It is not easy to find a sufficiently neutral tone of voice with which to assess the accomplishments of The Most Rev’d Dame Sarah Mullally the latest Archbishop of Canterbury. The danger is inevitably that one runs the risk of sounding elitist or condescending. But the change in the quality of Archbishop is one that Anglicanism has itself chosen and inflicted upon itself. So the danger has to be braved and risked.

One of the reasons Anglicanism once achieved dignity and respect in the public square was due to the highest level of intellectual and professional competence embodied in its Archbishops. When the spoke about complex issues of faith, ethics and theology in the public square, they did so with records of intellectual and philosophical achievement that were at least the equal and usually superior to most other commentators. They were listened to with the respect such competence deserved, even amongst those who disagreed with them.

Something went wrong with the appointment of Justin Welby, when a man was chosen without anything beyond the basic theological credentials, and not much parish experience either.

It was thought that his prior career in middle management within the oil industry compensated for this. It turned out that it didn’t.

The serious complexities of being responsible for a highly complex organisation like the Church of England tragically proved to be beyond him at almost every level of engagement.

Astonishingly he was effectively finally sacked because of a failure in basic administration. He lost sight of the paperwork and progress of a disastrous sexual scandal; a situation that was not improved when it was discovered that he had first hand knowledge of the circumstances and might have been expected to treat the crisis with as much seriousness and practical acumen as it deserved.

Was this then the moment to return to the model of intellectually, theologically and experientially qualified clergy of the highest calibre in looking for a new Archbishop?

The immediate predecessors were highly impressive people:

• Michael Ramsey was Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
• Donald Coggan was a classical scholar, a biblical linguist, and a specialist in New Testament Greek.
• Robert Runcie had been a fellow and Dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and principal of an Oxford theological college.
• George Carey, despite humble beginnings, distinguished himself with a PhD and became principal of a theological college.
• Rowan Williams, perhaps the most intellectually distinguished of his generation, was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford.

Against this background, the difficulty with the appointment of Sarah Mullally is clear: the Church of England appears to have abandoned the expectation of deep theological formation, augmented by proven church experience and replaced it with a different set of qualities.

Sarah Mullally trained first as a nurse at South London Polytechnic. Demonstrating real ability once in nursing, she rose to the highest levels of nursing administration.

She later trained for ordination as a clergywoman at evening classes, completing a two-year diploma at a newly created Church of England training institution designed for busy professionals entering ministry.

Her theological formation comprised of a diploma for which she studied part time over two years.

After being ordained she accumulated three years experience in one parish before being promoted to assistant bishop. So she had neither theology, nor experience in a context when most bishops will have served for about twenty years in parishes, including a learning curve which often involved experience as an Archdeacon or Cathedral Dean. It can only be assumed that rising to the top of nursing administration compensated for these gaps in expertise and experience.

It became harder to maintain such confidence when voices of victims of sexual abuse were raised claiming that her administrative incompetence was tarnished by the way she dealt with the suicide of a false accused priest and the complaints of other victims of abuse.

Sarah Mullally deserves respect for reaching the top of two entirely different professions. But many will reasonably ask whether this is sufficient preparation for the role of Archbishop of Canterbury — a role in which she will be tested by some of the most intellectually formidable figures in public life.

Unless, of course, it is now thought that the Church of England no longer needs to represent theological, intellectual, and spiritual excellence of the highest order — and that other gifts may be considered equivalent.

We know she has administrative competence. We know she is widely regarded as personable and kind. The question her critics raise is whether this is enough.

The sermon at her consecration functioned inevitably as a kind of shop window to demonstrate what the latest Anglican Archbishop had to offer in this august office. It was both a shock and a surprise to find that within the first minutes alarm bells were ringing. Whatever criteria count towards a good homily, mistakes a teenager would not make are not amongst them. What went wrong?

She began her sermon by referring to a recent walk she had made from London to Canterbury, suggesting it echoed the pilgrimage of her predecessor, Thomas Becket.

This might seem folksy and charming, but it contains factual historical errors.

First, it is far from clear that the Catholic Archbishops of Canterbury — her predecessors — can be claimed in any meaningful continuity beyond the Anglican borrowing of the title. This is matter of contention, but for politeness sake we can set it aside. There was a more serious problem.

Anyone with even a modest familiarity with history knows that there were no pilgrimages to Canterbury before Beckett’s death. His death caused them. He did not go on pilgrimages to his own tomb. They only arose after his martyrdom. It was the extraordinary reports of miracles at his tomb that gave rise to the great pilgrimage tradition.

It may not seem hugely important but as a matter of historical awareness it ought to be hard to ignore the fact if you are a Protestant preacher, that that pilgrimage itself is a specifically Catholic practice, rooted in penitence, conversion, and the sacramental life of the Church. It belongs within a theological framework that includes indulgences and the remission of the temporal effects of sin — concepts historically associated with doctrines such as Purgatory.

These are precisely the doctrines that Anglicanism has repudiated from its origin.

It is therefore something of a muddle — and perhaps a revealing one — that an Archbishop of Canterbury should begin her ministry by unconsciously blending together theological elements that do not, in fact, belong together within the tradition she represents founded on a false and misunderstood historical narrative.

But after the informal and inaccurate introduction, things got no better. Rather worse. The whole homily appeared to be a tribute to Moral Therapeutic Deism. But I wanted to test my reaction against a more sympathetic perspective.

So I asked Peter Ould to join me in discussing it.

Many of you will know who Peter is. He is an ordained clergyman in the Church of England and has lived in Canterbury for many years. For thirty years he ahs become a much admired commentator. He has written, spoken, and broadcast on issues around Christianity, sexuality, and the Church of England. He read his theology at Oxford before his parish ministry.

But also he is a trained statistician who too has impressive secular qualifications alongsid ehis theological ones. (He has designed and implemented credit-scoring and regulatory models for banks across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He has consulted for major firms and contributed to prudential regulation in the UK through work connected with the Financial Conduct Authority.) He currently leads credit risk provision for a UK bank — and, in his spare time, raises a family of three teenagers.

Despite being a lifelong fan of Doctor Who, he has also has advanced towards the top of his profession.

Here (below) is our conversation. Peter begins by rebuking people (mainly Anglicans) who have been gratuitously rude about their new Archbishop. He addresses the insults, starting with, she is NOT a witch.