Updated again Tuesday afternoon
There was a press conference today at Canterbury, at which the Archbishop of Canterbury answered questions.
A full audio recording of this can be downloaded from the ACO website, go here.
A video recording of it is available at ENS, go here.
Navigate to the video by date: 07/21/08.
Jim Naughton has posted about it, see Live: ABC meets the press.
I will add links here to further reports about this event.
Anglican Journal Communion not headed for a schism, says Archbishop of Canterbury
BBC ‘Alienation’ over women bishops and also Robert Pigott’s Lambeth diary: Saying sorry
Guardian Riazat Butt Church is not wounded and bleeding, says Williams
Telegraph Martin Beckford Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams: Traditionalists ‘alienated’ by women bishops
Tuesday afternoon
The Times Ruth Gledhill Archbishop confirms church’s anti-gay sex stance
Every time I think that I have gotten used to Rowan Williams’ weird statements, he manages to come out with something that sounds even more weird to my American ears. Do people in the UK have some means of making sense out of what he is saying, or are they just too polite to point out the the archbishop has no intellectual clothes on.
No intellectual clothes?
I simply do not see how you make this statement.
Clearly you are reading or hearing a different Godly man to one I am hearing – a man of great integrity, wisdom and intellect who talks not only with great clarity but with great understanding and openness as well.
Maybe his intellect does not cross ‘the pond’ too well.
I believe the Archbishop of Canterbury is well ahead of his time. I agree he is difficult to understand but worth making the effort. Reading his book, “Tokens of Trust” shows how deeply he understands God and Christ and what they are actively doing in the world right now. He says, “The resurrection displays God’s triumphant love as still and for ever having the shape of Jesus. And this is why it won’t do to reduce the resurrection just to something that was going on inside the heads of the apostles. If we go down that road, we lose sight… Read more »
Perhaps Richard Lyon is not used to Archbishop Rowan Williams’ style of teaching. As spiritual leader of a very diverse group of Church – including the Episcopal Church of America – he has to adopt a very eirenic way of revelation, which, like that of any good teacher, always has something to say to those who really want to listen. The parabolic teaching of Jesus was not too dis-similar. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear – what the Spirit is saying to the Church!” Like last Sunday’s parable; the Seed is always capable of germination – but… Read more »
What a strange, strange man. Even stranger is the fact that some believe his pronouncements come from some well of “wisdom.” Pathetic.
Rowan is a fount of wisdom but all this Gene Robinson stuff becomes a quagmire every time. I wish the bishops would invite him to join them, belatedly, at Lambeth. His exclusion is illogical, or worse, follows another logic, that of scapegoating.
Dr Williams is illogical in that he invited female bishops whose consecration is ‘questionable’ by those who oppose the admission of women to the episcopate and whose intergrity must be honoured. Yet it is not possible to invite the Bishop of New Hampshire in the same way. Why does one integrity get honoured and the other insulted?
Fr Joe, scapegoating seems a good description of what is on offer in the Anglican Communion – and it is made all the more unpalatable because it just happens that several of those now selling this solution I called “friend”. I remember all too well the day it dawned on me just how set this agenda was, it was a haunting experience – I really felt as if my family had been betrayed and we had become so much more vulnerable as a result. I know that we are often sent to read other things from TA – but I… Read more »
I find Rowan’s statements usefully provocative in making me think. However, to claim, as Riazat Butt reports, that as many people were aggrieved by the GS decision on women in the episcopate as were elated by it is just plain wrong. It overlooks the 60% in the middle of the Church of England who were neither, but said, thank God, it’s about time. Yes the traditionalist voices are valuable and must be heard, but they only reflect 7% of the Church of England at best, and a 7% that has not had the experience of walking and talking with a… Read more »
The ABC is a remarkable theologian.
Who else could take time off to write a book about Dostoevsky while a storm of forces sought to rend the Communiion by crossing diocesan borders, attempting to steal property,abandoning their orders and plotting an alternative to Lambeth?
That takes almost superhuman abilities to rise above or ignore the job one was chosen to do as Archbishop!
See Paradise Lost II, 557-565 or thereabouts – I’m too lazy to type it out for you.
Theologian? Yes. Effective leader of the Communion? NO!
If Rowan Williams “eirenic” style is what the people in the Church of England want in a leader, who they had no voice in choosing, they are welcome to it. Imposing that nonsense on the rest of the world is a great waste of time. The Anglican Communion in its present form is entirely dysfunctional. It is an outdated imperial artifact. The British Empire went out of business. It’s time for the rest of the world to move ahead and deal with reality. That reality is that it is probably a waste of resources to spend time and energy trying… Read more »
Martin: Thank you for bringing this RW interview to the fore – very revealing. I recall that the former B of Oxford (can’t recall name ) was quoted as saying something to the effect that RW’s sympathies are entirely with LGBT people but that he has a 50 – 100 year time horizon on this issue. In other words, on this issue, he is content to “lead from the rear”. If this is indeed the case, I must ask myself, as a gay man, is there anything for which this price is worth paying? And the only answer I can… Read more »
Andrew I am glad you found the interview of interest. I completely understand your thinking as you look for a positive development as a consequence of this. In December, seven months later I drafted an open letter to Rowan and I think this paragraph echoes something of your mood: “There are many amongst us who, in the short or medium term, would gladly relinquish such fripperies as the wearing of a mitre if freedom from tyranny for the majority of LGBT people in our world were the prize, or even for the promise of making that struggle for justice a… Read more »
All I can say, is “It’s good job he is not unsympathetic towards us.” ! (on any timescale)
“I recall that the former B of Oxford (can’t recall name ) was quoted as saying something to the effect that RW’s sympathies are entirely with LGBT people but that he has a 50 – 100 year time horizon on this issue” Would he have had that about apartheit? Let’s try, “I’m very sympathetic to Black South Africans’ hopes for freedom but…” Would he have answered Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by saying he had a 50 -100 year timeline for integration? Maybe he should actually READ that document. More of a call to action than, say, Dostoevsky. HE… Read more »
Martin/Cynthia:
The last few paragraphs of this article from Theo Hobson support the view that the ABC is playing a long game on this issue
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/23/anglicanism.religion
But how long is long and how long has he got.There are, as you know, at least three Canadian dioceses that have recommended to their bishop the blessing of SSU’s with substantial majorities. It is difficult to see how the bishops in question can frustrate the will of their people for decades, without serious negative consequences.