On the face of it, I don’t have much in common with Sarah Mullally, who was yesterday appointed the new Archbishop of Canterbury. I strongly suspect that we don’t vote the same way, that we have divergent cultural priorities, and that we take our pleasures in very different spheres of life. I am an observant though far from outstanding Catholic; she is at the liberal end of the Church of England. If she scrolled my social media feed, I dare say she would be rolling her eyes before too long — and vice versa.

It is tempting, therefore, to react to her appointment with a certain amount of harrumphing and grumbling about the CofE, the church of which I was a member for a decade before swimming the Tiber 20 years ago. There are genuine grounds for concern. She is pro-choice on abortion, which will put the final nail in the coffin of any meaningful institutional Anglican witness on that issue for the foreseeable future. She appears to be a revisionist on matters of sex and gender, having committed the Diocese of London to LGBT+ History Month, while her public statements on politics suggest the usual gloopy soft-Left open-borders Blobbism.

Some have expressed disquiet about how she handled the Martin Sargeant fraud scandal, though that was mostly the legacy of her long-serving predecessor as Bishop of London, Richard Chartres. There will be plenty of further sniping, both reasonable and ill-natured, but it might be better, as she begins her role, to look for the points of light. Marcus Walker, the Rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City, speaks highly of her pastoral work in London parishes. Catholic religious journalist Damian Thompson, meanwhile, notes that she has a “warm personality” — not a tribute that can be paid to every Christian leader.

It is true, too, that Mullally deserves some benefit of the doubt over her future plans, like most newcomers to high office. As we Catholics discovered earlier this year with the intriguing figure of Pope Leo, a new broom is always a chance for fresh thinking, and a break from any failures and disappointments associated with the previous incumbent. We might see, for example, a moderation of the high-handed centralising approach to local churches under Justin Welby that so infuriated many parish clergy and spawned the Save The Parish movement.

More fundamentally, Christians should remember that they are all ultimately hoping for the same things, and seeking repentance and renewal. The American Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft often quotes the aphorism, “When an axe murderer is at the door, feuding brothers reconcile.” Squabbling between the practising faithful has long been a luxury that we can ill afford. Despite some tentative green shoots of recovery, English Christianity remains in a precarious state, with ageing congregations and an insistently secular and materialist culture peeling off members at a high rate of attrition.

Those of us in the faith who have strong disagreements with Mullally should perhaps be willing to save those arguments for another day, to bite our tongues for now, and be willing to put our shoulders to the wheel with her. It is a time of great difficulty for British Christians, but also of great hope.

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Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

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