going to Africa – missionary pastors who both are sensitive to the culture but can also bring more in. I say let’s see more like Sentamu and Nazir-Ali! And Ford – whether its the two men in question or no – I agree we need both types of person – thoughtful academics and fearless pioneers and not just two… Read more »