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Rowan Williams

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                                                   CAPTION: Rowan Williams

           Denomination                                           Anglican
                               Senior posting
                    See                                         Canterbury
                  Title   Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England
       Period in office                                     2002 — present
            Predecessor                                       George Carey
              Successor                                          Incumbent
                              Religious career
    Priestly ordination                                               1977
    Previous bishoprics                                Bishop of Monmouth,
                                                       Archbishop of Wales
          Previous post                                             Bishop
                                  Personal
          Date of birth                                       14 June 1950
         Place of birth                                            Swansea

   Rowan Douglas Williams, DPhil, DD, FBA, (born 14 June 1950) is the
   104th and current Archbishop of Canterbury, metropolitan of the
   province of Canterbury, Primate of All England and head of the
   worldwide Anglican Communion. Williams is a distinguished theologian as
   well as being a poet.

Biography

   Rowan Williams was born in Swansea, Wales, into a Welsh-speaking
   family. He was educated at Dynevor School, Swansea, Christ's College,
   Cambridge, where he studied theology, and Wadham College, Oxford, where
   he took his DPhil in 1975.

   He lectured at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, Yorkshire
   for two years. In 1977, he returned to Cambridge to teach theology,
   first at Westcott House, having been ordained ordained deacon in Ely
   cathedral that year. He was priested in 1978. Unusually, he undertook
   no formal curacy until 1980 when he served at St. George's Chesterton
   until 1983, having been appointed as lecturer in Divinity at the
   University of Cambridge. In 1984, he became dean and chaplain of Clare
   College, Cambridge and in 1986, at the very young age of 36, he was
   appointed to the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity at Oxford
   University which meant that he became also a residentiary canon of
   Christ Church. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1989.
   In 1997, Dr Williams was proposed as Bishop of Southwark. George Carey,
   the then Archbishop of Canterbury, asked Dr.Williams to distance
   himself from his writings sympathetic to the cause of gay rights, but
   he declined and was not nominated to the post. Then in 1991 he was
   consecrated Bishop of Monmouth, and in 1999 he was made Archbishop of
   Wales. In 2002 he was announced as the successor to George Carey as
   Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the Church of England and
   primus inter pares of the Anglican Communion. Williams was the first
   Archbishop of Canterbury since the English Reformation to be appointed
   from a position outside the state Church of England, being at the time
   a member of the disestablished Anglican Church in Wales. He was
   enthroned on 27 February 2003 as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.

   Since he become a bishop, several institutions have granted him
   honorary degrees and fellowships, such as Kent, Cambridge, Oxford and
   Roehampton universities.

   In 2005 he was inaugurated as the first Chancellor of Canterbury Christ
   Church University. This is in addition to his role as Visitor at the
   University of Kent.

   Dr Williams is a noted poet and translator of poetry. His collection
   The Poems of Rowan Williams, published by Perpetua Press, was
   longlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award in 2004. Beside his own
   poems, which have a strong spiritual and landscape flavour, the
   collection contains several fluent translations from Welsh poets. He
   got into trouble with the press for allegedly supporting a 'pagan
   organisation' the Welsh Gorsedd of Bards which promotes Welsh language
   and literature and uses druidic ceremonial, but which is not religious
   in nature. He married Jane Paul, a lecturer in theology, in 1981. They
   have two children, Rhiannon (born 1988) and Pip (born 1996).

   Dr Williams' summer residence is in the Oxfordshire town of Charlbury
   and when resident on Sundays he worships at the local church.

Appointment as Archbishop

   His appointment was widely predicted. He was held to be, as he is, a
   man of considerable intellectual powers, who had demonstrated a huge
   range of interests in social and political matters and was regarded by
   a number of people, including academics, as a figure who could make
   Christianity credible to the intelligent unbeliever. As a patron of
   Affirming Catholicism, his appointment was a considerable departure
   from that of his predecessor and his views, not least those expressed
   in a widely published lecture on homosexuality (see below), were seized
   on by a number of Evangelical and conservative Anglicans. However, the
   issue had begun to divide the communion, and the Archbishop in his
   position as nominal 'head' of the Anglican Communion would be bound to
   have an important role. The secular press did not know what to make of
   him; some attempted to ridicule him on trivial grounds such as his
   having a beard; others took him to task for not providing soundbites
   and for his occasional obscurities. The Church Times columnist Andrew
   Brown drew a comparison with his predecessor: 'The trouble with Rowan
   Williams is that he can never remember that he is Archbishop; the
   trouble with George Carey was that he could never forget.'

Theological Views

   He is a highly respected scholar of the Church Fathers, as well as a
   historian of Christian spirituality, and his deep engagement with the
   classical sources of the Church is quite clear throughout his books and
   sermons. Nevertheless, his style is often dense and his statements and
   actions are sometimes misunderstood. In 1983, he wrote describing
   orthodoxy 'as a tool rather than an end in itself...' It is not
   something which stands still. Thus 'old styles come under increasing
   strain, new speech needs to be generated' He sees orthodoxy a number of
   'dialogues': a constant dialogue with Christ, crucified and risen; but
   also that of the community of faith with the world - a risky
   enterprise, as he writes. (Risk is a word which he uses often.) We
   ought to be puzzled, he says, when the world is not challenged by the
   gospel. It may mean that Christians have not understood the kinds of
   bondage to which the gospel is addressed. Hence his concerns with
   political and social issues. In his view 'orthodoxy is inseparable from
   sacramental practice' which he takes to be an expression of the same
   concern.'The eucharist is the paradigm of that dialogue which is
   'orthodoxy'.'he wrote. This stance may help to explain both his social
   radicalism and his view of the importance of the Church, and thus of
   the holding together of the Anglican communion over matters such as
   homosexuality: his belief in the idea of the Church is profound.

   Consistent with his engaged and searching views, his response to a
   controversy about the teaching of creationism in privately sponsored
   academies was that it should not be taught in schools as an alternative
   to evolution. When asked if he was comfortable with teaching
   creationism, he said "I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of
   category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ...
   so if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside
   other theories, I think there's - there's just been a jar of
   categories, it's not what it's about." When the interviewer said "So it
   shouldn't be taught?" he responded "I don't think it should, actually.
   No, no. And that's different from saying – different from discussing,
   teaching about what creation means. For that matter, it's not even the
   same as saying that Darwinism is – is the only thing that ought to be
   taught. My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of
   creation rather than enhancing it." ( full transcript)

   Although very much an Anglo-Catholic, his sympathies are broad. One of
   his first publications was in the largely evangelical Grove Books
   series with the title 'Eucharistic Sacrifice, the Roots of a Metaphor'.

Social Involvements

   His interest in and involvement with social issues is longstanding.
   Whilst chaplain of Clare College, Cambridge, Williams took part in
   anti-nuclear demonstrations at US bases. In 1985, he was arrested for
   singing psalms as part of a protest organized by the Committee for
   Nuclear Disarmament at Lakenheath, an American air base in Suffolk; his
   fine was paid by his college. At this time he was a member of the
   left-wing Anglo-Catholic Jubilee Group headed by Father Kenneth Leech
   and he collaborated with Leech in a number of publications including
   the anthology of essays to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the
   Assize Sermon entitled Essays Catholic and Radical in 1983.

   He was to repeat his opposition to American action in October 2002 when
   he signed a petition against the Iraq War as being against UN ethics
   and Christian teaching, and 'lowering the threshold of war
   unacceptably'. Again on 30 June 2004, together with the Archbishop of
   York, David Hope, and on behalf of all 114 Church of England bishops,
   he wrote to Tony Blair expressing deep concern about UK government
   policy and criticising the coalition troops' conduct in Iraq. The
   letter cited the abuse of Iraqi detainees, which was described as
   having been "deeply damaging" - and stated that the government's
   apparent double standards "diminish the credibility of western
   governments". (BBC) (The Scotsman)

   He was asked to deliver the 2002 Richard Dimbleby lecture and chose to
   talk about the problematic nature of the nation state but also of its
   successors. He cited the so-called 'market state' as offering an
   inadequate vision of the way a state should operate, partly because it
   was liable to short-term and narrowed concerns (thus rendering it
   incapable of dealing with, for instance, issues relating to the
   degradation of the natural environment) and partly because a public
   arena which had become value free, was liable to disappear amidst the
   multitude of competing private interests. (He noted the same moral
   vacuum in British society after this visit to China in 2006.) He is not
   uncritical of communitarianism, but his reservations about consumerism
   have been a constant theme.

   His attempts at reconciliation have extended to inter-faith matters. He
   was in New York at the time of 9/11 only yards from Ground Zero
   delivering a lecture; he subsequently wrote a short book, 'Writing in
   the Dust',offering some reflections on the event. He has subsequently
   worked closely with Muslim leaders in England, and on the third
   anniversary of 9/11 spoke, by invitation, at the al-Azhar al-Sharif
   Institute in Cairo, on, of all subjects, the Trinity.His carefully
   courteous attempt to build bridges between the two monotheisms, was
   well received as was his statement that the followers of the will of
   God should not be led into ways of violence. He contributed to the
   debate prior to the 2005 General Election criticising assertions that
   immigration was a cause of crime.

Homosexuality

   Williams' contribution to Anglican views of homosexuality were
   perceived as markedly liberal before his ordination as Archbishop.
   These views are evident in a paper written by Williams called 'The
   Body’s Grace', originally delivered as the 10th Michael Harding
   Memorial Address in 1989 to the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, and
   now part of a series of essays collected in the book, "Theology and
   Sexuality" (ed. Eugene Rogers, Blackwells 2002). In the conclusion of
   this address, he asserted:

          "In a church that accepts the legitimacy of contraception, the
          absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must
          rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number
          of very ambiguous biblical texts, or on a problematic and
          nonscriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied
          narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard
          to psychological structures."

   The same year as he made the above comments, and as a practical
   consequence of the views he expressed, Williams founded the 'Institute
   for the Study of Christianity and Sexuality' (which in 1996 became the
   'Centre for the Study of Christianity and Sexuality') - a group meant
   to combat homophobia - whilst Professor of Divinity at Oxford
   University, a fact that had characterised him amongst liberal Anglicans
   as a significant figure in the effort to make the Anglican Church's
   moral stance on homosexuality more inclusive.

   When he became Archbishop, questions of whether and how Williams would
   apply his views as Archbishop, specifically as regarded homosexual
   relationships among the clergy, were put squarely in the spotlight in
   2003, through the issue of the proposed consecration of gay priest
   Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading. Following protest from Anglican
   bishops in the developing world, Williams asked John to withdraw his
   candidacy, but then arranged his appointment as Dean of St Albans, one
   of the oldest Christian sites in England, in a move that was widely
   seen as a compromise to maintain the latitudinarian unity of the
   Anglican Communion.

   In a September 2006 interview with a Dutch newspaper, Nederlands
   Dagblad, Williams stated that "in terms of decision-making the American
   Church has pushed the boundaries" in its policies regarding
   homosexuality. Denying that the Church had to accept active homosexual
   relationships, Williams argued that the Church had to be "welcoming",
   rather than "inclusive", a distinction he characterised by saying: "I
   don't believe inclusion is a value in itself. Welcome is. We don't say
   'Come in and we ask no questions'. I do believe conversion means
   conversion of habits, behaviours, ideas, emotions". Moreover, the
   Archbishop seemed to distance himself from his more liberal 1989 essay,
   explaining, "That was when I was a professor, to stimulate debate... It
   did not generate much support and a lot of criticism - quite fairly on
   a number of points."

Ecumenism

   He did his doctoral work on Vladimir Lossky, the famous Russian
   Orthodox theologian of the early-mid 20th century, and is currently
   patron of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, an ecumenical
   forum for Orthodox and Western - primarily Anglican - theologians. He
   has expressed his continuing sympathies with Orthodoxy in lectures and
   writings since that time. He has written on the Spanish mystic St.
   Teresa of Avila. On the death of Pope John Paul II he accepted an
   invitation to attend his funeral, the first Archbishop of Canterbury to
   attend a funeral of a Pope since the break under King Henry VIII. He
   also attended the installation of Pope Benedict XVI.

The Anglican Communion

   Rowan Williams became Archbishop at a particularly difficult time in
   the relations of the churches of the Anglican Communion. His
   predecessor, George Carey, had sought to keep the lid on explosive
   relationships between the theologically conservative primates of the
   Communion such as Peter Akinola of Nigeria and Drexel Gomez of the West
   Indies and liberals, such as Frank Griswold the then Primate of the US
   Episcopal Church and others elsewhere.

   In an attempt to encourage dialogue in 2003 he appointed Archbishop
   Robin Eames, the Anglican Primate of All Ireland, as Chairman of the
   Lambeth Commission on Communion, to examine the challenges to the unity
   of the Communion, stemming from the consecration of Gene Robinson as
   the Bishop of New Hampshire, and the blessing of same-sex unions in the
   Diocese of New Westminster. (Robinson, formerly married with children,
   was in a long-term same-sex relationship.) The Windsor Report, as it
   was called was published in October 2004. It recommended solidifying
   the connection between the churches of the Communion by having each
   church ratify an "Anglican Covenant" that would commit them to
   consulting the wider Communion when making major decisions. It also
   urged those who had contributed to disunity to express their regret. In
   November 2005 following a meeting of Anglicans of the 'global south' in
   Cairo at which Williams had addressed them in conciliatory terms, 12
   Primates who had been present, sent him a letter sharply criticising
   his leadership. ("We are troubled by your reluctance to use your moral
   authority to challenge the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of
   Canada") The letter acknowledged his eloquence but strongly criticised
   his reluctance to take sides in the communion's theological crisis and
   urged him to make explicit threats to those more liberal churches.
   (Questions were later asked about the authority and provenance of the
   letter- two additional signatories' names had been added although they
   had left the meeting before it was produced.) Subsequently the Church
   of Nigeria appointed an American cleric to deal with US/Nigerian church
   relations, outside the normal channels; about which Williams expressed
   his reservations to the General Synod.

   Most recently, he set up a working party to examine what a 'covenant'
   between the provinces of the Communion would mean, (in line with the
   Windsor Report). The strains on the working of the Communion remain
   evident.

Recent Events

   Prior to a planned visit to the Vatican on November 21st. 2006, he was
   interviewed by the 'Catholic Herald' and pressed on the issue of the
   ordination of women. He was reported as having said 'I don't think it
   has transformed or renewed the Church of England in spectacular ways.
   Equally, I don't think that it has corrupted or ruined the Church of
   England. It has somehow got into the bloodstream and I don't give it a
   second thought these days'. He did not discount the possibility that
   the issue might be revisited. His remarks were interpreted as a
   revision of his former support for the ordination of women which, in a
   subsequent statement, he refuted saying' I feel nothing less than full
   support for the decision the Church made in 1992 and appreciation of
   the priesthood exercised.' There was a certain amount of critical press
   coverage of his comments in the interview.

Works

     * Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love (2005)
     * Why Study the Past? (2005)
     * Anglican Identities (2004) ISBN 1-56101-254-8
     * Darkness Yielding (2004) ISBN 1-870652-36-3
     * The Dwelling of the Light - Praying with Icons of Christ (2003
       Canterbury Press)
     * Writing in the Dust: Reflections on 11th September and Its
       Aftermath (Hodder and Stoughton, 2002)
     * Lost Icons: Essays on Cultural Bereavement (2003 T & T Clark)
     * Teresa of Avila (2003) ISBN 0-225-66579-4
     * Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert (2003) ISBN
       0-7459-5170-8
     * Faith and Experience in Early Monasticism (2002)
     * Ponder These Things: Praying With Icons of the Virgin (Canterbury
       Press, 2002)
     * Writing in the Dust: Reflections on 11th September and Its
       Aftermath (Hodder and Stoughton, 2002)
     * The Poems of Rowan Williams (2002)
     * Arius: Heresy and Tradition (2nd ed. 2001) ISBN 0-334-02850-7
     * Christ on Trial (2000) ISBN 0-00-710791-9
     * On Christian Theology (2000)
     * Faith in the University (1989)
     * After Silent Centuries (1994)
     * Open to Judgement: Sermons and Addresses (Darton, Longman and Todd,
       1994)
     * Christianity and the Ideal of Detachment (1989)
     * Politics and Theological Identity (with David Nicholls) (Jubilee
       1984)
     * Open to Judgement: Sermons and Addresses (1984)
     * Peacemaking Theology (1984)
     * The Truce of God (London: Fount, 1983)
     * Essays Catholic and Radical(Bowerdean 1983) (ed. with K. Leech)
     * Eucharistic Sacrifice: The Roots of a Metaphor (1982 Grove Books)
     * Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel (1982 Darton, Longman
       and Todd)
     * The Wound of Knowledge (1979 Darton, Longman and Todd)

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