Tag Archives: Rowan Williams

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.

Rowan Williams: "words have results"

Posted on by
1

He’s right: it’s a shame that Rowan so often employs words to obscure what he is thinking rather than clarify it, though.

Rowan Williams places the blame for David Kato’s murder squarely on those in Uganda who routinely vilify homosexuals with – words.

From here:

Dr Williams said Mr Kato’s murder illustrated the fact “words have results”.

“You cannot go around sharing information about the identity of proposed lesbian and gay persons and urging people to ostracise them or worse ‘Hang Them’ as in the headlines of one of the Ugandan newspapers,” he said, speaking to the media at the Emmaus retreat centre in Swords, Co Dublin.

“You cannot do that without taking responsibility for the consequences. Language which demonises gays and lesbians has consequences.”

As it turns out, it is quite probable that Kato’s murder had less to do with inflammatory anti-homosexual newspaper articles than it did with a criminal whom Kato paid – not enough apparently – to have sex with him.

From here:

“We have taken him to Mukono Magistrate’s Court to record an extrajudicial statement,” the source said. “He told us that he killed Kato after he failed to give him a car, a house and money he promised as rewards for having sex with him,” the source said.

Kato is alleged to have bailed the suspect out of Kawuga Prison on January 24, where he been remanded on charges of theft of a mobile phone. The suspect told police that he stayed with Kato for two days. He accused the deceased of having sex with him and promising to pay him during the period.

The suspect allegedly told the police he got tired of having sex with Kato but the latter would not have any of his excuses. “The suspect said he left the bedroom, went to a store and picked a hammer which he used to hit him [Kato] while he was still in bed,” the source said.

Rowan’s statements aren’t particularly surprising: at the Dublin Primates’ meeting no-one was allowed to talk about homosexuality at all, so the subject had to be introduced somehow.

Katharine Jefferts-Schori laments:

His murder deprives his people of a significant and effective voice, and we pray that the world may learn from his gentle and quiet witness, and begin to receive a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone.

Not only that, of course: those imprisoned for stealing mobile phones have one less person to bail them out as a gentle and quiet witness – or for sex.

The Ugandan murder rate is around nine people per day which means that on the day Kato was killed, eight other people were too. There were no denunciations from prominent Anglicans for the other eight murders; so much for inclusion.

Rowan Williams’ differing reactions to persecution

Posted on by
Reply

Rowan Williams condemned the murder of David Kato in Kampala. He went on to urge the British government to provide asylum for other homosexuals who might be in danger in Uganda.

All very proper, of course; except I don’t remember him pressuring the UK government to accept Iranian homosexual refugees – who, after all, are in considerably more danger than those in Uganda.

Rowan seems to enjoy impossible balancing acts: not satisfied with trying to indaba together the two incompatible religions represented by liberal and conservative Anglicanism, he is now trying to denounce anti-homosexual factions in other nations without implicating the most enthusiastically systematic abusers of homosexuals now extant – Muslims.

From here:

The archbishop of Canterbury has urged the government to offer protection to gay and lesbian people seeking asylum in the UK after the “profoundly shocking” killing of a Ugandan gay rights activist this week.

Williams said: “Whatever the precise circumstances of his death, which have yet to be determined, we know that David Kato Kisule lived under the threat of violence and death.

“No one should have to live in such fear because of the bigotry of others. This event also makes it all the more urgent for the British government to secure the safety of LGBT asylum seekers in the UK. This is a moment to take very serious stock and to address those attitudes of mind which endanger the lives of men and women belonging to sexual minorities.”

Meanwhile, the Archbishop is “powerless to help” Christians who are being routinely murdered, tortured and raped in Islamic nations, but trusts they will be encouraged because they “have not been forgotten” – at least, not completely.

From here:

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will say Christians who are suffering because of their beliefs would be helped through the knowledge they have not been forgotten.

“We may feel powerless to help; yet we should also know that people in such circumstances are strengthened simply by knowing they have not been forgotten,” Williams will say, according to extracts of the address released in advance.

“And if we find we have time to spare for joining in letter-writing campaigns for all prisoners of conscience, [rights groups] Amnesty International and Christian Solidarity worldwide will have plenty of opportunities for us to make use of.”

Delivering the sermon at the cathedral in Canterbury, he will cite a number of countries where Christians are suffering, including Iraq and Zimbabwe………..

Williams, the spiritual leader of more than 70 million Anglicans worldwide, mentions the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian mother-of-five in Pakistan sentenced to death for defaming the Prophet Mohammed.

“Our prayers continue for [Asia Bibi] in Pakistan and others from minority groups who suffer from the abuse of the law by certain groups there.”

Students appeal to Rowan Williams to end tuition fee protest

Posted on by
Reply

From here:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has been called on to help end a dispute between a university and students who are continuing three-week sit-in at the University of Kent in protest at rises in tuition fees…..

The students have now written to the Archbishop, Rowan Williams, in the hope that as a visitor to the university he will act as mediator to help resolve the impasse.

With his bent for compulsive Hegelian dialectic, Rowan, after his spectacular success at uniting divided Anglicans, is the obvious choice for mediating a squabble about tuition fees. Or he could preach a sermon; either way, the five sit-in students would have to disperse or risk boredom induced catatonia.

A 1947 Christmas

Posted on by
3

When I was a small child in the UK, rationing was still in force. Bread, meat, butter, potatoes were all rationed. In spite of that, at Christmas, we always seemed to have enough to eat and my parents managed to buy presents. My memory of my early childhood Christmases is not one of today’s excesses that don’t seem to particularly satisfy anyone, but of warm, cheerful (well, apart from my aunt Ada) family gatherings. I didn’t know it then, of course, but my parents made the necessary sacrifices to create a merry Christmas.

From the BBC:

[flv:https://www.anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/Christmas1947.flv 760 440]

Archive footage shows how British people experienced the run up to Christmas in 1947, one of the toughest of the post-War ‘Austerity’ years.

Bread became rationed, joining other staple items like meat, butter and potatoes, and queues in shops were common.

Sterling was also experiencing a currency crisis, resulting from the UK’s post-War debt to America.

Contrast that with Rowan Williams’ Christmas meanderings in which he bemoans the plight of today’s poor – who are actually considerably more wealthy than even the moderately well-off in the late 40s.

‘No government in its right mind wants poverty. One positive thing about aspects of the current spending review is a clear intention to put things in place that will actually reduce poverty and help people out of the traps of dependency.

‘But also we need to beware of the real temptation to take it for granted that if people still suffer, even after reforms undertaken with good intentions, then somehow it is their fault.

‘Life at the grass roots is always going to be less black and white, and it isn’t surprising if a lot of people, already insecure, start feeling even more insecure. At the very least, there’s a job of communication to do.

‘Hard-working and honest people who do their best really do face problems; so do people with disabilities, with mental health issues or limited mobility.
‘There are doubtless some who make the most out of the benefits culture (just as there are some who have made the most out of other kinds of perks available to bankers or MPs).

Dr Williams returned to the theme in his Christmas Day sermon in Canterbury Cathedral, in which he said society would stick together in hard financial times only if people felt the burden was being shared.

‘That confidence isn’t in huge supply, given the crises of trust that have shaken us in the past couple of years and the sense that the most prosperous have yet to shoulder their load.’

It’s hard not to come to the conclusion that what really irks Rowan Williams is the fact that the government is not redistributing wealth more vigorously. Unfortunately at Christmas, just as at any other time, if a person cannot be content with what he has, he won’t be content no matter how many free Xboxes are showered upon him. It’s a shame that rather than point that out, Rowan chose to preach leftist politics instead. He also could have said a few words about the relatively significant Incarnation event.

Nobody loves the Anglican Covenant

Posted on by
Reply

Although a vote passed in the Church of England synod saying “[t]hat the draft Act of Synod adopting the Anglican Communion Covenant be considered”, the homosexualist lobby, having decided that there is no Anglican crisis, has already rejected it and now the GAFCON Primates, having decided that the crisis has already broken the Communion beyond repair, have also rejected it:

For the sake of Christ and of His Gospel we can no longer maintain the illusion of normalcy and so we join with other Primates from the Global South in declaring that we will not be present at the next Primates’ meeting to be held in Ireland. And while we acknowledge that the efforts to heal our brokenness through the introduction of an Anglican Covenant were well intentioned we have come to the conclusion the current text is fatally flawed and so support for this initiative is no longer appropriate.

Rowan Williams’ strategy all along has been to find a middle ground in all this. He has been forced to do that himself since he is personally sympathetic to homosexual marriage and homosexual bishops but leads millions of Anglicans who are not. The Covenant, to some extent, represents the middle ground that he seems to be comfortable with; it is not something he will be able to sell to the rest of the Communion, though.  That is probably because for those with a less convoluted thought process than Rowan, it is obvious that to pretend that two irreconcilable opposites can comfortably coexist is blatant  hypocrisy.

Sharia Law being taught in British Schools

Posted on by
1

From here:

British children are being taught brutal Sharia Law in weekend schools across the country.

Text books ask pupils to list the “reprehensible” qualities of Jews, and teach how to chop off the hands and feet of thieves.

Around 5,000 Muslim children, aged six to 18, attend more than 40 weekend schools which teach the Saudi national curriculum.

As Rowan Williams noted in 2008, Sharia law in the UK is “unavoidable” and “would help maintain social cohesion”. At least he got the first part right.