Tag Archives: Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams to quit next year

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From here:

Dr Rowan Williams is understood to have told friends he is ready to quit the highest office in the Church of England to pursue a life in academia.

The news will trigger intense plotting behind the scenes over who should succeed the 61-year-old archbishop, who is not required to retire until he is 70.

Bishops have privately been arguing for Dr Williams to stand down, with the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, telling clergy he should give someone else a chance after nearly ten years in the post.

Better late than never.

 

A call for the church to take on the new atheists

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From here:

Clergy are to be urged to be more vocal in countering the arguments put forward by a more hard-line group of atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who have campaigned for a less tolerant attitude towards religion.

A report endorsed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warns that the Church faces a battle to prevent faith being seen as “a social problem” and says the next five years are set to be a period of “exceptional challenge”.

It expresses concern that Christians are facing hostility at work and says the Church could lose its place at the centre of public life unless it challenges attempts to marginalise religious belief.

The rallying call comes amid fears that Christians are suffering from an increasing level of discrimination following a series of cases in which they have been punished for sharing their beliefs.

I agree.

However, if the church is to create a bulwark against the onslaught of God hatred from the ilk of Dawkins and Hitchens, it will have to ensure its own belief is robustly Christian. The kind of wishy-washy liberal Christianity of someone like Tony Blair will not withstand the typical diatribe of the anti-God brigade, as evidenced by the Hitchens vs. Blair debate in Toronto.

William Lane Craig, has sent Dawkins and his cohorts scurrying for the hills, whimpering excuses, although Dawkins says he is quite happy debating a bishop or archbishop. This is not surprising; since many bishops and archbishops dither on what the resurrection is or what the gospel is, they aren’t going to stand much of a chance defending something whose truth they themselves doubt.

 

Riotous Rowan pontificates on the looting

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Rowan Williams offers ecclesiastical wisdom – or lack thereof – on the rioting in the UK:

Aug 11 (Reuters) – England’s most senior cleric on Thursday gave his first reaction to riots across the country, saying the government’s stated priority of building stronger communities was now a matter of urgency.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said the violence would “intensify the cycle of deprivation and vulnerability” in Britain, in a statement emailed to Reuters.

“The government has insisted on the priority of creating stronger, better-resourced local communities. This priority is now a matter of extreme urgency. We need to see initiatives that will address anxieties and provide some hope of long-term stability in community services, especially for the young,” he wrote.

I’m unsure as what kind of cycle of deprivation would include in its deprivations Blackberries with which to organise looting parties. I have no doubt that, had the government provided more community centres – offering free Blackberries, perhaps – they would have been looted too.

Rowan Williams has, predictably, placed the blame for the rioting on the government for not providing adequate community services, while, at the same time, missing the obvious fact that the government is to blame for not protecting its citizens.

The kind of long term stability that Rowan is looking for is not provided by governments but by families. What is his church doing to strengthen families? Oh, right, it’s promoting same sex marriage; that should do the trick.

Rowan Williams wants church schools to be inclusive

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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

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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

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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.

And now for something completely different: an Anglican clergyman who thinks bin Laden should have been “stamped out”

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From here:

a LEADING Lancashire clergyman has spoken of his “surprise” after the Archbishop of Canterbury criticised the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Fr Timothy Lipscomb, vicar of Preston, claims the al-Qaeda leader needed “stamping out” and congratulated US special forces for killing the terrorist who was believed to have ordered the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington that killed thousands of people. His comments come after Dr Rowan Williams, head of the 80-million strong Anglican Communion, said the killing of the unarmed terrorist left him with an “uncomfortable feeling.”…….

He said: “The fact of the matter is that bin Laden was a murderer and needed to be stamped out. It might not sound very Christian but it is true.

“I am a big supporter of the Archbishop’s but I was very surprised by his comments on this matter. He is a very intelligent man but maybe he sometimes has difficulty in expressing what he really means.”

A person who has difficulty expressing what he “really means” is usually signifying that he doesn’t know what he really means. I think Rowan Williams knew exactly what he meant in this case.

Rowan Williams uncomfortable with bin Laden killing

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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

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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.