Anglican Female Archbishop Enthroned in ‘Woke Fever Dream’

On Wednesday, Sarah Elizabeth Malallie was formally enthroned as the 106th archbishop of Canterbury, the first woman to hold the office in its 1,400-year history.

• The New York Times called it historic. The Church of England called it hopeful. The Trumpet calls it a symptom of the institution’s terminal illness.

Symbolic: Malallie was installed in a ceremony that included pink-haired clergy, ecumenical chanting and pageantry that looked, in the words of one observer, like a “woke fever dream.”

The ongoing liberalization of the Church of England was also highlighted in October when its head, King Charles iii of England, visited the Vatican and prayed with the pope in the Sistine Chapel, the first time a British monarch had done so since the Church of England broke from Rome 500 years prior. Charles also said, before becoming king, that he wanted to be a “defender of faith,” rather than “the defender of the faith” as specified in the coronation oath.

• The Church of England had weekly attendance exceeding 1 million in 1980. That figure has now dropped below 700,000 in a country of 68 million people.
• Meanwhile, Roman Catholic conversions are surging. The New York Times reported this week that bishops across the United States are trying to understand the source of a wave of new converts, the most pronounced cohort of which is adults ages 18 to 35.

Not silly—serious: The enthronement ceremony had all the gravity of a theatrical production. But this is not fiction. The Church of England is crumbling, and Britain is crumbling with it.

• For decades, the Church of England has chased relevance by pursuing fashionable societal trends. The appointment of Archbishop Malallie, a former health-care worker, is offered as the solution to those decades of decline. But this “fresh start” is actually doubling down on changing the church to be more like society instead of the other way around.

The Church of England could not more clearly reject the Holy Bible’s New Testament teaching in 1 Timothy 2:12: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man ….”

Bible prophecy warns: “For the leaders of this people cause them to err; and they that are led of them are destroyed” (Isaiah 9:16).

The Church of England reflects England’s national character. When even the nation’s church rejects God’s Word, the nation is cut off from God. Britain is not simply struggling politically or militarily; it is spiritually lost. A female archbishop of Canterbury did not cause this dire spiritual state, but it is one of its clearest symptoms.