Lemonline have received news that Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, has resigned after eleven years at the post. He will be undoubtedly remembered as the Archbishop who refused to allow the Church of England to perform same-sex marriage.

Welby first became a priest in 1989, when he retired from his job as an executive at a French oil company. Reports claim that the decision was spurred on when a billion oil-poisoned fish appeared before him and urged him to renounce his evil ways.

He slowly climbed the ranks of the Church, being elected to the Bishopric of Durham in 2011 after a close election in York Minster. In 2013, the incumbent Archbishop of Canterbury left to follow his dream of making gay pornography, leaving a gap in the heart of the Anglican church. Welby threw his hat in the ring and won in a landslide, comfortably beating his closest rival Donald Trump. His dreams crushed, Trump decided to end his short-lived clergical career and venture into the world of US Politics.

Welby was enthroned a day after the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act passed the committee stage in Parliament, and Welby immediately announced that he would continue the Church’s long and proud tradition of homophobia by refusing to recognise same-sex marriages. He did, however, introduce a new policy of talking out of both sides of their mouths.

From 2017 to 2021 was what many in the Church called Welby’s wild period. In this period, the Church experimented with expanding into new areas. Notable artefacts from this era included their Jackson 5 parody ABC: Archbishop of Canterbury, the two-act musical horror comedy show Bishop! which ran on London’s West End for seven nights before closing (though it is currently on its third US tour), and a chain of McDonald’s clones called McWelby’s.

In 2022, the Church realised that its incense was mildly hallucinogenic, and Welby came back to the real world, or as close to the real world as a man who has dedicated his life to worshipping a bronze-age storm god can get.

In 2023, Welby issued an official apology for the Church’s long and proud history of homophobia, and said that the church would make it up by refusing to recognise same-sex marriage. He then flew to Africa and badmouthed gay people. The same year, he became the first Archbishop in seventy years to crown a king, an honour for which he was made a knight in 2024. However, clergymen are forbidden from using the title “Sir” and from taking up weapons of war. Consequently, if war does break out with Russia, Welby and all other priests will be forced to bludgeon the enemy to death with a bible, as is traditional.

Now, after his resignation, we asked Bishop Mark South of Woodham Walter, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons, who he thinks should take over:

“I don’t care who comes next, but whoever they choose needs to take a harder line against the gays. Welby was too soft on them.”

Justin Welby will forever be remembered as the bishop who tried to marry the Church’s long and proud history of homophobia to their current desperate need to appear like an actual credible organisation.

This was a Lemonline Special Report by Mike Heslington