On September 19, 1944, three and a half months after D-Day, the President of the United States took time to write a personal letter to an Englishman. It was not addressed to Winston Churchill or Field Marshal Montgomery. It reads thus:

“The White House, Washington.

My dear Archbishop, The mission which my old friend, Bishop Oldham, in whose diocese I have long worshipped, is undertaking, gives me an opportunity to send you a brief word of greeting.

In these victorious days, and in the times to come, we need, more than ever before, that spiritual strength which is essential to a just and enduring peace. The Church is indeed fortunate to have at this critical time a leader of your strength and understanding.

Warm personal regards and best wishes for success.

Very sincerely yours, Franklin D. Roosevelt”

The letter was delivered by hand on October 22. Dr Oldham was the Bishop of Albany, New York, whose Episcopalian see included Hyde Park, the Roosevelt family home. The archbishop to whom the letter was sent was William Temple, who had been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in February 1942, only two and a half years earlier. He was sick in bed.

Four days later, on Thursday, October 26, Temple received a cheering note from London, saying that his doctors were “on the track of the bug” responsible for his infection. He breakfasted and as usual read The Times. The sister who attended him came in to make the bed. He suddenly said: “I feel very faint.” A doctor came, and asked him whether he was in great pain. According to F.A. Iremonger, his biographer, Temple replied: “No, but I can’t breathe.” A few moments later he died.

The international tributes poured in. Roosevelt cabled King George VI: “As an ardent advocate of international co-operation based on Christian principles he exercised profound influence throughout the world. The American people join me in extending this expression of sympathy.” From Pretoria, South Africa, Field Marshal Smuts cabled: “A great man has passed. Church, nation, and the world, have suffered an irreparable loss.” There are records of spontaneous public grief, even among British soldiers in a Japanese prisoners of war camp at Singapore.

Yesterday the present Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, delivered his last sermon as Primate of All England, a post he will be resigning this week. His successor, Dr Rowan Williams, is to be installed after a short interregnum. Hardly any public attention has been paid to the archbishop’s resignation. How can one account for the extreme contrast between the world impact of Archbishop Temple’s death and the world’s unconcern at Archbishop Carey’s resignation?

Certainly there are particular explanations. Death is also more striking than resignation. Temple was a great archbishop; surely the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury of his century. His work does not seem to be complete. He was expected to influence the whole postwar settlement, national and international. His form of liberal and democratic Socialism was fashionable; he was one of the precursors of the great Labour victory of 1945. Though a shy man, he was highly charismatic; though a good man, Dr Carey is not. But to understand the contrast, one has to look beyond purely personal or circumstantial reasons.

In the early 1940s the Church of England was a very important cultural institution throughout the British Empire, and important even in the United States. It is not certain that there will ever be another observant Episcopalian in the White House. It is hardly conceivable that any future President should see the Archbishop of Canterbury as the leader of his Church. As the British Empire has become independent, the influence of the Church of England as a world Church has inevitably declined.

England has always been the heartland of the Church of England. In the 1940s one could still say that England was a Christian country. In the past 60 years the fall in the numbers of churchgoing Anglicans has been matched by comparable falls in Roman Catholic and Nonconformist congregations. As it happens, the Roman Catholic Church, during Dr Carey’s period, had in Basil Hume a highly charismatic Archbishop of Westminster. Cardinal Hume was the charismatic Catholic archbishop of 20th-century England just as Temple was the charismatic Anglican. Yet Hume was not able to reverse the decline in Catholic congregations.

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