Notes from the Archbishop’s Underground

Ruth Gledhill on what distinguishes the current Archbishop of Canterbury from his predecessor . In a phrase, “intellectual arrogance.” Or, perhaps as the current ABC said himself when addressing the Synod, he is simply prone to a “misleading choice of words” “clumsily deployed.”

Well, if the archbishop is in fact both an “iconoclast” and a “mystic,” as Kendall Harmon describes him , then no doubt his choice of words, however deployed, make a good deal of sense to himself, if to few others.

I look forward to his book on Dostoyevsky. We’ve had from him books on Teresa of Avila and Arius. I would much prefer a book on Thomas Cranmer or Richard Hooker. But out of sight, out of mind, I guess . . .