The noun “crisis” may be a journalistic cliché but it aptly describes the state of the Church of England. When Justin Welby is enthroned in March as Archbishop of Canterbury, he will command respect for his personal and spiritual qualities, and the loyalty of 85 million Anglicans worldwide. But he has a huge task in healing a divided Church.
We wish him well in it, knowing his deep understanding of the significance of faith in an age of scepticism. The message that he and other servants of the Gospel will proclaim from the pulpit tomorrow is that Christianity is bound up with history — that in ancient Palestine 2,000 years ago, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.
Contemporary mythologies had accounts of divine and miraculous births; but Christianity declares Jesus to be God incarnate. Through all the rigours of ecclesiastical politics — and the traumas of religious persecution in such countries as Zimbabwe, Iran and Pakistan — Christians affirm that God is concerned with the stuff of human life, for, in a particular time and place, He became human.

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