Press release from the Archbishop of Canterbury
Bishop David Urquhart to be the new Bishop to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York
02/02/2023
Archbishop Justin Welby and Archbishop Stephen Cottrell have announced the Rt Revd David Urquhart as the new Bishop to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. Bishop David will work directly for both Archbishops and closely with the entire College of Bishops. Bishop David takes over from Bishop Emma Ineson who has been appointed Bishop of Kensington.
As a senior member of the Archbishops’ teams, Bishop David will play a key role in supporting the Archbishops and liaising with the House and College of Bishops, as well as alongside NCI and Diocesan colleagues and other key stakeholders.
Bishop David will be part-time in this one-year interim role while continuing in his other part-time role as Assistant Priest for St Mary at Hill in the City of London. He will start in post next week.
Bishop David was ordained in York Minster in 1984 and served in parishes in Hull and Coventry. In 2000 he became Bishop of Birkenhead and in 2006 Bishop of Birmingham, succeeding John Sentamu after he became Archbishop of York, stepping down in October 2022.
He became the Convenor of the Lords Spiritual in May 2015, and was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (KCMG) for services to international relations in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2018.
As previous chair of the West Midlands Bishops, and former member of the Assets Committee of the Church Commissioners, Bishop David has wide experience of many aspects of Church and national life.
Bishop David said: “I am looking forward to supporting the ministry of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and to sharing with them the pastoral and practical needs and opportunities of our episcopal colleagues across the Church of England”.
Archbishop Justin Welby and Archbishop Stephen Cottrell said: “We are delighted to welcome Bishop David to this important role. We know he will bring his considerable wisdom, humour and humility to the role, as well as his wealth of experience as a bishop and leader in the Church and the national life.”
If the Archbishop of Canterbury concentrated on England, not the Anglican Communion, not only might he reach better decisions but maybe we wouldn’t need this additional bishop.
But with the greatest respect that’s his job! – It comes with the territory. He is head of the Anglican Communion. He has a ridiculously impossible brief and he is trying to keep things together – that’s what makes the decisions both difficult and unsatisfactory. +David is retired and is willing to offer his skills and talents to the wider church when most of us would probably want to take up a hobby and relax a bit. I am as distressed as most people on here about LLF and our inability to be just and inclusive. Its a mess, but… Read more »
I will disagree from Australia. He chairs the Lambeth Conference. Other than that he plays no role in the autonomous Anglican Church of Australia. He is always a welcome and honoured guest when here.
It doesn’t seem to have been the job of previous ABCs to the same degree. Certainly none of those required an extra bishop.
I think the time has come for the ABC to stop being the head of the Anglican Communion. It should be chaired rotationally for six months/a year at a time, and its purpose should be to maintain dialogue between the many parts of its one body. There’s no reason why the Lambeth Conference cannot continue, but, as has been pointed out elsewhere, each country/area can and will continue to make its own decisions. Rather than a “schism”, it could be a new way of working that celebrates our commonalities in Christ and keeps us talking to on another. This would… Read more »
Well, from 1980 there was a ‘Bishop at Lambeth’ supporting the ABC. The new name now supports York as well as Canterbury. I think ‘Bishop to ….’ is a confusing choice of name, with resonances of ‘pastor pastorum’.
It’s one part. The others are a focus on England and the Diocese of Canterbury. They are meant to be equally emphasised, but actually how it’s worked out will vary by the person in the role (as you’d expect).
Have I got this right? The former bishop of Birmingham is another oil man who trained at Wycliffe? Bound to be even-handed, then.
What does the Bishop to the Archbishops do that requires them to be a bishop? Emergency ordinations? If the role is simply about being the Archbishops’ Special Representative To Other Bishops, are we to take it as given that bishops will not pay attention to anyone who is not themselves a bishop? That would explain so much …
In 1919 Major Harry Barnes MP compared the bureaucracy of the CofE to the model espoused by Lenin for the fledgling Soviet Union (https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1919-11-07/debates/b557391b-6134-4e76-8454-d19efecdbe75/NationalAssemblyOfTheChurchOfEngland(Powers)BillLords). He could not have known the extent to which that model has grown with more and more members of the Central Committee, the Politburo and the Secretariat, and less and less notice taken by them of grass-roots soviets. In biological terms I see an increasingly malignant tumour stealing nutrients from the surrounding tissues that do the work so that body is left to waste away from inanition. Quite what one can do about this escapes me:… Read more »
Professor, I once chanced upon a member of staff at the English College in Rome; he said that as the number of seminarians declined the number of committees he was expected to attend correspondingly increased. As the CofE’s state of entropy develops the bishops are deploying the maxim “Jesus is coming, look busy”, another bishop at Lambeth plumps up the Court there. His involvement will necessitate more secretarial support – those minutes won’t write themselves you know!
“Bishop David will work directly for both Archbishops and closely with the entire College of Bishops”
“As a senior member of the Archbishops’ teams”
“play a key role in supporting the Archbishops and liaising with the House and College of Bishops”
“other key stakeholders”
“this important role”
But what will he actually do?
Presumably he will do what all important people do in the C of E these days: co-ordinate things; facilitate things; envision things; convene things; add additional capacity to things; inspire things; signpost things; support things; empower people; enable people, etc. No, I don’t know what any of that means either, but I’m sure they’re all very busy doing it.
I should have got the job. I can do any of those things.
Lovely and accurate.
A very surprising appointment. He is 70 and has retired from Birmingham. Is this a full time role or is he just providing informal advice on an ad hoc basis?
See paragraph 3 – “Bishop David will be part-time in this one-year interim role”.
Can’t we simply recognise these moving around of the chess board pieces as largely an irrelevance to the core mission of the Church of England and focus instead on that church’s core mission? I speak as a Dean who this Sunday is about to step down as notionally a “senior leader” to become a parish priest. I would strongly commend Bishop Clive Gregory’s resignation comments (recorded on TA a few weeks ago) as important testimony.
In case this helps, from 6 Jan TA piece,
https://www.lichfield.anglican.org/news/bishop-clive-to-retire.php
Or is it moving the deckchairs around on the Titanic?
funny how parishes have to wait for up to18 months or longer for a vacancy to be filled, but this role can be filled in 4 weeks….
It’s clearly an important role…
It’s clearly explained above: “Bishop David will be part-time in this one-year interim role while continuing in his other part-time role as Assistant Priest for St Mary at Hill in the City of London.”
He is already involved in parish ministry. I don’t know how/ when retirement age applies, but doubtless it will kick in.
The actual job involves those tasks which the canons reserve to the archbishops but where they don’t need to be personally involved. For instance licences to overseas clergy. They can also be used as a go-between for an awkward pastoral conversation. Presumably the person they want for the job is not available for another year.
Or that the Archbishop of Canterbury is preparing the for ground his own retirement – and it would not be fair to appoint someone on a long term basis when his successor might want to do things differently – or have a different kind of person in the role.
Thanks Clare, that was what I wondered too.
Yet another evangelical ‘promotion’. Quelle surprise. So depressing.
I haven’t quite understood the role of Bishop to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, but think it broadly equates to the Bishop at Lambeth model, except it now supports both archbishops. With a disproportionate amount of self-imposed foreign affairs, someone needs to mind the shop.
Archbishop Welby says he and the Church put survivors first, but this appointment gives the lie to it. David Urquhart’s handling of safeguarding issues – and particularly of the Harborne review, was shocking. He required the victim to sign an NDA in order to see a (heavily redacted) review into her own case. And that report is still not available.
If the Archbishops want to be taken seriously by survivors of church abuse, they must act as if they’re serious.
Janet is right. Giving this role to +Urquhart is sticking two fingers up to survivors of church abuse, who he served so badly in Birmingham. For background, see the report on abuse by the vicar of Harborne. I don’t suppose that ++Welby and ++Cottrell have thought about this.
Previous Bishops at Lambeth have had a prominent role in liaising with survivors on behalf of the Archbishop. I can’t see any way that survivors will agree to engage with +Urquhart.
Urqhart was also criticised in the Pearl Report for having ‘forgotten’ a disclosure by a survivor of abuse by Whitsey.
Why is it that bishops keep getting away with failures?