Wanted: Anglican SocMedia Expert
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2017I found out something that rather took me aback when preparing the following tweet:
Most of us are aware that, for some time now, there has been a Twitter account associated with the papacy, namely @Pontifex, just as there is an account for the American President (@POTUS – and in fact @FLOTUS for the First Lady as well).
Turns out, though, that there is no such account for the Archbishop of Canterbury! (For those of you not in the know, he’s precisely the “pope” of the Church of England – that is, the highest official of all, other than God Himself, subordinate to no other mere mortal ever since Henry VIII took the Anglican Church out of Catholicism back in the 16th century.)
Now, it’s true that there is an account for the current Archbishop of Canterbury, namely @justinwelby. And as you can imagine, he’s been tweeting up a storm today in response to the suicide-bomber attack last night at the Manchester pop-concert.
But again, that’s only for The Most Reverend Archbishop Welby himself, not for the office. The way things work in the Anglican Church, apparently, being top-archbishop is not for life – the last one, Rowan Williams, was in office for ten years and then retired, for example. So eventually The Most (Current) Reverend will presumably also leave office, taking his Twitter with him, and how can we be sure that the next Most Reverend will bring along his own account? Make it a prerequisite for the job? Somehow that just doesn’t seem appropriate.
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