Category Archives: Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams wants church schools to be inclusive

Posted on by
Reply

Shocking news, I know, but here it is:

Dr Rowan Williams said they needed to be more concerned with providing places to disadvantaged children than “securing our membership”.

In an address to the General Synod, the Church’s parliament, on Saturday, the archbishop said that its schools need to be “open for as many children as possible”.

[……]

“How, in the context of far-reaching changes to how education is delivered in this country, do we continue to offer what we have always offered?” he said.

“Which is not a system of confessional schools designed to secure our membership, but a critical partnership with the state that seeks to keep open for as many children as possible the fullest range imaginable of educational enrichment.

“Our history as educators in this country is much to do with offering possibilities in social contexts where other providers have practically given up or have settled for less than the best.”

Today no confessional schools, tomorrow no confessional seminaries, next week no confessional churches. But all offering possibilities in social contexts.

Rowan Williams thinks Western Anglicans are self-indulgent

Posted on by
1

From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has attacked “self indulgence” within the Church of England as he spoke of how his visit to the eastern Congo left him “wanting to be a Christian”.

Dr Rowan Williams said hearing about the “transforming” work of the Anglican Church in the central African country had helped put into perspective “fashionable sneers” faced by the Church of England in this country.

He added that the dedication of Anglican workers in the eastern Congo has put into a “harsh light” the “self indulgence of so much of our church life” which gives people the excuse not to take God seriously.

Dr Williams said church members had risked their lives to rescue young men and women trapped in militias in the forests of eastern Congo.

The experience had highlighted how the church “mattered so intensely”, he said, and how if it wasn’t for the Church no-one would have cared for these young people.

“It left me wanting to be a Christian,” he said, adding jokingly: “Never too late.”

“It left me thinking that there is nothing on earth so transforming as a Church in love,” he said.

He’s quite right, of course, although I suspect that it was Christ rather than the institution of the church that mattered so intensely.

Considering this, one might expect Rowan Williams to welcome with open arms the Anglican Mission in England, an outreach from Kenya, a country whose Anglicans also take Christ seriously.

But, placing himself squarely in the camp of those who self-indulgently care more for the institution to which they belong than the salvation of men’s souls, he didn’t.

 

Clerical Temper Tantrums in High Places

Posted on by
Reply

Rowan Williams and John Sentamu engaging in shouting matches with the opposition, bishops sulking in the lavatory and onlookers bursting into tears sounds like an episode of a TV reality show:  The Bachelor Bishop, perhaps. But no, it’s just another humdrum bishop’s selection committee meeting.

From here:

Church of England tied in knots over allowing gay men to become bishops.

The fraught divisions have been laid bare in the leak of an anguished and devastating memorandum written by the Very Rev Colin Slee, the former dean of Southwark Cathedral, shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer last November. Dr Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, vetoed candidates from becoming bishops of the south London diocese.

The document reveals shouting matches and arm-twisting by the archbishops to keep out the diocese’s preferred choices as bishop: Jeffrey John, the gay dean of St Albans, and Nicholas Holtam, rector of St Martin-in-the-Fields in central London, whose wife was divorced many years ago. Eventually Christopher Chessun, then an assistant bishop, was chosen.

[……]

“The archbishop of Canterbury was bad tempered throughout. When it came to voting, certainly two – possibly three – members were in tears and [Williams] made no acknowledgement but carried on regardless. At a critical point Archbishop Sentamu and three other members simultaneously went to the lavatory, after which the voting patterns changed.”

What an extraordinary mess – one created by the ambiguous attitude of the Anglican Church to the nature of homosexuality, an attitude that is unlikely to come down definitively on one side or the other of the issue any time soon.

So, at critical moments,  we can look forward to many more archbishops retreating to the toilet to powder their noses as the church continues to fracture, the pews empty and the Indaba groups multiply like maggots on a corpse.

Rowan Williams uncomfortable with bin Laden killing

Posted on by
4

Not as uncomfortable as bin Laden, though.

From here:

The archbishop of Canterbury has said the killing of Osama bin Laden left a “very uncomfortable feeling” because it appeared as if justice had not been done.

Bin Laden was shot dead in his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on Sunday. It has since emerged that he was unarmed when US Navy Seals fired at him.

Lambeth Palace had previously refused to comment on the death of Bin Laden but, when asked at a press conference what he thought of the killing, Dr Rowan Williams replied: “I think the killing of an unarmed man is always going to leave a very uncomfortable feeling; it doesn’t look as if justice is seen to be done.

For future engagements, Navy SEAL 6 will take an embedded Rowan along for tactical advice on how they should behave to ensure his continuing comfort.

Rowan Williams wants compulsory virtue

Posted on by
1

What do Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot and Rowan Williams have in common? They all believed – or believe in Rowan’s case – that it is possible to “re-educate” the wealthy, by compelling them to perform menial tasks.

From here:

Bankers, politicians and newspaper editors should be legally required to spend a couple of hours every year working with the poor and needy to remind them of the purpose of their power and wealth, the archbishop of Canterbury has suggested.

He made the comments on Maundy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and when the British monarch honours deserving subjects.

In his contribution to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day slot, Dr Rowan Williams asked: “What about having a new law that made all cabinet members and leaders of political parties, editors of national papers and the hundred most successful financiers in the UK spend a couple of hours every year serving dinners in a primary school on a council estate?

“Or cleaning bathrooms in a residential home? Walking around the streets of a busy town at night as a street pastor, ready to pick up and absorb something of the chaos and human mess you’ll find there, especially among young people?”

I am all for society’s privileged few freely choosing to help those less well-off than themselves – an ideal, I admit, which I find easier to discuss than practice. To remove, as Rowan suggests, the free choice component of the activity is to remove its virtue. You cannot compel goodness – it comes from within: the best the state can do is restrain evil.

When Jesus said radically upsetting things like “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” and “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment”, he did so because good and evil emanate from the human heart: being good produces good deeds, not vice-versa.

The Rowan Hood tax

Posted on by
1

Rowan Hood, Rowan Hood, going round the bend;
Rowan Hood, Rowan Hood, with his band of men persons.
Loathed by the bad, loathed by the good:
Rowan Hood. Misunderstood, Rowan Hood.

From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has repeated calls for a “Robin Hood” tax to be imposed on financial transactions as he spoke of the “acute” dangers of “paralysing” the voluntary sector through heavy public spending cuts.

Dr Rowan Williams said a tax of 0.05% on transactions in currency, stocks and derivatives between major financial institutions – and not High Street banks – could generate £20 billion a year for the UK.

The money would then be divided between domestic public services and international development projects, he said in a speech in London on the Big Society vision, first outlined by David Cameron.

“On its own, this idea might too easily be taken for another variety of ‘stateist’ problem-solving – but united to a coherent programme of capacity-building in local communities, here and worldwide … it still has the potential to deal effectively with the acute current dangers of paralysing the voluntary sector through heavy cuts in their public budgetary support,” he told an audience at King’s College.

 

Rowan Williams won’t allow homosexual marriage in church

Posted on by
1

From here:

Dr Rowan Williams has refused to be drawn on the issue publicly, but has broken his silence to tell MPs he is not prepared for the Coalition to tell the Church how to behave.

He told a private meeting of influential politicians that the Church of England would not bow to public pressure to allow its buildings to be used to conduct same-sex civil partnerships.

It’s hard to know what is going on in Rowan Williams’ erudite Hegelian head at the best of times and, for him, this is not the best of times. Why would an archbishop who has written that, in his view, homosexual relationships are comparable to marriage not allow such marriage in his church?

Not, presumably, because of personal conviction, but because he is committed, in his own potty way, to holding the Anglican Communion together, whatever it takes. So, in order to convince conservatives that they still have his ear, it’s the liberals’ turn to take a poke in the eye – for unity.

Or perhaps he suffers from that most debilitating of contemporary liberal malaises, the lack of clear categories to organise his thinking, making it impossible for him to have straightforward answers to difficult questions – resulting in an inability to take a side.

 

Archbishop of Canterbury converts to Islam

Posted on by
1

From here:

Dr RoAdd an Imagewan Williams has failed to quell the row over his recent comments with the announcement that he has been fully accepted into the Muslim faith. He claims to see no inconsistency with his new religion and his continuing role as the leader of the Anglican faith.

‘Both religions are saying basically the same thing,’ said Rahman Muhammed bin Williams as he now wishes to be known, ‘and I hope to bring together two aspects of these two major world faiths. So we will still have the Church of England Christingle Add an ImageJumble Sale, but instead of getting a jar of home made jam in the raffle, the winner gets to drive a car bomb into the American Embassy.’


Rowan Williams added that, in order to become a Muslim, he has had to relinquish his standing as a Celtic Druid, since Druidry conflicts with Sharia law.


Rowan Williams, friend of axe murderers

Posted on by
4

The UK does not allow prisoners to vote, a tragedy that probably doesn’t bother most law abiding citizens since prisoners would undoubtedly vote for anyone who promises to go easy on criminals.

Most law abiding citizens other than Rowan Williams, that is, who, in his never ending exertions to distance himself from normal people, has put his foot – perhaps both feet – in his remarkably capacious mouth by supporting a prisoner’s “right” to vote.

From here:

Williams said that the civic status of a prisoner should not be “put in cold storage” while they are inside. “The notion that in some sense, not the civic liberties, but the civic status of a prisoner is in cold storage when custody takes over is one of the roots of a whole range of issues around the rights of prisoners,” he said in remarks published by the Prison Reform Trust.

“If we lose sight of the notion of the prisoner as citizen, any number of things follow from that, and indeed are following from that. The prisoner as citizen is somebody who can … expect that penal custody will be something that contributes to, rather than takes away, their capacity to act as a citizen in other circumstances,” said the archbishop.

“Thus issues around restoration, around responsibility, around developing concepts of empathy and mutuality are all part of what seems to me to be a reasonable working out of what it is to regard the prisoner as a citizen.”

John Hirst, who chopped up his landlady with an axe before managing to develop much of a concept of empathy, is, needless to say, most appreciative of Rowan’s support and is boasting about it:

The Archbishop of Canterbury today said prisoners should get the vote, backing an axe killer whose campaign has been endorsed by European courts.

John Hirst, who hacked his landlady to death, yesterday boasted that he was on the verge of forcing the Government to ‘wave the white flag of surrender’, as MPs prepare to vote on the move tomorrow.

As usual Rowan sacrifices common sense to tangled Rowanesque distinctions; in this case between civic liberties and civic status, both of which – even if there is a distinction – are forfeited the moment you start hacking your landlady to death with an axe.

Rowan Williams should re-read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: in it, Raskolnikov, an axe murderer, didn’t receive redemption through insisting on his right to vote, but by confessing his crime, repenting, accepting his punishment in Siberia and being spiritually reborn in Christ.