An Evangelical Ascends

The Primate of All England and spiritual leader of the 46 million Anglicans on six continents is appointed in a peculiarly secular fashion. The Prime Minister of England (in the case of Harold Wilson, a Congregationalist) submits a single name to the Queen, who as head of the church makes the ritual nomination. To be sure, the Prime Minister has received advice from church leaders, but only after the Queen's approval is the name sent, for pro forma church election, to the dean and chapter of the historic see of Canterbury.

F. Donald Coggan, 64, named by the Queen last week as the 101st Archbishop of Canterbury, may be the last primate chosen by this method. He will take over from A. Michael Ramsey, who will retire in November at the age of 70, a church that is struggling to gain greater independence from the state* and, above all, to survive despite the enormous apathy among its members.

The choice was not unexpected among either ecclesiastics or London bookmakers, who were giving Coggan 2 to 1 odds at the time of his nomination.

As the Archbishop of York, he has been Britain's second-ranking churchman since 1961, and he is known as a fine preacher, administrator and scholar. Another leading candidate was Bishop John Howe, who administers the worldwide Anglican Consultative Council and who, at 53, may yet have a chance at the top post. Coggan is generally viewed as an interim leader; he is expected to follow Ramsey's precedent and retire at 70, which will give him only five years in office. Meanwhile other, younger bishops will be seasoned, and a logical successor may emerge.

The Church Times, England's leading Anglican publication, praised Coggan as a man of "true evangelistic zeal and fervor" who was taking on a job that was "no bed of roses." Wrote Mervyn Stockwood, the liberal and nonconformist Bishop of Southwark, in the London Times: "I placed Donald Coggan at the top of the list. [He] is well aware of the problems that confront a generation that has been reared in a scientific era ... [He] is increasingly aware of the need for the church to concern itself with practical affairs." Others praised Coggan's efficiency and administrative abilities. "A theologian with a tape recorder handy for prompt dictation, and a meticulousness equal to that of any managing director," wrote Baden Hickman in The Guardian. A few years ago Coggan took the unprecedented step of hiring a management consultant to streamline his diocese at York.

Coggan is not considered in Ramsey's league as an intellectual, but he has excellent credentials. He earned a double first at Cambridge, has written nine books and coordinated the translation of the New English Bible from Greek and Hebrew. A teacher of Semitic languages, he once responded graciously to an introduction by a Jewish lord mayor of London with a discourse in Hebrew. Bespectacled and gray-haired, Coggan has a quietly appealing air of informality; he is as open and relaxed as Ramsey is reserved. A family man (two daughters, one a teacher in England, the other a missionary doctor in Pakistan), Coggan delayed replying to Prime Minister Wilson's offer for four days. "There were those who wanted a quicker answer, but I said, 'No, come off it. I want to say my prayers and I want to talk with my wife, who, after all, shares the work with me.' "

Coggan began his career in a working-class parish, and as a bishop has kept contact with ordinary folk by visiting breweries, mines and shipyards. He occasionally dons a cassock, but generally wears a simple pin-stripe suit with purple vest. Says he: " 'Your Grace' and all that doesn't mean very much to me. It's not the label on the bottle but what's inside that matters."

The most striking fact about Coggan is that he is the first product of the church's Evangelical (Low Church) wing to become primate since John Bird Sumner was appointed 126 years ago.

The Evangelicals, who stem from the Evangelical Revival of the 18th century, generally lean to Calvinist theology, hold to individual conversion and biblical authority, and stress preaching more than ritual.

Though they sometimes seem like Anglo-Baptists, the Anglican Evangelicals are generally not of the Billy Graham "hot gospel" stripe. Coggan was trained at an Evangelical seminary and taught at two others, in Toronto and London. Since he became a bishop in 1956, he has avoided party entanglements and is viewed today as a solid churchman popular with all elements. However, his orientation is evident in his concern for preaching, his longtime presidency of the world union of Bible societies, his interest in the "Feed the Minds" campaign to supply Christian reading to newly literate peoples, and his major recent project, "Call to the North," an attempt to spread the Gospel in the north of England.

Actually, a bit of evangelistic flair could prove useful in a church that is steadily losing its historical grip on the nation. Although the Church of England claims a baptized membership of 28 million people,* only 2.6 million are active enough to vote on parish affairs, and a mere 1.8 million worship at Easter. An equally important sign of church malaise is the declining interest in church work. Only 373 men entered the ministry in 1973, compared with 636 ten years before.

Ramsey, with his bobbing eyebrows and familiar stutter, was a colorful man whom Hollywood might have cast in the archiepiscopal role. No evangelist, he was primarily interested in ecumenism, theology and social issues. Appropriately for a High Church man, his major accomplishment was his rapprochement with Roman Catholicism, which led to agreements on the Eucharist and the ministry by a joint theological commission. His major failure, perhaps, was the defeat of his plan to merge with the Methodists, England's third largest church group after the Anglicans and Roman Catholics; the Anglican General Synod turned down Ramsey's proposal.

In social outlook, Ramsey usually gave firm support to Third World causes, attacking not only South African apartheid but also Britain's curb on immigration of Kenyan Asians with British passports. In one rash moment, he informed the government that it would be morally right to send troops to protect the rights of black Rhodesians against the white regime.

Some younger churchmen find Ramsey's successor too conservative.

Coggan is horrified by the spread of pornography and has spoken of Britain as a "sick society" that would become healthy when "it starts living by some rules again. There's a lot to be said for the Ten Commandments." But he has publicly advocated more compassionate treatment of homosexuals, and is far from indifferent to poverty and racial problems in England and abroad. "This insular island must have its attention drawn to the Third World and its needs," Coggan said last week, and as for apartheid, he has publicly stated that it is incompatible with Christian beliefs.

Open Question. Coggan supported Ramsey's Methodist merger plan, and he now sees that effort as part of a "larger unity program" encompassing all Christians. Indeed, his own Call to the North program involves 52 denominational leaders, including Catholics and Salvation Army workers, who meet regularly at York to discuss how best to spread the word of God. Coggan appears receptive to the ordination of women, a practice that has never occurred in Anglicanism except for a handful of cases in Hong Kong. "It is now an open question," Coggan says. "The emotions are less and the intelligent approach has increased--I would not be surprised to see it happening in the next five years." Like Ramsey, he wants expanded church power in the appointment of bishops and the right to change the liturgy without Parliament's approval. He opposes total "disestablishment," however, because "a radical break would be taken as a sign of abandonment of the Christian faith on the part of the nation."

Coggan faces the church's enormous problems with optimism. He may have to preside over half-empty pews but he calls them half-full. Anyone who thinks the church is dying "needs his head examined," he remarked last year. "If they could see what is going on, they would say how very lively the church is in many places." Because of his probable short term of office, he is already dismissed by some as a caretaker leader--as Pope John XXIII was when he was enthroned. With typical good spirits, Coggan responds that "caretaker" is a "splendid title. There is a saying in the New Testament, 'Take care of the Church of God,' and that is something which I am very proud to do."

*Ramsey was one of the chief architects of the church's program to seek greater autonomy. A General Synod with broader legislative powers than the previously existing Church Assembly was established during his tenure. Last February the Synod voted to ask Parliament to grant the church greater control over its worship. Parliament is expected to give its approval, and the church will then begin to move slowly away from the state. *Outside England, the countries with the largest numbers of Anglicans (or Episcopalians) are Australia, 3.7 million; the U.S.. 3.2 million; South Africa and Uganda, 1.3 million each.

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