Alan Rusbridger editor of the Guardian interviewed Rowan Williams last Friday. The results are:
A front page news story by Stephen Bates Archbishop: stop teaching creationism
An article, based on the interview, in the G2 section of the paper:
‘I am comic vicar to the nation’
A complete transcript of the interview: Interview: Rowan Williams
Selected audio extracts of the interview: Listen to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s interview
There is much interesting, but also much troubling, about this interview. The key exchange, IMO, comes here— “[Interviewer Alan Rusbridger, “AR”]: at what point do you eventually stub against your irreducible, small “l” liberal principles and say actually “well there is an irreducible bit I can’t negotiate over”? AC: Yes, I haven’t got there yet, and if I could speculate about where those were, then it would be rather simpler now. It’s – it’s a dangerous comparison, because it sort of ups the stakes a bit, but I’m very struck by what Bonhoeffer writes in the middle-30s about the division… Read more »
I agree. Just what would be the tipping point for the Archbishop? What is his acceptable level of exclusion?
I once overheard an academic colleague, a member of the English department at my university, tell a friend and colleague, a Jew, that, after all, Ezra Pound was “only a literary anti-Semite.”
My friend and colleague said, “Oh. I suppose a literary anti-Semite doesn’t actually beat up a rabbi, but writes a nice poem about someone who does.”
What is the tipping point?
As the grandchild of people who took great professional and economic risks in rowing and sailing refugees from Nazism to freedom in the 30ies and 40ies, I very much object to these not unusual attempts, from bullies and collaborators who would have been the first to deride Dietrich Bonhöffer and others, to adorn themselves with a moral rectitude and a civil courage they do not possess.
I had a brief conversation with the rector last night. I wondered who would be the first to stick the knife into +Rowan. He suggested Reform. I demurred, and suggested it might be the other side. As far as Thinking Anglicans are concerned, it looks as if I’m leading three-nil at this stage.
Amen, Göran! Seeing the most radical extremists of the “conservative” sort attempt to drape themselves with Bonhöffer’s mantle has made me quite sick to my stomach for a long while… Well said!
I am not quite sure how wondering at what point the Archbishop would break with those who support homophobic laws constitutes being a bully or a collaborator, if that is the drift of that comment. Nor do I desire to stick a knife into the Archbishop. I simply wonder just how punitive antigay laws have to become before he will distance himself from those members of the Communion who support such laws. I quite understand that the antigay laws under strict sharia law [and I hope I spelled that correctly]are even worse than the ones proposed in Nigeria. But that… Read more »
Quite right too. The man is a spineless coward – in my opinion. Not up to the job.
And well, I can’t really have any respect for someone who puts his job and a quiet life before his friends and what he supposedly believes.
Thats one of the many reasons why I no longer attend an Anglican church and will not do so again until there is a split.
“stick the knife”???
[Tell that to the Nigerians machete’d by the “restive youth” +Akinola couldn’t (wouldn’t) “restrain”!]
That kind of *hyperbole* helps NO ONE, Alan. >:-(
Gosh – everytime I think that the nastiness of some of the “conservative” brigade makes it even harder to see their views as Christian, up pops someone like Meseymike to show that “liberals” can be just as nasty. I think the archbishop may believe something like “that they may be one, that the world might believe” not agree, not get it all right, but put God’s gift of baptism ahead of human propensity to sin, and work out how to be not only a church for sinners, but a church of sinners too — all on their way to a… Read more »
Speaking for the “conservative” side I don’t hate anyone. I simply accept what Scripture and Tradition have always and clearly taught on the issue of human sexuality. That all sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and a women is a sin. I have read a large number of books, including Boswell’s, in favour of accpeting homosexual sex. I have cearfully listened to the arguments in its favour, and I have carefully and over time compared those to the arguments against, and I have simply and honestly concluded, without any “hate” or “phobia”, that the traditionalist teaching is right… Read more »
Well said Shawn, I get very hurt by constant labelling as a “-hater”, or “anti-” because I don’t approve…