Lunch with the FT is a regular feature of The Financial Times. Today’s lunch mate is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby:
Williams said the job required “the hide of a rhinoceros and the constitution of an ox” but Welby, a chronic asthma sufferer, doesn’t look to me as if he has either.
“I don’t know about an ox,” he [Welby] says. “Just, sort of, I get by. I love the job.”
One problem he faces is that God isn’t really very popular. According to one recent survey, God is less trusted than Google.
“I saw that. I was very grumpy about it. Google always gives me the wrong answer. They’re actually out to make money out of us. I’m not.”
Welby is trying to build trust in a way that has fallen out of fashion in the Church of England: through his own belief in God. When I ask point blank if he really and truly thinks that Mary was a virgin and that Christ actually rose from the dead, he puts down his fork and replies simply: “Yes.”
I must be looking doubtful as he goes on: “Is that clear? I can say the Creed without crossing my fingers.”
We also learn the ABC rides the bus, usually has a toast and celery for lunch and compares being his role to that of CEO of an international oil company with tenure but no power.
Read it all and tell us what you think.