It begins with unexpected promise:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged Christians to approach inter-faith dialogue with confidence in their own beliefs about the uniqueness of Christ whilst retaining a desire to learn from others.

In an address exploring the finality of Christ in a pluralist world on Tuesday, Dr Rowan Williams said people who believed in absolute truth were liable to be branded bigots or intolerant by those who felt that what was right for some was not necessarily right for others.

“Belief in the uniqueness or finality of Christ is something that sits very badly indeed, not just with a plural society but with a society that regards itself as liberal or democratic,” he said.

“This is a world where the ideal is simply to be presented with the choice that makes you comfortable and the question of truth or finality isn’t really allowed to arise.”

The Archbishop admitted that accepting the uniqueness of Christ was “problematic” for many people and that Christians faced the challenge of communicating what they believe.

He doesn’t go quite as far as saying that for a Christian to deny the uniqueness of Christ is illogical, but “not sensible” is better than nothing:

He added, however, that giving up on the uniqueness of Christ was not “sensible”.

To prevent anyone falling into the trap of thinking that Rowan is being uncharacteristically straightforward, he muddles things with:

“Christians have claimed and will still claim that when you realise God calls you simply as a human being into that relationship of intimacy with Jesus, then you understand something about God which cannot be replaced or supplemented,” he said.

“The finality lies in the recognition that now there is something you cannot forget about God and humanity and which you cannot correct as if it were simply an interesting theory about God and humanity.”

Rowan seems to think that Christ’s uniqueness lies in his unforgettability, rather than his unique offer of salvation through atonement – to admit the latter would have been too embarrassingly fundamentalist, perhaps.

The Archbishop said that affirming the uniqueness and finality of Christ, rather than being unfair to those who had not heard of Him, made possible the universal reconcilability and fellowship of human beings.

Is the “universal reconcilability and fellowship of human beings” the purpose of Christ’s atoning sacrifice? What about being reconciled to God (or is that what he is alluding to – who knows)? Either way, Rowan gives the impression that he is a Universalist.

He warned that there was a danger of “treating others as if they know nothing, and we have nothing to learn” if Christians simply believed there was no hope for people outside of the Christian faith.

A belief in the uniqueness and finality of Christ, he said, gave Christians a “generous desire to share” and a “humble desire to learn”.

But not, it would appear, a desire to evangelise by speaking of the salvation that only Jesus offers.

“In dialogue between people of different faith we expect to learn something, we expect to be different as a result of the encounter. We don’t as a rule expect to change our minds,” he said.

A Rowanite Christian is one who, when encountering other faiths is content to have held on to his own beliefs.

“We come with conviction, with gratitude and with confidence, but it is the confidence which I believe allows us to embark on these encounters, hoping that we may learn – not change our conviction – but learn.

“When we sit alongside the Jew, the Buddhist, the Muslim, the Hindu, we expect to see in their humanity something that challenges and enlarges ours. We expect to receive something in their humanity as a gift to ours.”

All this leaves me wondering whether Rowan is actually a Christian at all, in any coherent sense of the word.

Rowan Williams, in his Presidential Address, postulates that our Anglican troubles are caused by seeing in only two dimensions; so, put on those polarised lenses, stare at the screen, and prepare to be amazed:

Earlier I mentioned ‘three-dimensionality’.  Seeing something in three dimensions is seeing that I can’t see everything at once: what’s in front of me is not just the surface I see in this particular moment.  So seeing in three dimensions requires us to take time with what we see.

Until Rowan attempted to explain it, I thought I understood seeing in three dimensions; never mind, if Rowan is seeing that I can’t see everything at once it’s probably only because he forgot his 3D glasses. And, of course, seeing in three dimensions requires us to take time with what we see means we have to take time into consideration and see in four dimensions, which will require a tinfoil hat in addition to the 3D glasses  – see?

In his Presidential Address, Rowan Williams has said something to upset just about everyone. I think he deserves credit since his seems to be such an effortless gift; others of us have to work at it.

Liberals are upset because Rowan is still not “fully including” homosexuals in the life of the Anglican church, even though he did issue a rather grovelling apology – perhaps what was missing was an obsequious Obama Bow™.

Conservatives will be upset because, among other things, he seems to think that TEC and the ACoC have exercised genuine restraint, because he jumbles together outside intervention and litigation as if they were equivalent wrongs and because he still doesn’t get it: the ACoC and TEC have become sub-Christian institutions.

Such is the problem of trying to find middle ground when there really isn’t any.  Rowan Williams might be able to thrive in the effete, refined halls of academia but he is quite incapable of leading the Anglican communion to anywhere but ruin.

From the Times:

The whole world, and not just Britain, is broken, with continents such as Africa feeling forgotten and uncared for, the Archbishop of Canterbury said in the heart of New York’s financial district yesterday.

Any money men who might have happened in to Trinity Wall Street to shelter from the snow would have found a different sort of chill as Dr Rowan Williams delivered his lesson.

Standing at the lectern of the famously wealthy US Episcopal church, which lies at the head of Wall Street, the leader of the Anglican Communion condemned the “straw man” of self-interest.

His theme was that financiers, wordsmiths — in fact anyone in the Western world connected in any way with economic reality — should look at themselves in the mirror and repent.

It is hard to argue with Rowan’s assessment of Western money moguls whose modus operandi is grounded in avarice, self-interest and utilitarianism. However, Rowan’s asking secular financiers to repent stands in stark contrast to his response to heresy in the Anglican church where, instead of repentance, he seeks “conversation”.

Rowan Williams, Utopia Chaser, bemoans the last ten years:

The last 10 years have been “gruelling and terrible” but they should not deter people from helping the poorer and needy living thousands of miles away, says the archbishop of Canterbury.

In his new year message, to be broadcast tomorrow, Dr Rowan Williams will say that people can still make a difference in spite of the “terrorism, war, natural disaster and financial collapse of the last 15 months”.

There was one bright spot, though:

the archbishop also expressed his disappointment at the lukewarm commitment to achieving the millennium development goals.

Rowan Williams, ever in search of the impossible dream, is in Rome:

The archbishop of Canterbury today pleaded with Roman Catholics to set aside their differences with Anglicans over the issue of female bishops, insisting there was more uniting the denominations than dividing them.

Rowan Williams was giving a lecture in Rome before Sunday’s meeting with the pope, their first encounter since the Vatican’s surprise announcement of a special institution for traditionalist Anglicans wanting to convert to Catholicism.

In his address at the Gregorian University, Williams said the Anglican communion was proof that churches could stay together in spite of their differences.

Where has Rowan been for the last 3 years? The Anglican communion is proof that the church can’t stay together once internal differences become as stark as they are now.

I understand that once Rowan has convinced the Pope of the benefits of women bishops he will be travelling to Saudi Arabia to plead the case for women imams.