Humpty Dumpty might not seem the most obvious figure with which to open reflection upon the notions of communion and ecclesiology, and still less the See of Canterbury. Nonetheless, whatever obscurities may surround the origins of this great character of children’s literature and folklore, there is one thing upon which the sources are agreed, namely that after he ‘sat on the wall’ and ‘had a great fall’, the lamentable result was that – as the earliest text puts it
Four-score Men and Four-score more, Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.1The version as printed in Samuel Arnold’s Juvenile Amusements in 1797.
The irreversible consequences of his fall were even easier to envisage once he was portrayed as an egg – in the manner of Lewis Carroll’s, Through the Looking- Glass of 1871, since an egg once broken so very obviously cannot be mended.
Is there a parallel fall in store for the world-wide Anglican Communion and will it be similarly irreparable?