The archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans, is to retire three years ahead of the usual retirement age for the post.
Archbishop George Carey, who made the widely-expected announcement Tuesday, will leave office in October, when he will be 67, after having helped Queen Elizabeth II mark the 50th anniversary of her reign. It is understood that the Queen asked him to stay on for her golden jubilee this year.
Carey has been archbishop of Canterbury since 1991.
"I shall have served eleven-and-a-half years in a demanding yet wonderfully absorbing and rewarding post," he said. "I feel certain this will be the right and proper time to stand down. I look forward to exciting opportunities and challenges in the coming months, and then to fresh ones in the years that follow."
A senior church official at a press briefing today denied that Carey was retiring early, pointing out that bishops could retire from age 65. "Dr Carey wants to hand on the baton to his successor while he is still full of energy, vitality and commitment and I can assure you that he is," the official said.
Carey's three immediate predecessors—Robert Runcie, Donald Coggan, and Michael Ramsey—all served until around the age of 70, but the pressures of the post have been increasing while the see of Canterbury has developed as the de facto presidency of the world-wide Anglican Communion.
Last year, the head of a team inquiring into the future of the Canterbury see, Lord Hurd of Westwell, suggested that the archbishop's job was becoming unmanageable.
"Lambeth [the archbishop's administrative office in London] has grown organically. We are trying to make the whole manageable," Hurd said.
Among the proposals in the team's report are the appointment of a foreign bishop to work at Lambeth on Anglican Communion affairs, and more freedom for the archbishop from his duties as a diocesan bishop.
Carey's retirement creates an obvious opportunity to restructure the Canterbury see.
Among those mentioned by commentators as possible successors to Carey are the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres; the Bishop of Liverpool, James Jones; the Bishop of St Albans, Christopher Herbert; the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali; and the Archbishop of Wales, Rowan Williams.
The Church of England's second-ranking prelate, the archbishop of York, David Hope, is not viewed as a candidate. There is no automatic succession from York to Canterbury, and Hope is only a few years younger than Carey.
Since the Church of England is an establishment church, the appointment of bishops and archbishops is made in the name of Queen Elizabeth II, but in practice by the British government.
The new archbishop of Canterbury will be chosen by Prime Minister Tony Blair, himself an Anglican, from two names put forward by church authorities.
The person Blair chooses as archbishop will have to face the challenge of holding together both the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.
Much of Carey's time has been spent dealing with potential splits in the two bodies. Early in his tenure, in 1994, the first women priests were ordained into the Church of England—a move strongly supported by the archbishop. A major split in the church was avoided by the appointment of "flying bishops," allowing traditionalist parishes to receive pastoral supervision from bishops of like mind rather than the diocesan bishop.
Pressure has since built for women to be appointed as bishops. A church commission of inquiry is examining the issue under the chairmanship of one of the presumed candidates to succeed Carey, Bishop Nazir-Ali, who has expressed personal sympathy with the idea of women bishops.
The Church of England and the Anglican Communion face the unresolved issue of homosexuality within the church. Carey has made clear his opposition to the ordination of practicing homosexuals. The 1998 Lambeth Conference, the world-wide gathering of Anglican bishops, declared, with Carey's support, that homosexual practice was incompatible with Scripture.
Carey found himself in the middle of a dispute involving the Episcopal (Anglican) Church in the United States and conservative dissidents. In January 2000, two Americans were consecrated bishops outside the country, returning to the U.S. to work as missionaries. The archbishop said he could not recognize bishops who did not have the support of the territorial authorities.
One of the chief themes of Carey's time in office has been the fight against moral relativism. In 1996 he observed: "We live in a society which is losing touch with its traditional religious and moral roots. … Individualism and relativism have seeped deep into our culture."
In 2000, Carey celebrated the 40th anniversary of his marriage to his wife, Eileen. They have four children.
After the announcement of his retirement, Carey won praise from the two main wings of the Church of England.
Leading evangelical Mark Birchall, a former key figure in the evangelical group on the Church of England's ruling general synod, said the archbishop had done "an extremely difficult job very well".
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Geoffrey Kirk, secretary of the traditionalist group Forward in Faith, said that after a hesitant start Carey had "established himself as a significant archbishop" in his influence world-wide and in reforming the administration of the Church of England—a reference to the streamlining of the church's central decision-making capacity.
"I'm surprised he was not more eager to stay on and steer further the recommendations of the Hurd Commission [on the future of the see of Canterbury]," he said.
Richard Kirker, secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM), strongly criticized Carey's stance on homosexuality. "We regret that Archbishop Carey made an already difficult situation infinitely worse as he so obviously failed to grasp the reality of homophobia, which is prevalent in the church and which the LGCM has consistently argued needs to be challenged if it is to be eradicated," he said. "He has used all the means at his disposal to prevent homosexuals who are self-affirming [open] from entering the ministry."
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