The Spectator magazine has this feature article about Rowan Williams, written by AN Wilson:
Holy sage
(and continued on page 2). The entire article should be read, but here is one quotation:
In spite of what some Christians today believe, the future of Christianity does not depend upon what a few bigots on the one hand, and a few homosexual enthusiasts and their friends on the other, believe about same-sex unions. It really does not.
The loudest critics come from some little enclave within the Church — whether ‘high’ or ‘low’ — where they are so busy with their church hobby and so smugly certain of their own rectitude that they have managed to overlook a rather obvious fact. Their churches, such as Holy Trinity Brompton or St Helen’s Bishopsgate might be full to the rafters on Sunday mornings, but the numbers who enjoy their particular form of holy club are a tiny minority of the population of this planet. Rowan Williams is sufficiently intelligent and normal to be aware that in the West, being religious these days is, outside America, very distinctly odd, and trying to defend Christianity against the whole ethos of materialism and scientific rationalism which most intelligent people take for granted is a more than intellectual task. We might very well be living in Christianity’s last days. Many of us who go to church do so a little wistfully, knowing that, unlike Rowan Williams, we do not believe in the ways which our ancestors did. ‘Our prayers so languid and our faith so dim’ is one of the few lines of a hymn which we could sing with gusto. ‘Fightings within and fears without’ might be another.