New Command in Canterbury

A soldierly, scholarly Scot will lead the world's Anglicans

As the elite Scots Guards neared the Rhine at the close of World War II, a dashing Sandhurst-trained tank commander risked his life to rescue one of his men under fire. The exploit won him the Military Cross. Last Friday, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's office announced that the onetime officer, Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie, 57, will be assuming a rather different command. In January he will replace F. Donald Coggan, who is retiring at age 70 as Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of the Church of England and titular head of the world's 65 million Anglicans, including America's Episcopal Church.

Runcie is the 102nd in the long line of prelates. The Archbishop of Canterbury is by no means an Anglican equivalent of the Pope. But because he presides over the historic center of Anglicanism, his attitudes and actions have influence around the world.

The new archbishop is a stalwart, outgoing man ("not an introverted ecclesiastic," according to friends). He had great popularity as Bishop of St. Albans near London, and is known for his teaching, administrative and diplomatic skills. He is also a High Churchman who has taken a definite stand on the most emotional issue in worldwide Anglicanism: he opposes the ordination of women as priests, at least in England. Trevor Beeson, European correspondent of America's liberal Christian Century, wrote of Runcie's view, "It is difficult to see how leadership of the Church of England and of the Anglican Communion can be exercised from such a position throughout the 1980s."

The Crown Appointments Commission thought differently. This 14-member church group was formed in 1977 to propose to the Prime Minister two names, in order of preference, to fill each bishop vacancy. Runcie is the first Archbishop of Canterbury to be selected this way, rather than through a series of political consultations. The new procedure is a step toward fuller independence of the established English church from the machinery of state, something Runcie favors.

In its deliberations, reports TIME Correspondent Erik Amfitheatrof, the commission quickly settled on a short list of candidates. The most controversial was Canada's forceful Anglican Primate Edward Scott, 60, who is also chairman of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches. But in the end, the commission decided Anglicanism was not ready to pick a non-Briton and thus "do a Wojtyla" (that is, echo Rome's election of a non-Italian as Pope).

That left as front runners Runcie and England's second-ranking churchman, Archbishop of York Stuart Blanch, 61. But Blanch was considered a little too old and too courtly for the job. Runcie seemed more likely to bring energy and excitement to Anglicanism.

Runcie admits that his Scottish engineer father had a "profound distrust of parsons." He went to Oxford, earning first-class honors in classics, philosophy and ancient history. He did not decide on a clerical career until his final year. During his years as a chaplain and tutor at Cambridge, he married Rosalind ("Lindy") Turner, an accomplished classical pianist known for spirited opinions ("I can't bear a lot of religious pomp and circumstance"). They have two children. Among Runcie's hobbies: breeding prize pigs.

Before becoming a bishop, Runcie spent a decade heading a theological seminary. He also has led the Anglican negotiations with the Eastern Orthodox churches on reconciling doctrinal differences. Runcie favors ecclesiastical remarriage for divorced persons, which the Church of England rejected last year. People who want to marry again, he believes, may even be more serious the second time around.

"I find the Church of England a most lovable and most infuriating body," the new archbishop remarks. People do not hear its message about Jesus Christ, he says, "because they feel the church is linked to an outmoded intellectual system and is part of a dated social world."

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