Tag Archives: Archbishop of Canterbury

More commentary on Rowan Williams

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George Pitcher, former secretary for public affairs to the ABC, provides an inside look at the “court” of Lambeth Palace. It’s a must read:

But the trouble with not squaring up to the apparatus of the Archbishop’s government machine is that it breeds, and is encouraged to develop, an internal, self-serving authority, like an overweening civil service. You should never underestimate a palace’s tendency to attract courtiers. The one at Lambeth is no exception. They preen and jostle for favour (somewhat pointless, as Rowan treats everyone the same). They build professional silos and guard their sometimes limited responsibilities jealously. They meet weekly around the table in the Pink Drawing Room and there is no higher endeavour than filling the Archbishop’s diary over a year in advance.

Jane Kramer of the New Yorker offers a different perspective:

The choices he had were simple: he could lead the Church of England, which was eager for his attention; or he could continue to reach out to the churches that ignored him; or he could resign. He was tired, and, being a good man and a Christian in evident anguish, he resigned. I think that he missed the old Rowan Williams, too.

Malcolm Boyd remembers a dinner he had with Williams and Williams’ memory of it as well.
Ben Myers’ perspective is especially insightful:

Rowan Williams’ belief in the Church and his view of academic life are closely related. His decision to leave Canterbury and take up the position of master of Magdalene College at Cambridge should not be seen as a retreat from the difficulties of Church life. Instead, for Williams, this will be a transition from one kind of priestly ministry to another.

It is often said that Williams is an unusual churchman – too scholarly, too ponderous, too sensitive to complexity – but it should equally be said that he is an unusual scholar. Although he has made important contributions to several academic disciplines – not only theology but also history, political philosophy and literary criticism – his deepest commitment has always been to the cultivation of community rather than to any particular intellectual project. If his critics complained that he was an unusually academic archbishop, Cambridge will also find him to be an unusually priestly scholar.

And this:

Simply put, Williams believes in the Church more than he believes in his own opinions. All his troubles as Archbishop of Canterbury have stemmed from this fact. He believes in processes of communal negotiation more than he believes in the enforcement of any fixed viewpoint. It is this mindset, this belief in the Church, that has drawn so much criticism, even from within the Church of England. Giles Fraser, the former canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, reports hearing a bishop say: “The problem with Rowan Williams is that he is too bloody Christian.”

Myers warns the academics of Cambridge that they will be as unhappy with Williams as many Anglicans have been:

But his belief in the Church shapes the way he understands academic life: it is the community, not the autonomous individual, that has access to truth. If this belief is the heart of Williams’ distinctive style of Church leadership, it is equally the whole basis of his approach to higher education. What he will really bring to Cambridge, in other words, is the same thing he brought to Canterbury: a belief in the Church.

What is unique about Rowan Williams is simply the fact that he is a priest. If anything will come to define his new position at Cambridge, it will be that he approaches academic life just as he approaches Church leadership: as a Christian and as a priest.

 

Nick Lao on Williams’ “persistence patience.”
Opposite the Clint Eastwood school of leadership, Williams’ self-understanding as a leader has been that of a servant or gracious host, making sure everyone has a seat at the table, no matter how unpresentable or unruly. He prefers keeping the ball in play, mainly because it’s what he presumes Jesus would do.In these fractious times, this is the kind of hospitable patience our churches and institutions may need for their own good, even if they don’t know it. As President Obama is now well aware, our culture celebrates or crucifies leaders by tallying up foes vanquished, reforms instituted, swift decisions not second-guessed.

Contrast this with a leader of 80 million who would rather be known for simply encouraging adversaries to stay engaged with one another. It may not show up in the stat box, but it counts for the fragile bonds of unity that keep Christians in communion, at least for the foreseeable future. If the church is the household of God, Williams’ peculiar style of leadership can remind us that the habits most proper to our common life are perhaps not acts of bravado, but better table manners.

 

More reaction to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s resignation

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N.T. Wright (former Bishop of Durham, currently Professor of New Testament at the University of St. Andrew’s, Scotland) on Rowan Williams:

‘Here to introduce Bach’s St Matthew Passion,’ said the radio announcer, ‘is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.’ My companion and I listened eagerly to a lucid account of St Matthew’s theology, and of how Bach’s music involves every hearer in the events of Jesus’ death. But at one moment the speaker paused, as though searching for a word. Didn’t he have a script? Next time I saw the Archbishop, I asked him. The BBC, he explained, sat him in a studio and asked him to talk about his favourite music. How many Archbishops could have done that, I wondered – at the same time as writing a book on Dostoevsky, debating with Philip Pullman, and plotting a visit to Robert Mugabe? Not to mention the thousand shocks that episcopal flesh is heir to.

Shocks there have been. Nobody in 2002 saw what was coming. That’s why many of us, courteously disagreeing on some issues, have remained convinced that Rowan was the right man for the job. Shallow, polarizing analyses remain irresistible for commentators; many in the church go along for the ride. But Dr Williams is a thinker’s thinker. He burrows down into an issue, reads it up, mulls it over, prays it through, and then speaks his mind. We have needed that. He is a classic Anglican theologian: not one for big, clunky systems, but solid, deep and rich in his study of the Bible and the Fathers. To hear Rowan expounding St John or St Augustine is to encounter Anglican theology at its best. Watch him translate that theology into pastoral mode: with children, say, or praying quietly with someone in the wings of a conference. Like all loveable people, he can be infuriating. But loveable none the less.

His mind has been, above all, for unity, always central to a bishop’s vocation. Not a shoulder-shrugging, lowest-common-denominator unity, but the hard-won, costly unity that makes demands on charity and patience rather than on conscience. He has worked hard for that unity within his own Anglican Communion and across denominational lines. He is one of a tiny handful of Anglican theologians to be a household name in Roman and Eastern Orthodox circles; and he has won friends in the free churches, too. When he was an official observer at an international Methodist conference twenty years ago, he complained in his closing remarks that they hadn’t sung his favourite Wesley hymn, ‘And Can it Be’, with its solid gospel affirmation, ‘No condemnation now I dread; Jesus, and all in him, is mine!’ They obediently stood up and sang it.

It’s worth reading in its entirety, in part because Wright comes from the Evangelical wing of the Church of England, and in part because the concluding paragraph lays out a vision of what Wright, and no doubt many other bishops, think the church should be:

Who, after all, is running the Church of England? We have Lambeth Palace, the House of Bishops, General Synod, the Archbishops’ Council, the Anglican Communion Office, and (don’t get me started) the Church Commissioners. How does it all work? In an episcopal church, the bishops should be the leaders.

Giles Fraser offers his very different perspective on the qualifications for the next Archbishop of Canterbury here. Money quote:

His much more pressing task is to speak clearly out of the Christian tradition in a way that will resonate with those who no longer think that religious belief has anything left to offer.

While Fraser and Wright come from very different wings of the Church of England, both express appreciation for the difficulty of Williams’ job, as well as for his faith, theology, and spirituality. Not so the Archbishop of Nigeria, who puts all blame for the shattering of communion on the Archbishop.

Archbishop of Canterbury resigns

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Lambeth Palace has announced that Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, will resign, effective in December. He will become the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Info at the Lead and Thinking Anglicans.

I remember the joy on this side of the Atlantic which greeted his selection in 2003, a few months before General Convention 2003 which gave consent to the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire. Much of his time in office has been spent dealing with the fallout from that event.

Williams is a brilliant man with a deep faith who held that office during a time of great difficulty. I wish him well and look forward to reading the theological and spiritual reflections that will come from serving in a position less burdened by controversy.

While I have made my disagreements with him public on this blog, I have enormous respect for him and am sorry to see him go. Speculation about his successor is of course already well underway, and several of the candidates mentioned would be much less open to change than he was (and probably even less skilled at diplomacy).

I will always remember the Sunday lunch we shared with him in Sewanee, years before he became ABC. He sat cross-legged, on the floor, eating corn on the cob. What a delightful image!

This week in Anglican Covenant news

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Last week, three Church of England dioceses voted down the covenant; one narrowly approved it. Details here. Complete results of the voting so far is here.

Overall, it looks like it may be heading for defeat. If it passes, it will be a very close thing, proving that it lacks widespread support (the bishops are fairly united in favor, but clergy and laity are less enthused). This turn of events has given rise to considerable comment

From Tobias Haller, here and here.

The letter from Diarmaid MacColluch to the Church Times is priceless.

As momentum against builds, the forces in support continue to marshal lame arguments in support.

  • From the Bishops of Bristol and Oxford. Tobias Haller’s response.
  • the Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a video in support (surely a sign of growing desperation)
  • other essays in support linked from Thinking Anglicans

Diarmaid MacCulloch’s video response to the ABC:

Mark Harris on the “scramble for votes”

All this suggests increasing desperation on the side of the covenant’s supporters. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the effects to the Anglican Communion’s leadership if it isn’t approved by the Church of England General Synod–and for it to be debated there it needs a majority of yes votes from the dioceses. It’s clear that its primary constituency in the CoE is the bishops. They support it overwhelmingly, while both the laity and clergy are split narrowly between supporters and opponents. Hopefully, the close votes in CoE diocesan synods will allow many who are somewhat swayed by the lame arguments of the ABC et al, to resist whatever “bonds of affection” they may feel, to resist the temptation to submit to the leadership’s requests.

More hijinx in Anglicanland

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The General Synod of the Church of England will be meeting next month. It offers to be fun for those of us interested in matters Anglican. The big issue will be the ordination of women bishops. In the run-up to the meeting, various reports and position papers will be produced. Just released is a document published with the signatures of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York discussing the relationship of the CoE and the Anglican Church of North America. This was produced in response to a motion that originally was intended to express the CoE’s ongoing commitment to relationship with ACNA. Here’s the document: gs misc 1011 – acna

It’s short, rather odd and a classic example of episcopal (i.e, of bishops, not of our church) fence-sitting:

18. We would, therefore, encourage an open-ended engagement with ACNA on the part of the Church of England and the Communion, while recognising that
the outcome is unlikely to be clear for some time yet, especially given the strong feelings on all sides of the debate in North America.

19. The Church of England remains fully committed to the Anglican Communion and to being in communion both with the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church (TEC). In addition, the Synod motion has given Church of England affirmation to the desire of ACNA to remain in some sense within the Anglican family.

Just what is the ACNA? And in what way is it Anglican in structure and polity? Mark Harris goes through some of the jurisdictional quagmire that exists among the dissenting Anglican communities in North America here.

Of course the core problem is that ACNA, CANA, AMiA, ex Recife, all believe these interventions by Provinces in the jurisdiction of The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada are “jurisdictional participation in a way that is fully Anglican.”
Where the hell did they get that idea?  One hopes not from Lambeth Palace, but if not there where?  Who knows?
But one thing is for sure. Who ever thought that propping up deposed bishops under new flags in jurisdictions already having Episcopal / Anglican oversight was “fully Anglican” was full of it.
If ACNA bishops are not in “jurisdictional participation in a way that is fully Anglican” well, the deck of cards begins to collapse. And they are not. Archbishop Duncan admits as much when he writes, “The present reality is brokenness. The vision, however, that governs our fledgling Province remains unchanged…”
ACNA is not yet a “province” of anything, no matter that the Episcopal Church in the Sudan recognizes it as and “orthodox” partner and the GAFCON / Global South folk considers ACNA a full fledged partner.  This is because not being a recognized province these bishops and people understand that to be “fully Anglican” they need to be under the jurisdiction of an existing Province.

AMiA bishops who have left Rwanda are clearly not under jurisdiction now. ACNA bishops in Fort Worth, Quincy, San Joaquin and Pittsburgh are not with the Southern Cone. If not there where are they?

Confused? Don’t worry. You should be. It’s all quite confusing. The structures and jurisdictional relationships of these various dissenting Anglican bodies have never been clarified, and in the last few months, things have gotten even more jumbled. That the Archbishops could have written a document concerning the relationship of the CoE to ACNA without addressing ACNA’s origins, history, and current status is mind-boggling.

Covenant, Schmovenant

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Back in the news with an Advent letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Primates and Moderators. After talking about his travels, especially in Africa, he turns again to the matter of the Anglican Covenant, and the letter turns into another plea for its adoption. In his efforts to convince those opposed as well as the uncertain of the merits of this documents, Williams’ arguments become more shrill and less convincing.

Tobias Haller is on the case here and here. Haller quotes Williams’ plea that the covenant is needed to provide a united front in our conversations with other religious bodies, especially the Roman Catholic and Orthodox. Curiously, Haller does not include in his quotation what I consider the most telling, sentence from that section:

“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?

Theological coherence? Anglican theological coherence? What can Williams possibly mean when his own Church of England is so deeply divided between Evangelicals on one end of the continuum and Anglo-Catholics on the other. Those differences are not chiefly about liturgy. They are about theology. One of the great blessings of Anglicanism is the space it has provided over the centuries for theological difference–for different approaches and perspectives, for those of a more Protestant, even Calvinist bent, and those who find in the Catholic theological tradition rich resources for faith and life.

In fact, the Covenant aims not at theological coherence, but at limiting the provinces’ expressions of what they think the gospel means in their particular contexts.

Andrew Gerns points out that the Archbishops’ travels and interactions with Anglicans in other countries succeeded in the absence of a Covenant, that there can be communion without covenant.

There have been more developments concerning the Covenant. In Canada, the House of Bishops has discussed it again. Archbishop Fred Hiltz expressed his reservations about the punitive measures in Article IV:

My personal concern is what happens when the direction you move in is not in accordance with the standards of the communion. You’re out. It does not end on a note of restoration or hope, so I say it falls short of the Gospel

 

The ABC on the KJV

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There was a celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Authorized Version in Westminster Abbey this past week. Queen Elizabeth was in attendance. Rowan Williams preached a sermon that is worth reading.

He alludes to the problems inherent in translation and the importance of interpretation but he is much more interested in the role of the text in the life of the community:

But what the 1611 translators grasped was that hearing the Word of God was a lifelong calling that had to be undertaken in the company of other readers and was never something that left us where we started.

 

it was meant to be read aloud. And that means that it was meant to be part of an event, a shared experience. Gathered as a Christian community, the parish would listen, in the context of praise, reflection and instruction, to scripture being read: it provided the picture of a whole renewed universe within which all the other activities made sense. It would not be immediately intelligible by any means, but it marked out the territory of God’s work of grace.

 

The Guardian’s report on the celebration is here.

Williams reminds us of the open and unfinished nature of translation, to use other language, that translation always involves interpretation. That means scripture always eludes our efforts to capture and contain it, to define and fix its meaning. More importantly, he also urges us to take seriously our obligation to devote our lives to engaging the text, wrestling with its meanings. As Williams puts it, scripture invites us “to a pilgrimage further and further into the mysteries of [God’s] mind and love.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury speaks

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In an article published in the Financial Times. The ABC broke his silence over the St. Paul’s situation yesterday, to express his dismay about the resignations of Giles Fraser and Graeme Knowles. Today he addresses some of the larger issues, including the Church’s role in the debate over the economy.

we should keep two things in mind. One is what I began with. The Church of England is a place where the unfinished business and unspoken anxieties of society can often find a voice, for good and ill. And if the Church cannot find ways through, that is not an index of the unique incompetence of the Church so much as of the extreme sensitivity of the matters in hand and of the fact that they touch us deeply, in ways that can’t be solved – even by the ablest and wisest – in short order. The second is that we are at risk, in all the excitement of personal crises and dramas, of forgetting the substantive questions that prompted the protest in the first place.

He also draws on the Vatican document on the economy published last week, supporting its general conclusions and suggestions. He highlights three of those suggestions: 1) to decouple ordinary banking transactions from the more speculative ones; 2) recapitalizing banks with public money to jumpstart the global economy; 3) a tax on financial transactions to fund investment and development in the ‘real’ economy.

Williams concludes:

The Church of England and the Church Universal have a proper interest in the ethics of the financial world and in the question of whether our financial practices serve those who need to be served – or have simply become idols that themselves demand uncritical service.The best outcome from the unhappy controversies in the City of London’s Cathedral will be if the sort of issues raised by the Pontifical Council can focus a concerted effort to move the debate on and effect credible and hopeful change in the financial world.

 

Yes, it could get worse–Developments at St. Paul’s

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The Dean of the Cathedral, the Very Rev. Graeme Knowles has resigned. The full coverage at Thinking Anglicans.

The article from the New York Times.

A background story from The Telegraph on the internal debates at the Cathedral over the last two weeks. Apparently the real power is a retired Major General, who served in Northern Ireland in the 90s. The mind boggles.

Andrew Brown’s commentary from The Guardian’s blog. He has strong words for Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, who is now the Church’s (and Cathedral’s) face in this mess. He’s trying to have it both ways, like bishops so often do, with the usual result of digging himself and the church into a deeper hole.

There’s a lot in the situation that is outside of our experience in the US. First of all, the Church of England is established, a state church, and second, it has a unique relationship with the corporation that runs the City, the square mile that is the heart of London’s financial district and a separate entity from London, with roots going back into the Middle Ages.

Still, it’s hard to see how the Cathedral or the Church of England can emerge from this scandal without greater damage than they’ve already brought on themselves. Given the marginal role of the Church in English society, and other controversies plaguing it, will this be a mortal blow?

The Archbishop of Canterbury has finally spoken out, at least on the departures of Giles Fraser and the Dean. His silence speaks loudly, given his recent courageous stance in Zimbabwe, as well as his extensive comments over the years on the ethics of the economy.

Profile in Courage: The Archbishop of Canterbury’s visit to Zimbabwe

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There’s a remarkable story unfolding in Africa. The Archbishop of Canterbury is visiting Zimbabwe, where the Anglican Church is caught up in the world-wide controversy over the ongoing rule of Robert Mugabe. A close friend of Mugabe, Nolbert Kunonga was Bishop of Harare. He was excommunicated and replaced by Chad Gandiya. This conflict has resulted in Zimbabwe Anglicans being locked out of their churches, beaten, and arrested.

On Sunday, Rowan Williams preached to a gathering of some 15,000 people. In his sermon, he said:

You know very well, dear brothers and sisters, what it means to have doors locked in your faces by those who claim the name of Christians and Anglicans. You know how those who by their greed and violence have refused the grace of God try to silence your worship and frustrate your witness in the churches and schools and hospitals of this country. But you also know what Jesus’ parable teaches us so powerfully – that the will of God to invite people to his feast is so strong that it can triumph even over these mindless and Godless assaults. Just as the Risen Jesus breaks through the locked doors of fear and suspicion, so he continues to call you and empower you in spite of all efforts to defeat you. And in the Revelation to John, the Lord proclaims that he has set before us an open door that no-one can shut. It is the door of his promise, the door of his mercy, the door into the feast of his Kingdom.

Directly critical of both colonialism and the continued rape of Africa’s natural resources for the material gain of a few, Williams spoke truth to power. He also sought a meeting with Mugabe where he could directly voice his concerns about the Anglican Church and about the overall situation in Zimbabwe.

The conflict over human sexuality within the Anglican Communion also played a role in this visit, with both Mugabe and Kunonga raising it in rather nasty terms. A spokesman for Mugabe is quoted by The Guardian:

“The second issue that the president wants this man of God to clarify is why his Anglican church thinks homosexuality is good for us and why it should be prescribed for us. He thinks the archbishop will be polite enough to point to him that portion of the Great Book [that] sanctions homosexuality and sanctions sanctions.”

I’ve been critical of the Archbishop in the past and continue to disagree with some of his positions, and his plans for the Anglican Covenant. Still, for him to challenge Mugabe directly in such a way is courageous. I wonder how many other leaders, political or religious, would be as brave. It’s also instructive to see how the Anglican debates are used by Mugabe and Kunonga to de-legitimize Williams’ message.

I’m also more than a little disappointed in the reaction among Episcopalians to this visit and the Archbishop’s words. While the Episcopal Cafe has covered the story, I’ve seen no mention from any of the bloggers who are most critical of Williams’ actions toward the Episcopal Church. I wonder why.

The text of Williams’ sermon is here. The Guardian’s article is here. Coverage by Thinking Anglicans is thorough; an article from the Episcopal Cafe.

A reflection from Nick Spencer on CNN’s Belief Blog: