Electing the Elected

London's awesome St. Paul's Cathedral was the scene of a solemn occasion last week--the election of a new Bishop of London. Behind tight-shut gates covered by pink curtains gathered 18 members of the cathedral's Great Chapter, led by Dean Walter Matthews. With appropriate portentousness, the dean questioned the assemblage: Should the election be "by acclamation, by scrutiny or by compromise"? It was decided that it should be "by scrutiny," i.e., secret ballot. And that was odd, as Tweedledum might say, because the Bishop of Peterborough, Robert W. Stopford, had already been chosen by the Queen to be Bishop of London. If the assembled prelates in St. Paul's dared vote against him, they would be subject to imprisonment, loss of civil rights and forfeiture of possessions, under the law of praemunire instituted by Henry VIII to keep the church in line.

Up jumped Canon Lewis J. Collins of St. Paul's, a passionate ban-the-bomber with no love for Dr. Stopford, who has publicly opined that nuclear war would be preferable to Communist domination. Cried Canon Collins: "The Crown, on the advice of the Prime Minister, has nominated the Bishop of Peterborough as the new Bishop of London. The nomination has been announced in the press. Now we are called upon to elect a new bishop, and custom requires that we pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our task. But we know that if we fail to endorse the Crown's nomination, our verdict will not be heeded. To pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit on such an occasion is little short of blasphemy. The whole process is a farce." Canon Collins proposed that his colleagues should refrain from voting at all.

Ignoring the outraged canon, the prelates duly prayed for guidance and voted for Stopford, though Dean Matthews admitted there were "two or three abstentions." But most of them agreed with Collins' humiliating point. And the fact that he made it, observers noted, was a stout blow for the cause of disestablishment--the separation of Anglican Church and British state--whose most potent protagonist is Arthur Michael Ramsey, the new Archbishop of Canterbury (TIME, July 7).

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