Justin Welby

Welby condemns modern slavery as a crime against humanity. He joined with Pope Francis and leaders of other faiths, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim, in a joint declaration they would work together aiming to end modern slavery by 2020. Forced labour and prostitution, human trafficking and organ trade were specifically mentioned but all relationships that do not respect human equality, freedom and dignity were condemned.

Welby was at first rejected for ordination by John Hughes, the Bishop of Kensington, who told him: "There is no place for you in the Church of England." Welby was subsequently accepted for ordination, with the support of the Vicar of Holy Trinity Brompton, Sandy Millar. Throughout his ministry Welby has been linked to the charismatic evangelical wing of the Church of England associated with Holy Trinity Brompton, and in a 2019 interview said that "In my own prayer life, and as part of my daily discipline, I pray in tongues every day".

Certainly there are parts of the country where there’s huge deprivation. We see communities caught in a poverty trap. Now, the economy has improved very much in many places but there’s a significant group of people who just seem trapped and the system doesn’t help them.

Welby maintains that tax avoidance is wrong and that many wealthy companies do not pay as much tax as they should. Welby said, “It is clear that a company that has a turnover of several billion and yet pays only a few million in tax, something isn’t quite working there. It is to do with transfer pricing, there are all kinds of explanations, but people who earn money from a society should pay tax in that society for the common good, for economic justice.” Welby said:

Not paying taxes speaks of the absence of commitment to our shared humanity, to solidarity and justice. If you earn money from a community, you should pay your share of tax to that community. I was in business, and I know that, within limits, it’s right and proper for people to arrange their tax affairs, and for companies to do so. But when vast companies like Amazon, and other online traders – the new industries – can get away with paying almost nothing in tax, there is something wrong with the tax system. They don’t pay a real living wage, so the taxpayer must support their workers with benefits, and having leached off the taxpayer once, they don’t pay for our defence, for security, for stability, for justice, for health, for equality, for education. Then they complain of an undertrained workforce, from the education they have not paid for, and pay almost nothing for apprenticeships. Those are only a fraction of the costs of aggressive tax management.

Welby is concerned about increasing need for food banks which would have been "unthinkable" a decade ago. He called the plight of hungry poor people shocking because he did not expect that in the UK, saying that it was "a very sad fact that they’re there, but also it's a great opportunity for the Church to demonstrate the love of Christ."

Welby's early grounding in Christian doctrine was rooted in the ‘Bash Camp’ network founded by Eric Nash. Welby became a dormitory officer at the camps held in the Dorset village of Iwerne Minster. The chairman of the Iwerne Trust (now operating as Titus Trust) in the late 1970s was John Smyth QC, a prominent evangelical and lawyer who had acted regularly for Mary Whitehouse. From 1978–81, Smyth allegedly carried out a series of brutal beatings on boys and undergraduates, recorded in a report written by Canon Mark Ruston in February 1982.

In the run up to the 2017 United Kingdom general election Justin Welby and Archbishop of York, John Sentamu campaigned over the need to address poverty, education, housing and health. The archbishops stressed the importance of "education for all, of urgent and serious solutions to our housing challenges, the importance of creating communities as well as buildings, and a confident and flourishing health service that gives support to all – especially the vulnerable – not least at the beginning and end of life."

Welby has shown some openness to accepting same sex marriage. In an interview with Alastair Campbell in October 2017, Archbishop Welby was asked if same sex activity was sinful, and declined to give a clear answer, saying "I don’t do blanket condemnation and I haven’t got a good answer to the question. I’ll be really honest about that. I know I haven’t got a good answer to the question. Inherently, within myself, the things that seem to me to be absolutely central are around faithfulness, stability of relationships and loving relationships." When asked if a loving stable relationship could be between two people of the same sex, Welby responded saying "I know it could be."

Smyth was described by Welby in 2017 as “charming” and “delightful” and they swapped Christmas cards for some years in the 1990s. In 1978 Welby left the UK to work in Paris, and Welby stated that "I had no contact with them at all". It later materialised that Welby had attended the camp in this period and had continued to receive the camp newsletter. Andrew Atherstone in the biography, Risk Taker and Reconciler, describes Welby as having been “involved in the camps as an undergraduate … businessman and theological college student in the 1980s and early 1990s.”

In 2012 a victim of Smyth reported the abuse to the Church of England and Welby was informed in 2013. The Archbishop maintained that this was the first he had heard of the abuse by his old friend. The New York Times on 14 October 2017 quoted a senior Church of England figure as saying that “all senior members of the trust, including officers like Archbishop Welby, had been made aware of the allegations against Mr Smyth, even those who had been abroad”. Questions have remained among Smyth victims as to when Welby first knew, and some have labelled the Archbishop an “observer,” a term denoting a person who knew about abuse but who did not report appropriately. The Archbishop has said that he was not part of the inner circle of Smyth's friends and is on the record as saying that survivors must come first, not the Church's own interests.

In October 2016, Welby declared that abortion as "delayed contraception" is wrong.

In July 2014, Welby acknowledged that there was a problem with young Muslim youths travelling to the Syrian Civil War and elsewhere to wage jihad but the numbers were "extraordinarily small", and so he scoffed at concerns over the potential for trouble as "hysterical... I think we’re in danger of slipping into a very fearful culture". In 2015, he offered his support for British air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) in Syria. Welby believes that the problem of Islamic extremism is far deeper than combating Islamic jihadists such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda; and that the Gulf monarchies and Saudi Arabia need to be challenged as their "own promotion of a particular brand of Islamic theology has provided a source from which ISIL have drawn a false legitimization." In November 2016 in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Welby stated that claiming that the actions of ISIS are "nothing to do with Islam" was damaging efforts to combat extremism. Welby stipulated that it was essential to understand the religious motivation behind extremism in order to understand it and also criticized the argument that claims that "Christian militia in the Central African Republic are nothing to do with Christianity."

Welby would like discipline applied over appointments to prevent opponents of women as bishops feeling alienated. Welby says he hopes to avoid a zero-sum game where people feel gain for one side inevitably means loss for the other, he sees need for caution, co-operation and unity. Slightly revised legislation to allow women to be ordained bishops in the Church of England was agreed in July 2014 and became law in November 2014.

Welby sees problems with special services of blessing for same-sex couples, saying in 2014 "There is great fear among some, here and round the world, that that will lead to the betrayal of our traditions, to the denial of the authority of scripture, to apostasy, not to use too strong a word and there is also a great fear that our decisions will lead us to the rejection of LGBT people, to irrelevance in a changing society, to behaviour that many see akin to racism. Both those fears are alive and well in this room today [a General Synod meeting in London]. We have to find a way forward that is one of holiness and obedience to the call of God and enables us to fulfil our purposes. This cannot be done through fear. How we go forward matters deeply, as does where we arrive".

In a 12 July 2013 interview with The Daily Telegraph, Welby related his conversion experience when he was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge. He said that, while he was at Eton, he had "vaguely assumed there was a God. But I didn't believe. I wasn't interested at all." But during the evening of 12 October 1975 in Cambridge, praying with a Christian friend, Welby said that he suddenly felt “a clear sense of something changing, the presence of something that had not been there before in my life. He said to his friend, "Please don’t tell anyone about this." Welby said that he was desperately embarrassed that this had happened to him. He has since said that his time at Cambridge was a major moment of self-realisation in his life. At the age of 19 he began speaking in tongues.

In July 2013, following the report of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards Commission, Welby explained that senior bank executives avoided being given information about difficult issues to allow them to "plead ignorance". He also said he would possibly have behaved in the same way and warned against punishing by naming and shaming individual bankers which he compared to the behaviour of a lynch mob.

Welby was enthroned as the Archbishop of Canterbury at Canterbury Cathedral on 21 March 2013, which in the calendar of the Anglican churches is an observance of Thomas Cranmer.

Welby's schedule included an official visit to the Vatican on 14 June 2013, with visits to senior Curial officials, including Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, an official audience with Pope Francis and prayer at the tombs of Saint Peter and Pope John Paul II.

In a 12 July 2013 interview with The Daily Telegraph, Welby addressed questions about his religion. His answers included the following:

Welby has been a strong supporter of Anglican consecration of women as bishops. In November 2013, Welby stated he aimed to ordain women as bishops while allowing space for those who disagree. In February 2014, Welby called on Anglicans to avoid fear, prejudice and suspicion and to grasp "cultural change in the life of the church":

Referring to poverty in the UK in March 2013, Welby criticised UK government changes which cap benefits below inflation.

In a speech at Christmas 2013 Welby said, "Even in a recovering economy, Christians, the servants of a vulnerable and poor saviour, need to act to serve and love the poor; they need also to challenge the causes of poverty." In a speech at Easter 2013 Welby said, "In this country, even as the economy improves there is weeping in broken families, in people ashamed to seek help from food banks, or frightened by debt. Asylum seekers weep with loneliness and missing far away families."

Brexit has divided the country and now we need a new narrative. One that is rooted in all that is best in our history – solidarity, courage, aspiration, resilience and care for each other. There is a danger that there is a schism in our society into which the most vulnerable are falling. Austerity is crushing the weak, the sick and many others.

In July 2013, Welby spoke out against the payday lending sites and met with Errol Damelin, chief executive of Wonga. Welby pledged that the Church of England would support credit unions as society needs to "provide an alternative" to the "very, very costly forms of finance" that payday lending services represent. He noted that he did not want to make legal payday lending illegal as this would leave people with no alternative to using criminal loan sharks.

Before Christmas 2013, Welby urged people to give 10% of what they spend at Christmas to food banks.

In March 2013, Welby stated that "My understanding of sexual ethics has been that, regardless of whether it's gay or straight, sex outside marriage is wrong." He reiterated this belief again later in 2013, further noting that "To abandon the ideal simply because it’s difficult to achieve is ridiculous."

Welby's theology is reported as representing the evangelical tradition within Anglicanism. Having worked in business before his ordination, some of his publications explore the relationship between finance and religion and, as a member of the House of Lords, he sits on the panel of the 2012 Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.

Welby emerged as a candidate to be the next archbishop of Canterbury; on 6 November 2012, the bookmakers Betvictor, Ladbrokes and William Hill suspended betting on his being appointed. On 9 November 2012, Welby's appointment to the position was announced. In January 2013, Welby said that he initially thought it was "a joke" and "perfectly absurd" for him to be appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, because he had only been a bishop for a short time. His confirmation of election ceremony to the See of Canterbury took place at St Paul's Cathedral on 4 February 2013 (by this, he legally became Archbishop of Canterbury); on the following day it was announced that Welby would be appointed to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, as all archbishops are; the order for his appointment was made on 12 February and he swore the oath on 13 March.

Interviewed by the BBC in 2011, Welby said that to be appointed bishop of Durham was both challenging and a huge privilege: "I was astonished to be offered the role. It is a passionate desire to see a church that is vigorously full of spiritual life, serving Jesus Christ and serving those around it." His election was confirmed at York Minster on 29 September 2011 and he left Liverpool Cathedral on 2 October. He was consecrated as a bishop at York Minster on 28 October 2011 and was enthroned in Durham Cathedral on 26 November 2011. He was introduced to the House of Lords on 12 January 2012, where he sits on the Lords Spiritual bench. He gave his maiden speech on 16 May 2012. He was asked to join the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards in 2012.

Welby was educated at the University of Cambridge where he read History and Law. Later in life, he received an ordination at St John's College, Durham. After several parochial appointments, he became the Dean of Liverpool in 2007 and the Bishop of Durham in 2011.

Welby was appointed Dean of Liverpool in December 2007 and was installed there on 8 December 2007.

In 2002, Welby was appointed a canon residentiary of Coventry Cathedral and the co-director for international ministry at the International Centre for Reconciliation. In 2005, he was appointed sub-dean and Canon for Reconciliation Ministry.

From 1989 to 1992, Welby studied theology and trained for the priesthood at Cranmer Hall and St John's College, Durham, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree and a Diploma in Ministry (DipMin) in 1992. He was ordained a deacon at Petertide (on 28 June) 1992 and a priest the next Petertide (27 June 1993), both times by Simon Barrington-Ward, Bishop of Coventry, at Coventry Cathedral. He then became a curate at Chilvers Coton and St Mary the Virgin, Astley (Nuneaton) from 1992 to 1995. He then became rector of St James' Church, Southam, and later vicar of St Michael and All Angels, Ufton, Diocese of Coventry, from 1995 to 2002.

Welby has written widely on ethics and on finance, featuring in books such as Managing the Church?: Order and Organisation in a Secular Age and Explorations in Financial Ethics. Welby's dissertation, an exploration into whether companies can sin, marks his point that the structure of a system can "make it easier to make the right choice or the wrong choice." His dissertation led to the publication of a booklet entitled Can Companies Sin?: "Whether", "How" and "Who" in Company Accountability, which was published by Grove Books in 1992. He has said that the Benedictine and Franciscan orders in the Anglican churches, along with Catholic social teaching, have influenced his spiritual formation.

Welby worked for eleven years in the oil industry, five of them for the French oil company Elf Aquitaine based in Paris. In 1984 he became treasurer of the oil exploration group Enterprise Oil plc in London, where he was mainly concerned with West African and North Sea oil projects. He retired from his executive position in 1989 and said that he sensed a calling from God to be ordained.

Welby is married to Caroline (née Eaton) and they have had six children. In 1983, their seven-month-old daughter, Johanna, died in a car crash in France. Referring to the tragedy, Welby explained, "It was a very dark time for my wife Caroline and myself, but in a strange way it actually brought us closer to God." Welby established a special day for bereaved parents at Coventry Cathedral where there is now an annual service commemorating the lives of children who have died.

Welby was educated at St Peter's School, Seaford; Eton College; and Trinity College, Cambridge, where his great-uncle, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, was then master. He graduated in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and law; according to custom, he was later promoted to a Master of Arts by seniority.

Welby apologised unreservedly after allegations that barrister and evangelical Christian John Smyth beat boys in the late 1970s, mainly pupils at Winchester College, until their wounds bled and left permanent scars. Smyth then headed the Christian charity, the Iwerne Trust. These allegations were suppressed for decades, although Smyth was asked to leave the UK.

Welby's mother stopped drinking in 1968, and in 1975 married Charles Williams, a business executive and first-class cricketer who was made a life peer in 1985. Williams was the nephew of Elizabeth Laura Gurney, a member of the Gurney family of Norwich who were prominent Quakers and social reformers. Welby describes his stepfather as being supportive of him.

Gavin Welby, born Bernard Gavin Weiler in Ruislip, West London, was the son of Bernard Weiler, a German-Jewish immigrant and importer of luxury items who changed the family name to Welby shortly after the First World War broke out. Welby describes his early childhood as "messy": Gavin and Jane Welby were both alcoholics. They divorced in 1959, when Justin was three years old, and he was placed in Gavin Welby's custody. In 1960 Gavin Welby was engaged to the actress Vanessa Redgrave, who called the engagement off after her mother Lady Redgrave wrote to Vanessa's father, Sir Michael Redgrave, that Gavin Welby was "a real horror ... a pretty rotten piece of work". Gavin Welby died in 1977 of alcohol-related causes.

Justin Portal Welby (born 6 January 1956) is the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury and the most senior Bishop in the Church of England. He has served in that role since 2013. Welby was the Vicar of Southam, Warwickshire, and most recently was the Bishop of Durham, serving for just over a year. As Archbishop of Canterbury, he is the primate of all England and the head primus inter pares of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Justin Portal Welby was born in London, England, on 6 January 1956, almost nine months after the marriage of his mother Jane Gillian Portal (born 1929) to Gavin Bramhall James Welby (1910–1977). Jane had served as a personal secretary to Sir Winston Churchill from December 1949 until her marriage to Gavin Welby in April 1955, soon after she had a brief relationship with the private secretary to Churchill, Sir Anthony Montague Browne (1923–2013). Justin believed that Gavin Welby was his biological father until paternity testing in 2016 showed that he was Browne's son.

Welby's mother Jane Portal was the daughter of Iris Butler (1905–2002), a journalist and historian whose brother R. A. "Rab" Butler, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, was a Conservative politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. Their father was Sir Montagu Butler, Governor of the Central Provinces of British India and Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Sir Montagu Butler was the grandson of George Butler, headmaster of Harrow School and Dean of Peterborough; the nephew of educator George Butler (husband of social reformer Josephine Butler) and Henry Montagu Butler, headmaster of Harrow School, Dean of Gloucester and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; and the grand-nephew of John Colenso, the first Bishop of Natal.