Tag Archives: Rowan Williams

Jesus wasn’t a “super-good” person according to Rowan Williams

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From here:

Jesus would spend Christmas with the St Paul’s Cathedral protesters, the Archbishop of Canterbury said yesterday.

Dr Rowan Williams declared that Christ would be ‘there, sharing the risks, not just taking sides.’

He said in an article aimed at the huge audience of buyers of the Christmas edition of the Radio Times that Jesus ‘is somebody who constantly asks awkward questions’.

The Archbishop said: ‘Christmas doesn’t commemorate the birth of a super-good person who shows us how to get it right every time, but the arrival in the world of someone who tells us that everything could be different.’

If Jesus wasn’t “super-good”, does that mean the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks Jesus was slightly bad, that he sinned? If he doesn’t show us how “to get it right every time”, does that mean Jesus sometimes got it wrong? Does Rowan Williams believe that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father? It doesn’t sound like it.

Dr Williams said in his article: ‘One of the slogans on the posters and banners in front of St Paul’s Cathedral has been “What would Jesus do?”

‘This started life in the US some years ago, with people wearing wristbands with WWJD on them. It’s one of those things that looks wonderfully obvious, a quick way to the right answer.’

He added that when Jesus said ‘give Caesar what belongs to Caesar’, he meant to ask ‘what’s the exact point at which involvement in the empire of capitalist economy compromises you fatally?’

That must be one of the things Jesus didn’t get quite right: when he said ‘give Caesar what belongs to Caesar’, what he really meant to say was that you should ‘give Caesar what belongs to Caesar’ unless, instead of being a ruthless tyrant,  Caesar happens to be a capitalist, in which case, don’t giving him anything since capitalists are more corrupting than the devil himself.

Rowan Williams is the only Anglican left who still remembers the “moratoria”

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For those who wish to brave the fog of  the Windsor Continuation Group Report and peruse the moratoria, they can be found here.

In summary, “gracious restraint” (a phrase subsequently mangled into meaninglessness) was asked for:

  • Consecration of Bishops living in a same gender union
  • Permission for Rites of Blessing for Same Sex unions
  • Interventions in Provinces

Since the forming of ACNA and ANiC, no further “interventions” have occurred, so that leaves the other two – which have never stopped occurring.

This has led Rowan Williams to have an Advent Moan:

These questions are made all the more sharp by the fact that the repeated requests for moratoria on problematic actions issued by various representative Anglican bodies are increasingly ignored.  Strong conscientious convictions are involved here.  No-one, I believe, acts out of a desire to deepen disunity; some believe that certain matters are more important than what they think of as a superficial unity.  But the effects are often to deepen mutual mistrust, and this must surely be bad for our mission together as Anglicans, and alongside other Christians as well.  The question remains: if the moratoria are ignored and the Covenant suspected, what are the means by which we maintain some theological coherence as a Communion and some personal respect and understanding as a fellowship of people seeking to serve Christ?  And we should bear in mind that our coherence as a Communion is also a significant concern in relation to other Christian bodies – especially at a moment when the renewed dialogues with Roman Catholics and Orthodox have begun with great enthusiasm and a very constructive spirit.

The fact is that the North American Anglican Provinces aren’t interested in theological coherence, are continuing to press ahead with same sex blessings – full blown marriage to follow shortly – the ordaining of actively homosexual clergy and the legalised persecution of those who refuse to go along with them. The word “moratorium” is never mentioned.

It’s hard to take Rowan Williams’ complaining about everyone ignoring the moratoria too seriously, when he himself not only welcomes Bishop Michael Ingham, who has a same-sex partnered Dean and continues to bless same sex marriages, to Lambeth for a pally chat, but offers to look for a replacement priest for St. John’s Shaughnessy on Ingham’s behalf.

Lambeth launches a Hindu Christian forum

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From here:

Canterbury, England  – In a move to create an “opportunity for dialogue and depth,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and Sri Shruti Dharma Das Ji launched the Hindu Christian Forum today at Lambeth Palace, according to a Church of England news release.

“The conversation of interfaith dialogue is always one where we look eagerly and expectantly for enrichment. We’re not playing for victory, we’re seeking understanding from one another…by learning the depth of one another’s commitment and vision; dialogue and depth is what we all hope for,” said Williams.

Perish the thought of “playing for victory”, that would imply that Christianity is true and Hinduism isn’t, an idea whose insensitivity would shrivel the inclusion addicted sensibilities of Anglican prelates from coast to coast.

The state of Global Warming

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With the release of 5000 new Climategate 2 emails, it has become even more apparent that data has been falsified, the issue politicised and the science as unsettled as my Aunty Ethel’s homemade blancmange.

From here:

Global-warming skeptics spend much of their time knocking down the fatuous warmist claim that the science is settled. According to the warmists, this singular piece of settled science is attested to by hundreds or thousands of highly credentialed scientists. In truth, virtually the entire warmist edifice is built around a small, tightly knit coterie of persons (one hesitates to refer to folks with so little respect for the scientific method as scientists) willing to falsify data and manipulate findings; or, to put it bluntly, to lie in order to push a political agenda not supported by empirical evidence. This is what made the original release of the Climategate e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia so valuable. They clearly identified the politicized core of climate watchers who were driving the entire warmist agenda. Following in their footsteps are all the other scientists who built their own research on top of the fraudulent data produced by the warmist core.

Canada is standing up for sanity by refusing to participate in the Kyoto protocol and, excluding flights for the participants, around 15,000 tonnes of CO2 is being dumped into the air in Durban City at the conference to discuss how to dump less CO2 into the air.

Meanwhile, Rowan Williams is promoting his solution to the problem: grow your own potatoes. I am all for home grown vegetables since they taste very good and, I have to admit, it’s a pretty harmless solution from a person no-one listens to, to a problem that doesn’t exist.

 

Rowan Williams confuses the steps of St. Paul’s with Tiananmen Square

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In 1989 millions of people gathered in Tiananmen Square to protest their totalitarian government and demand democracy. China’s military responded with guns and tanks killing hundreds of people in what became known as the Massacre in Tiananmen Square. Local hospitals filled with the wounded and dying and these images became iconic:

 

 

The occupiers of the steps of St. Paul’s took advantage of the fact that they already live in a democracy to broadcast their outrage at the recently discovered abomination that some people are paid a lot and others aren’t. Not only was no-one was shot at by police, but sympathetic clergy persuaded the police to leave, providing a tacit invitation for the protesters to stay – which they did.

There is as much similarity between these two events as there is between the first world war and a teddy bears’ picnic. That’s not the way Rowan Williams sees it, though:

He added that St Paul’s had become “a theatre” in which conflicts were played out and urban landscapes were often the scenes of defining, dramatic moments in history, citing Tiananmen Square, Cairo and Athens as examples.

The only conflict being played out in the theatre of St. Paul’s is the one between muddled clergy who can’t decide whether it’s better to promote social justice by letting the step squatters stay, or whether prophetic social justice making is served more deeply by collecting the £20,000 daily from visitors who are slightly more well heeled than the churls presently impeding their entrance.

Rowan Williams interviewed on the St. Paul’s protest

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At around the 3 minute mark, the interviewer asks:

“Has the church seized the opportunity to put the Christian message forward?”

To which Rowan Williams, apparently missing the point, answers :

“There’s actually been quite a lot coming from the church in the last 18 months or 2 years on the economic crisis”.

Needless to say, none of what the church has said about the economic crisis had much to do with the Christian message, unless you believe that the Christian message is one of correcting the apparent failings of capitalism by redistributing wealth as prescribed by the dogma of socialism.

 

Rowan Williams solves Occupy problem: calls for new tax on banks

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In a typical flash of brilliance, Rowan Williams has finally applied his immense intellect to the conundrum of what to do about the protesters camped outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, an inconvenience that is costing the church £20,000 per day and, to date, three senior clergy, not to mention new fractures in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

The answer was there for all to see, but it took a Welsh academic with out of control eyebrows to pierce the confusion and find an answer: tax the banks some more!

Very soon now the protesters will melt away, caught up in a euphoria of selflessness, knowing that the leader of the church on whose steps they are playing house wants much of the money now flowing into the coffers of British banks to be diverted into good works – like paying for bailouts for Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

From here:

Dr Rowan Williams said that the Church of England had a “proper interest in the ethics of the financial world” and warned that there had been “little visible change in banking practices” following the recession.

He urged David Cameron and George Osborne to drop their opposition to a European-wide tax on financial transactions, which is expected to be formally proposed by France and Germany at the G20 summit of world leaders starting tomorrow.

“The demands of the protesters have been vague. Many people are frustrated beyond measure at what they see as the disastrous effects of global capitalism; but it isn’t easy to say what we should do differently. It is time we tried to be more specific,” Dr Williams said.

 

Rowan Williams wades into the St. Paul’s debacle

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But he hasn’t waded in very far.

From here:

He said the resignation, which followed that of Rev Dr Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor, was “very sad news” and that the events of the past fortnight had shown “how decisions made in good faith by good people under unusual pressure can have utterly unforeseen and unwelcome consequences”.

Speaking publicly about the crisis for the first time, Dr Williams added: “The urgent larger issues raised by the protesters at St Paul’s remain very much on the table and we need – as a Church and as society as a whole – to work to make sure that they are properly addressed.”

As usual Rowan Williams can’t make up his mind what to do or whose side to be on. If he sides with the Dean Knowles, throw the protesters out faction, it makes his prior anti-banker statement look even more ridiculous; if he sides with the Giles Fraser, we stand with the protesters (even though they have less of an idea of what they are doing than Rowan Williams) faction, the church may look good for a while but will lose hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The internal division in the church on what to do about the protesters parallels the division between church conservatives and liberals. The difference is, in the case of the latter, almost no-one cares, or even notices; the former is very public and the world is watching to see what the church will do.

Will Rowan mingle among the tent dwellers and organise impromptu Indaba groups? Will he advocate a Listening Process between clergy, police and protesters? Will he employ Hegelian dialectic to arrive at a middle ground that everyone will be unhappy with?

The Bishop of London, Richard Chartre, has plumped for the last option: he wants the protest to be scaled down but not be forcibly removed.

What should the church do? It seems to me to be a perfect opportunity to preach the gospel of Christ – the real one, not social justice claptrap – to the lost. Tent city on the steps of St. Paul’s would be a good setting for an Alpha course.

 

Taking pride in the Anglican processes

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While I worked for IBM I was an avid follower of Dilbert, the cartoon character who seemed to understand how IBM works better than the executives who pretend to run it. One of my favourites was pinned to my office wall. In it, Dilbert spent his entire week accomplishing nothing other than fulfilling the demands of the institutional processes surrounding the task – the actual task was never completed. At the end of the week, he concluded that, if he was to take pride in anything, he had to take pride in the processes. The strip was entitled, “We take pride in our processes.”

Such is life at IBM: few executives care what gets done as long as the attempt adheres to the process. To accomplish anything worthwhile demands an intricate knowledge of an underground network of people willing to conspire together to circumvent the elaborate obstacles erected by entire divisions of bureaucrats, the object of which is to prevent anything happening any faster than the pace of continental drift.

I sometimes think that Rowan Williams, with his indabas and listening process, should work at IBM after he retires: he would fit right in.

Here is an article by the ever perceptive Charles Raven:

The strategy behind Williams’ address was not to promote his views on homosexuality directly, but to reflect on the process by which moral decisions in general should be made – not so much to play the game, so to speak, as the more ambitious task of actually trying to define what the playing field should look like. And this is the enduring significance of his address thirteen years later as he continues to promote ‘indaba’ and ‘listening process’ strategies which focus on the process of decision making, while all the time kicking the can down the road in the hope that the institutionally messy consequences of closure can be avoided.