The 94th successor to St. Augustine will retire March 31.
This is no mean event—for the Most Reverend and Right Honorable Cosmo Gordon Lang, P.C., G.C.V.O., D.D., D.C.L., LL.D., D.Litt., Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England, is the senior prelate of the Anglican Church, which with its worldwide affiliates (including the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.) has 40,000,000 members. Spiritually, only the Pope has more followers. Temporally, Canterbury ranks among Britons next to the royal family, takes precedence over the Prime Minister. Even a King cannot safely defy him, for his opposition, making use of the Anglican stand against divorce, was a major factor in forcing Edward VIII to abdicate.
Only thrice before in the 1,345 years since Augustine landed in Kent has an Archbishop of Canterbury left office before death relieved him. But 77-year-old Cosmo Cantuar, as the Archbishop signs him self (Cantuar: abbreviation for Cantuarium, Latin for Canterbury), felt he had good cause.
"In Ordinary times I might have been able to continue my work for a few more years," he explained. "But the times are not ordinary. . . . When this war is over great tasks of reconstruction must await the Church as well as the State. Preparation for these tasks must begin now." In emphasizing the need for post-war reconstruction, Dr. Lang clearly implied that his personal choice as a successor is the man who is probably the world's leading exponent of Christian social reconstruction: portly, brilliant, 60-year-old William Temple, Archbishop of York and second-ranking Anglican prelate.
When Lang was promoted from York to Canterbury in 1928, Temple succeeded him at York. Temple may well succeed him again. Outstanding as a church administrator and theologian as well as a reformer, Dr. Temple a year ago called the famed Malvern Conference to seize for the Church leadership in "ordering the new society." In December he led an official interdenominational commission (TIME, Jan. 5) in a far-to-the-left program for Social Justice & Economic Reconstruction which he called "a conscious and deliberate attempt to cancel the divorce between theology and economics." But York may decline the Primacy—on the grounds that it would bog him down with State duties—in order to leave himself freer for postwar planning.
Like many another thing British, the unwritten system of appointing bishops and archbishops in England is antiquated, illogical, even blasphemous—but in practice quite effective. The King, who is the official head of the Church of England, supposedly picks the prelates. Actually the Prime Minister does (even when he is a Unitarian like Neville Chamberlain). The appointee's name is then forwarded to the cathedral chapter of the vacant diocese. The chapter assembles, prays for God's guidance, opens the sealed envelope, elects the man whose name it finds inside. The system has produced at least as good a batch of bishops as other systems.