Essex vicar Paul Trathen offers an interesting image, apparently his own photograph:
“a Lapith pinned by an aggressive Centaur”, as portrayed in a marble from the Parthenon in Athens, currently in the British Museum. This could have made a good caption competition, but Paul has already offered his interpretation of it as relating to Archbishop Rowan Williams: Continue reading
Would Archbishop Rowan Williams, the Primate of All England’s difficulties be eased if he drank Pepsi? Nick Norelli’s post might suggest this – although I’m not so sure about his claim in a comment here:
Jesus spoke of Pepsi as “rivers of living water.”
Personally, I neither endorse nor drink any cola drinks.
Ruth Gledhill writes in The Times – not in her blog but in a proper newspaper article – about Archbishop Rowan Williams:
Although he is a holy and spiritual man, danger lies in the appearance of the kind of intellectual arrogance common to many of Britain’s liberal elite. It is an arrogance that affords no credibility or respect to the popular voice. And although this arrogance, with the assumed superiority of the Oxbridge rationalist, is not shared by his staff at Lambeth Palace, it is by some of those outside Lambeth from whom he regularly seeks counsel.
Neither the Archbishop nor his staff regard his speech as mistaken. They are merely concerned that it has been misunderstood. This characterises the otherworldliness that still pervades the inner sanctums of the Church of England.
I share with Dr Williams his Oxbridge rationalist background (as does Bishop NT Wright). I studied at Clare College, Cambridge a few years before Williams became Dean and Chaplain there. Jane Paul who later became Mrs Williams was a fellow student with me, and we worshipped together at the college chapel.
At Cambridge I saw this rationalism and intellectual arrogance at work, and to some extent I shared it. But then, called by God as I believe, I left the ivory towers and my plans for PhD studies to get a job in the real world of Essex, and to join a real church. Now, after 30 years and various travels, I am back in Essex and both living and worshipping on a former council estate used for housing single parent families and people with drug problems. And quite frankly I am much happier to be away from the world of intellectual arrogance and instead in touch with and listening to, although often not agreeing with, ordinary people in the real world.
Meanwhile, press coverage (summarised here; see also this BBC analysis) remains largely hostile to Williams. But the Church of England at its General Synod seems to have largely closed ranks around him, even giving him a standing ovation. Perhaps this is because the majority share Williams’ Oxbridge rationalism and are at least tinged with his intellectual arrogance. Only a small minority at the Synod, led by long-term critic Canon Chris Sugden of Anglican Mainstream (ironically also an Oxbridge rationalist) is publicly criticising him. So it looks as if Williams will survive this crisis unless he chooses to go himself. But the cost has been immense to the credibility of the Anglican church in this country, and even more so in places like Nigeria and Pakistan.
The most worrying thing is that Dr Williams doesn’t seem to care what ordinary people think or say. As Ruth Gledhill puts it,
Dr Williams holds such populist tendencies in disdain. … The difficulty [his chief adviser] and the Archbishop’s other advisers face is that Dr Williams does not believe he is in a hole, or that if he is, it is a false hole, one dug for him by the media.
According to Jeremy Paxman on the BBC programme Newsnight last night (Friday) (click “Watch Now” on this page, but probably only until Monday), King James I was called “the wisest fool in Christendom”,
because he never said a foolish thing or did a wise one.
But Paxman suggested that Archbishop Rowan Williams has inherited this mantle.
I was privileged to meet this morning (Saturday), for the first time, one of Paxman’s guests, John Richardson, who blogs at The Ugley Vicar and Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream. We met only hours after Paxman interviewed Richardson, at the meeting where I also heard Bishop Pete Broadbent speak. Richardson drew my attention to another wonderful quote from Paxman on the programme:
How do you solve a problem like sharia?
You need to get the pronunciation right for this: rhyme with “Maria”.
The Archbishop’s comments on sharia law have apparently generated easily the biggest response the BBC has had to any story – 17,000 comments in 24 hours, the great majority critical of Williams. Continue reading
Astonishingly, Archbishop Rowan Williams’ comments on Sharia law are still the top story on the BBC news website after more than 24 hours. It is very rare that any story, let alone a religious one, keeps that top spot for so long. In the latest article there, the Archbishop
is said to be overwhelmed by the “hostility of the response” after his call for parts of Sharia law to be recognised in the UK.
Yesterday I repeated, but did not answer, Ruth Gledhill’s question: has the Archbishop gone bonkers? John Richardson in one place gives a short but straight answer:
No, but I’m not sure about his advisors.
On his own blog, Richardson writes at much more length an explanation of his position, which is well summarised in his post title: Dr Williams and Sharia: wrong suggestion, right concern. Continue reading
For once this is nothing to do with the Lambeth Conference or the fragmentation of the Anglican Communion. And it is not me asking this question, but Ruth Gledhill of The Times. The occasion for asking is Williams’ astonishing call, reported by the BBC, for “certain aspects” of Islamic Sharia law to be introduced in the UK. To their credit, politicians of all main parties have rejected this call. But it is extremely worrying that a man who heads the established church in this country could even consider making this appeal.
Ruth Gledhill’s commenter Tom Jackson writes the following:
To say I was dumbstruck this afternoon when I read the Archbishop’s comments would be an admission that somehow, I expected better of him.
But these latest observations by Rowan Williams just serve to demonstrate once again just how unfit to lead the Anglican Communion this man is. …
The Archbishop should resign, should go and make way for someone more suited to such high office to take his place.
I agree. And if he did, that might help to sort out the Lambeth mess as well, although it is getting a bit late for that.
21 evangelical bishops in the Church of England have written an open letter to the Church of England Newspaper urging their fellow Anglican bishops around the world to attend the Lambeth Conference. The signatories include NT Wright, Bishop of Durham, but not bishops Nazir-Ali of Rochester or Benn of Lewes – nor for that matter Broadbent of Willesden, as far as I know the only bishop so far to comment on this blog (but I have no idea of Broadbent’s position on this issue).
I have not actually seen the open letter, which is not in the CEN’s free online daily edition. But I have read the CEN report as republished by Anglican Mainstream and others, with extracts from the letter. In one of these the bishops write:
We urge you therefore to take the long route, waiting for God to work through the processes that are already in train and praying for him to work his purposes in us and through us together.
That is, they are asking their fellow conservatives in the worldwide Anglican communion to abandon their boycott, which they at least implicitly consider a short cut, and take a long route via the Lambeth Conference.
But the problem with taking long routes is that they don’t always lead to the intended destination. This one is at least starting off in what a direction which seems completely opposite to the one which the evangelical bishops want to go to. Continue reading
I greatly respect the theology of NT Wright, Bishop of Durham, although I don’t claim to understand all of it. I have referred to it several times, mostly positively, on this blog.
However, a letter from Dr Vinay Samuel reported by Anglican Mainstream alleges a different side to Wright’s character. Samuel, a well respected Indian theologian and evangelical Anglican, is a director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life. In his letter Samuel was responding to a commentary by Wright in the Church Times, which can be read here. In this article Wright attacks the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), concerning which he refers to
the small group represented by Chris Sugden, Martyn Minns, and Peter Jensen. It is clear that they are the prime movers and drafters, making a mockery of Canon Sugden’s claim … that GAFCON is about rescuing the Churches from Western culture.
Samuel responds firmly to this. He writes that Wright
has suggested in particular that that this whole movement is now following the lead and the agenda of three white men, Bishop Martyn Minns, Archbishop Peter Jensen and Canon Chris Sugden.
I am part of the leadership team of this movement. I have known and worked with Archbishops Akinola, Kolini, Mtetemela, Nzimbi and Orombi and Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali for many years. I have to say that if the scenario were as BishopWright imagines it to be, neither I nor any leader of Christians in the non-western world who have stood for years for the identity, selfrespect and dignity of Christians from the “global south” and their right to self-theologise and organise their own networks independent of influence from the former metropolitan centres of power, would have anything to do with it.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has left the Anglican Church to become a Roman Catholic.
This is how the BBC starts its report of this long expected news – long expected at least by Ruth Gledhill, and indeed I was among those predicting it (and more) on the day when he left office.
I thank Tim from Oxford, the first commenter on the BBC report, for reminding me that it was this same Tony Blair who selected Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury. This is how the BBC reported this in 2002:
Prime Minister Tony Blair chose Dr Williams from a shortlist of two names, put forward by the Church after months of debate.
Now I am sure that Blair’s reasons for leaving the Church of England have little to do with Rowan Williams. But Tim suggests that it is not right that he has chosen to abandon the leader he chose. Well, I guess Tony Blair the private citizen has the right to choose his own religion, but his abandonment of Rowan and his church is certainly symbolically interesting.
Yes, the Archbishop of Canterbury has got things right for once, and it is the British press which has messed it all up. My title echoes the similar cheers in John Richardson’s post at Chelmsford Anglican Mainstream, which clarifies what Rowan actually said, as does Dave Walker’s post.
Despite the press reports, the Archbishop did not say that the nativity is a legend. The only thing he said was a legend was, it seems,
‘the three kings with the one from Africa’.
This part of the traditional story is not in the Bible, which mentions only an unspecified number of magi or wise men from “the east”, which would probably exclude Africa. So it is entirely uncontroversial to call this part of the story a legend.
Indeed I find all of what Rowan said in his interview (according to this transcript) to be very sensible. I would be interested in finding out more about what he thinks about the virgin birth. Warning, you might be offended by his use of “damn”.
So why did the British press, even the usually reliable Ruth Gledhill in The Times, write that
Dr Rowan Williams, dismissed the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men yesterday as nothing but “legend”
?