Man may assume that Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, put some effort into preparing his sermon. This Monday, it is to become the centerpiece of a state funeral the likes of which the world has probably not seen in decades. When Welby’s predecessor Rowan Williams was recently asked what direction the Archbishop of Canterbury would give his words, he recalled that the Queen “didn’t like obituaries” and preferred to look forward rather than backward. Welby will “probably try to offer comfort, but also to challenge, in a positive sense, what kind of country we are and want to be.”
The oscillating between the spiritual and the earthly, between liturgy and politics, lies with Welby. Before he “heard the call of God” in 1989, at the age of 33, and switched to priestly training, he had worked internationally in the oil industry for eleven years. He had already received a very worldly character from his parents. His mother came from an illustrious family and was a personal secretary for many years Winston Churchills his father, the scion of a German-Jewish refugee, was a colorful figure on both sides of the Atlantic. Although his parents became addicted to alcohol and he had, in his own words, a “difficult childhood”, there was enough money to enable the son to study at Eton and Cambridge.
