On January 28, 2026, Sarah
Mullally became the first woman to occupy the seat of the archbishop of
Canterbury, which is the spiritual leader of the Church of England under its
governor, the British King (or Queen) and of the worldwide Anglican Communion,
which includes the Episcopal Church. The King (or Queen) being above the
archbishop in the Church of England is in line with Thomas Hobbes’
seventeenth-century theory that the sovereign should be in charge of church and
state lest civil war break out (again). Just as a British king is a man and a
queen is a woman, so too, as of 2026, the Archbishop of Canterbury could be a
man or a woman. This of course set the Anglicans even further off from the
Roman Catholic Church, where only men can be priests and bishops, including that
of Rome (i.e., the Pope). I contend that the intransigence on this point is due
to a logical error involving a category mistake just for added fun.
The full essay is at "Sarah Mullally as the Archbishop of Canterbury."
