Rowan Williams, next archbishop of Canterbury, is outspoken
LONDON (AP) – Rowan Williams, named Tuesday to lead the world’s 70 million Anglicans as the next archbishop of Canterbury, was among those caught in the dust and debris of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York City. Despite witnessing the terrible destruction and loss of life, he went on to oppose the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and the sanctions and threats of war against Iraq.
“No intensive campaign to search and destroy in Afghanistan will guarantee that it will never happen again,” Williams said after the attacks.
“Indiscriminate terror is the weapon of the weak. … We have to be asking what it means that the world has so many people in it who believe they have nothing to lose.”
But Williams, 52, defies easy categorization.
He has been described as both theologically orthodox and a liberal, and he is a member of the anti-abortion Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.
The head of the Episcopal Church in the United States, presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, praised Williams in a statement Tuesday for his ability to “relate classical Christian tradition to the needs and struggles of our world.”
Professor Ian T. Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass., called Williams a complex thinker who would take a nuanced approach to battles between conservatives and liberals.
“He isn’t going to make it easy for either of them,” Douglas said. “I don’t think he is going to be a single-issue guy.”
Williams’ appointment as the 104th archbishop of Canterbury, successor to the Most Rev. George Carey, was made Tuesday by Prime Minister Tony Blair and confirmed by Queen Elizabeth II, the supreme governor of the state church. Currently the archbishop of Wales, Williams is the first Welshman to be chosen primate of the Church of England.
Williams becomes leader of an English church and a global communion struggling with controversies over the ordination of women and attitudes toward homosexuals.
Carey held the Church of England together through its decision to ordain women priests, but Williams is likely to face a growing debate about whether women can be bishops – as they are in the Anglican churches of Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
In England, the archbishop also inherits a church in a steep, long-term decline in attendance – it claims 26 million baptized members but draws a million or less to Sunday services.
“If there is one thing I long for above all else, it is that the years to come may see Christianity in this country able again to capture the imagination of our culture, to draw the strongest energies of our thinking and feeling into the exploration of what our creeds put before us,” Williams said at a news conference Tuesday.
Williams has alarmed some conservative Anglicans by admitting he ordained a priest he suspected of having a homosexual partner.
“I haven’t inquired as to what people do in bed,” Williams was quoted earlier this year as saying. “I don’t see my task as going around the bedroom with a magnifying glass doing surveillance.”
Bruce Mason, spokesman for the conservative American Anglican Council, in Washington, D.C., which opposes same-sex unions, said Tuesday his group was withholding judgment until Williams had a chance to fully explain his opinions. “Some of his past views on issues of human sexuality are things we don’t support,” Mason said.
Williams spent most of his career teaching theology, including appointments at Cambridge and Oxford universities.
Much of his published writing is addressed to fellow theologians, and likely to be impenetrable to the average parishioner. However, he also admits a fondness for “The Simpsons,” praising the television show as “one of the most subtle pieces of propaganda around in the cause of sense, humility and virtue.”
The Most Rev. Desmond Tutu, former archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, says Williams “towers head and shoulders above” other candidates to succeed Carey. “He’s got a very acute mind, an incredible capacity to communicate,” Tutu said last month.
Williams has spoken in favor of ending the Church of England’s status as England’s official church, governed by the monarch – placing him at odds with Blair and the Church of England’s governing General Synod, which recently voted down a proposal that it should choose its own bishops, rather than having them appointed by the prime minister.
Born June 14, 1950 in Swansea to a Welsh-speaking family, Williams was lecturer in divinity at Cambridge University from 1980 to 1986, and professor of divinity at Oxford University from 1986 to 1992.
He was elected bishop of Monmouth in 1991, and in 1999 was elected archbishop of Wales, the senior clergyman in the Church in Wales, the Anglican church in the principality.
He married Jane Paul in 1981. They have a daughter, Rhiannon, 14, and a son, Pip, 6.
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On the Net:
Church of England, http://www.cofe.anglican.org
Canterbury, http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org
Rowan Williams, http://www.Wales.anglican.org/archbishop/index.html
Anglican Communion, http://www.anglicancommunion.org
Southern Cross interview, http://www.anglicanmediasydney.asn.au/june2002