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A life less ordinary for the very different Archbishop
You have only to eat with John Sentamu, the newly appointed Archbishop of York, to know you are breaking bread with a man of charisma and dynamism. And of infectious laughter. Michael Brown
Share the table at breakfast, lunch or dinner with this 56-year-old former lawyer at the meetings of the General Synod and all these qualities quickly become apparent as his table becomes the jolliest in the refectory.
Boldness is not a quality often associated with the Church of England, or No 10 Downing Street when deciding appointments on the Church of England's behalf. But yesterday's elevation of John Sentamu, eighth Bishop of Birmingham, is bold and visionary. Historically, it is unprecedented. He is the first black to be Lord Archbishop of York, Primate of England and Metropolitan.
His experience of life and his progress towards becoming Number Two in the Church of England has been unlike that of any of his predecessors. Born near Kampala, the sixth of 13 children, he was so small the local bishop was called in to baptise him immediately. After surviving a sickly childhood and a famine to become a judge in the Uganda High Court, an even bigger threat awaited him there.
His independence of mind angered the despotic Idi Amin who took the view that the judiciary did as it was told. During Amin's reign of terror in the early 1970s, the dictator set his henchmen on to Sentamu. He recalls: "The injuries, not noticed at the time, were so sev ere that, years later, I was close to death with internal bleeding." He saw the Archbishop of Uganda murdered by Amin's's mob and the illegal deportation of Ugandan Asians.
In 1974 he came to Britain to study theology with a view to returning to Uganda. When his friend the Ugandan Archbishop Janani Luwum was murdered, he vowed: "You kill my friend, I take his place.". He was ordained in 1979 and became assistant chaplain at Selwyn College, Cambridge and chaplain at a remand centre.
Switching jobs from advocate to cleric did not affect his determination to speak as he saw. In his inaugural sermon as Bishop of Birmingham in November 2002, he urged the Government to remove the "bureaucratic shackles" hampering the education system. At the height of the Iraq crisis in 2003, the bishop led church-wide protests against the conflict.
In recent months, he has pledged his support for workers made redundant at MG Rover and, having ordered a new Rover 75 just before the crash, took delivery of the car despite the maker's demise. He has been equally vocal in support of campaigns to rid areas of his diocese of gun and other violent crime. In the wake of the deaths of Charlene Ellis and Letisha Shakespeare in 2003, he gave out his home telephone number for potential witnesses to get in touch. About 200 people called him. He sat on the judicial inquiry into the murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence, which exposed "institutional racism" in the Metropolitan Police and as the chairman of the review in the murder of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor, he delivered another critical assessment of the police and criminal justice system's handling of the case.
He donates a fifth of his salary to the collection plate and at the slightest excuse he indulges his passion in public for the African drum. Earlier this year, he embarked on a marathon walk in his diocese in a bid to fulfil his inauguration pledge to be more accessible to parishioners. He began that promise at his 2002 installation by walking in full bishop's dress from Birmingham Snow Hill station to St Philip's Cathedral with the people instead of processing with other bishops.
He greatly dislikes dogmatic "isms" as in "racism". With sparkling eyes – and a suspicion among his hearers that further laughter will break out at any minute – he says: "When I give blood, my colour isn't written on the form. I am recognised only as being O Positive."
This appointment will mean that both the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York will ordain women as priests. The former Archbishop of York, David Hope, an Anglo-Catholic, never did. In that sense, Sentamu will be a disappointment to the traditionalists. But they won't be unilaterally breaking away just now. In a few years time they will probably have their own archbishop in a separate province with men-only bishops and priests.
Sentamu is clear on his attitude to the other great issue – gay clergy – that is threatening an Anglican schism.
He would have no problem in accepting communion from a homosexual cleric. "The efficacy of the sacrament is not dependant on the worthiness of the minister," he says, adding: "Gay people are to be welcomed in the life of the church."
He does however, deliver a caveat. "The Church of England says the option for gay clergy is either celibacy or marriage. That is the decision the church has taken. And I am its servant."
At York, the Rt Rev Dr John Tucker Mugabi Sentamu will be a gift to the media with which he seems wholly at ease. As a result, his influence will be felt among a far broader community.
An appearance on Desert Island Discs won Bishop Sentamu many admirers among the far broader church of listeners with no particular religious leanings who were impressed by his personal candour and his humour
He revealed to Sue Lawley that in 2000 that he had been stopped by police as he drove near London's St Paul's Cathedral while Bishop of Stepney.
His favourite record to take on a desert island? What a Wonderful World, performer Louis Armstrong.
It kind of sums up his attitude to life.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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