Tag Archives: Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams calls for more gun control in the U.S.

Posted on by
7

From here:

The leader of the world’s 80 million-strong Anglican Communion has thrown his support behind stricter gun control in the U.S., saying the easy availability of powerful weapons drew vulnerable people toward violence.

[….]

Turning to the issue of gun control, Williams said: “People use guns but, in a sense, guns use people too. When we have the technology for violence easily to hand, our choices are skewed and we are more vulnerable to being manipulated into violent action.”

If Rowan Williams is right and “guns use people” then, if the citizens of the U.S. are completely disarmed and only the police and armed forces have guns, only the police and armed forces will be “vulnerable to being manipulated into violent action”, potentially leaving ordinary citizens at their mercy.

If Williams is right – and I’m not sure he is – that’s a good reason why U.S. citizens should not be disarmed.

Rowan Williams still at sea

Posted on by
1

All his efforts concentrated in frantically Rowan without a paddle.

Since, in the essence of my being I am empathetic and soft hearted, I feel rather sorry for Rowan Williams as he throws in the towel as Archbishop of Canterbury. By any measure he has been a dismal failure – but not for lack of trying. The sad thing is, when not wasting his time by tilting at windmills, his trying has been directed at attempting to achieve the impossible: reconciling the irreconcilable, squaring the circle, synthesising a happy medium between zero and infinity .

As has become transparently apparent in North America, Anglican liberals and conservatives adhere to different religions: both call their beliefs “Christian” but that’s where the similarity ends. Rowan Williams has staunchly attempted to occupy a position mid-way between the two, a contributing factor to the incoherence of everything he says.

And he still hasn’t learned his lesson; he believes that if he had visited the “United States when things began to get difficult” it might have gone better. But without him doing the one thing he could not do – take a stand for one side or the other – it would not have made a blind bit of difference.

From here:

“Thinking back over things I don’t think I’ve got right over the last 10 years, I think it might have helped a lot if I’d gone sooner to the United States when things began to get difficult about the ordination of gay bishops, and engaged more directly with the American House of Bishops,” Williams said in September.

Justin Welby’s assessment of Rowan Williams

Posted on by
4

From here:

I want to say at once that one of the biggest challenges is to follow a man who I believe will be recognised as one of the greatest Archbishops of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

He is some one with a deep love for Jesus Christ, an infectious spirituality, extraordinary integrity and holiness, immense personal moral and physical courage, and of course one of the world’s principal theologians and philosophers.

To be fully serious, the church world wide owes him a great debt, more than it knows, and I shall be continuing to seek his advice and wisdom. I can only wish him, Jane and the family a wonderful end to his time at Canterbury and joy in their new roles.

One can only hope that he was simply being polite.

Rowan Williams denies importing a secular fuss into the church

Posted on by
Reply

But who believes him?

Here we have “empowerment of women”, “global industry”, “damage being done to our environment” and “running out of a world to live in”, all of which were secular obsessions long before the church even noticed them. The Anglican Church has taken its cue from secularism ever since it abandoned proclaiming Jesus’ uniqueness in being the only way to the Father in favour of the foggy ambiguity of the fatuous “Five Marks of Mission”.

The Chair of the forum, Archbishop Rowan Williams, agreed saying that environmental issues were bound with issues of moral courage such as land ownership, empowerment of women and global industry.

He said that, considering the damage being done to our environment, “running out of a world to live in is a mark of our unfaithfulness,” adding that Christians should not consider environmental issues “a secular fuss imported into the church”. Followers of Christ should not “shrug our shoulders when we are asked why there is not sufficient food or safe, clean water…That is not what Christians should be. That is why this is a matter of faithfulness to our creator and redeemer.”

 

Creeping Hegelianism in the Anglican Communion

Posted on by
Reply

The Anglican Consultative Council is meeting in New Zealand: it is rather like an Entmoot, except it moves more slowly and is more firmly rooted in fantasy.

Considering Rowan Williams – when not waxing eloquent on sharia law and dressing as a Druid – has spent his entire tenure on attempting to find a middle ground between irreconcilable opposites, perhaps I should have made the headline “Galloping Hegelianism….”. No matter. Rowan is still at it and is joined by General Secretary Canon Kenneth Kearon, who says:

Speaking at the first plenary session of ACC15, the Canon Kenneth Kearon told delegates assembled in Auckland’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, that Anglicanism at its best “reaches out to those with whom we differ, recognising that together we will come to a deeper and far richer understanding of God than any of us could do on our own or if we only share the company of like-minded people.”

This only works if the non-like-minded people, at a minimum, hold to the truth of the basics of Christianity. As it is, the liberals Kearon is suggesting might provide a “far richer understanding of God” routinely deny the uniqueness of Christ, his divinity, his Virgin birth, his atoning sacrifice on the cross and his physical Resurrection: they believe in a different God. There is no possibility whatsoever that listening to heretics expound on false gods will shed any illumination on the objectively real God that has been worshipped by Christians for the last 2000 years.

Kearon would have us sit down with the least like-minded person we could find – Richard Dawkins, say – “reach out” to him, have endless dialogue and triumphantly emerge with a synthesised faith of – agnosticism.

I met Kearon in 2010 and suggested to him then that Anglican Communion meetings move so slowly that, by the time anything is done, there will be no Anglican Communion – in the West, at least. He stared past my head with watery blue eyes and intoned in a mild Irish brogue: “no, no, things move slowly but it will last longer than that”.

One thing is certain: when the lights finally go out at Lambeth, there will be a few dust encrusted clerical relics – eyes slowly closing, beards unkempt and stiff with congealed spittle – still having conversations on “continuing Indaba, ecumenical dialogues and inter faith issues.”

Archbishop of Canterbury visits New Zealand

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury is in New Zealand, in what will be his last major international engagement before he retires.

It’s a relief to see Rowan doing something useful at last: trying out for a part as stunt double for Balin’s beard:

 

Rowan Williams congratulates himself on not being too cautious

Posted on by
2

Unfortunately, he threw caution to the wind when pontificating on political matters that were really not his primary concern, thereby earning derision from the right and applause from the left, and timid to the point of abject poltroonery when it came to standing up for the Christian Gospel.

If, as the remarks below imply, he really did say what he believed, he would have been better suited to the job of Labour Party backbencher than Archbishop of Canterbury.

From here:

In a question and answer session at the end of a densely theological lecture on the nature of the individual, organised by the religion think tank Theos, Dr Williams admitted some of his statements, which have touched controversially on issues from the Iraq war to government economic policies, were risky.

He said: “I just don’t think that it will do to be too cautious in a job like this, you are here, as is true for any archbishop, you are here to try and say what you believe you have been given to say – by which I don’t mean by divine inspiration.

“To try and share a particular picture of what the world is like, what God is like, which of course leads you into sometimes risky and anything but infallible judgments about particular issues of the day.”

Rowan Williams deconstructs Narnia

Posted on by
2

Rowan Williams, when asked his thoughts on C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, declared that he finds Aslan to be “on the knife-edge of the erotic.”

One wonders what C. S. Lewis would make of Rowan Williams and his ideas; Williams himself provides a clue in the same interview: “”Lewis thought most theologians were gutless liberals who didn’t care about the truth enough.”

And Aslan would almost certainly say: “Oh, Adam’s son, how cleverly you defend yourself against all that might do you good!”

From here:

On C S Lewis and theology: “Lewis thought most theologians were gutless liberals who didn’t care about the truth enough.”

On the sensuousness of Aslan the lion: “on the knife-edge of the erotic.”

On the Aslan resurrection scene in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: “I think it is such an obvious parallel. The more interesting thing is how does Lewis convey a sense of what the religious climate, the religious sensibility might be in another world? That is the teasing thing.”

On his first response to C S Lewis’ Narnia books: “When you’re 14 or 15, as I was when I read some of those books, you think, wow, we’ve got a clever man on our side! Isn’t that good!”

Of a pagan who gets to heaven: “Here is someone with total courage, passion and generosity who’s giving all that to a mistaken target. But the heavenly postman knows better and delivers it to the right address.”

Rowan Williams badly misjudges attempt at compromise; in other news, sun rose in the East this morning

Posted on by
2

The tenure of Rowan Williams has been notable for the failure of his unceasing efforts to find an Hegelian synthesis or middle ground in every either/or conundrum with which he has been faced. It didn’t work with the battle over actively homosexual priests and bishops, with the blessing of same-sex unions or with the mushy Anglican Covenant, but Williams thought he’d give it another go with the division over women bishops in the Church of England.

It didn’t work.

He seems to suffer from a congenital inability to take a side: even his private opinions about homosexual marriage are at odds with the official view his position compels him to maintain. The resulting theological schizophrenia seems to have spilled over into his entire ministry creating the boggy quagmire from which only his retirement can extricate him – but not his church – at the end of this year.

From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury made a humiliating apology to the Church of England yesterday for the latest fiasco over women bishops.

Dr Rowan Williams spoke of ‘penitence’ as the bishops asked the Church’s parliament, the General Synod, for another three months to make up their minds over how to draw up a new law about the place of women.

It would allow women priests to be promoted for the first time to the leadership ranks of the bishops. It has already taken the CofE 12 years of agonising to get to the brink of consecrating its first woman bishop.

But yesterday the Synod voted for another delay after Dr Williams admitted that, together with his fellow bishops, he had badly misjudged an attempt at a compromise.

Supporters of women bishops were so angry that they were poised to vote down the new Church law.

The other Rowan Williams

Posted on by
1

TEC, the  organisation that will tolerate anything except disagreement, is disciplining bishops for saying what they think, the Archbishop of Canterbury has declared that the Church of England is looking into the abyss, gay priests are out and transgendered priests are in, but the real Anglican news of the week is that there are two Rowan Williams (or should that be Rowan Williamses or Rowans Williams?).

The gender variant needs to work on those eyebrows if she expects anyone to take her seriously.

 

From here:

Meanwhile, Dr Williams has been revealed to have a female namesake. She is the Reverend Rowan Williams, who is chaplain at the University of York.

She was photographed chatting to General Synod members yesterday as they gathered in the grounds of the university.