As [Arif] Ahmed recited figures on Anglicanism’s decline Rowan Williams grew restless, causing Ahmed to ask the master of Magdalene pointedly: “Do you want a point of information?” The room broke out in laughter as Williams responded by motioning for Ahmed to ”˜bring it on’.

The Spectator columnist Douglas Murray, arguing for the relevance of religion in the 21st century despite the “awkward position” of being an atheist, finished the debate by declaring that “no rational person could agree with this motion”. Religion, alongside humanism and secularism, has “a contribution to make”, Murray argued, telling students that without religion you may end up “with something like a perpetual version of The Only Way is Essex”.

Priyanka Kulkarni, Pembroke first year, said: “Tonight’s debate was highly anticipated, the queue spanning for what seemed to be miles was an indicator that this was going to be a highlight of the union this term.”

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You may find the preliminary video here (it lasts a little over 1 1/2 hours).

Rowan Williams and Richard Dawkins are to go head to head again in debate. Last year the two debated religion and science in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre, now they are to debate the place of reli- gion in the modern world at the Cambridge Union.

About 1,000 students are expect- ed to attend a debate in which Tariq Ramadan, Andrew Copson of the British Humanist Association, and Douglas Murray, founder of the Centre for Social Cohesion, will also take part.

The debate will be filmed and be available on the Union website soon after it has taken place.

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But you don’t believe the dear Lord created it anyway, do you? Hasn’t that got you into trouble with the people who don’t believe in evolution? Not in this country. You get letters but it’s a very easy thing to answer. Someone says: ”˜I believe a God of infinite mercy created every single species and the Lord looks after us and all the animals.’ Well, what about that little African boy, five years old, sitting on the banks of a river, and he’s got a worm in his eye that’s going to turn him blind in three years? Did this God that you talk about actually design this worm and say: ”˜I’ll put it in this boy’s eye?’ To suggest that God specifically created a worm to torture small African children is blasphemy as far as I can see. The Archbishop of Canterbury doesn’t believe that.

He’s supposed to believe it, though, isn’t he? Absolutely not! If you said to the Archbishop of Canterbury: ”˜Are you really telling me that God got some mud, blew in it and made a man and when that man said: “I haven’t got a friend”, he took out one of his ribs, rubbed it in his hands and went “boom, boom”?’ [Rowan] Williams [the last Archbishop of Canterbury] is a highly civilised, educated man. He wouldn’t for a microsecond be so silly as to believe that. But it does put him in an intolerable position.

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On the evening of 4 January, as the BBC News led with a new “civil part- nered bishops” row, Rowan Williams must have powerfully experi enced how different life had become after stepping down as Archbishop of Canter- bury at the end of 2012. For over 10 years such stories were almost always tied to him and his views on sexuality and his leader- ship of the Church. Not any longer. Yet the story illustrates how much “unfinished business” remained as he left office and how fragile Anglican unity is. It therefore raises the question as to his legacy.

For the last six months I’ve attempted to look back over his primacy to offer an ini- tial tentative assessment of his tenure and legacy in Rowan Williams: His Legacy (Lion, 2013). It has been a fascinating and challenging task. I thought I had a fairly good idea of his ministry but quickly realised how little I knew and how wide it has been.

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The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, must be hoping that his tenure will not be dogged and disrupted by rows about homosexuals and women bishops.

His forerunner, Rowan Williams, was almost completely derailed by such quarrels. Much of the rest of what he had to say was drowned by the din of factional infighting, baffling to the uncommitted.

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In the [BBC2 Goodbye to Canterbury] programme, Dr Williams also spoke of his opposition to the Iraq war in 2003. Once war had broken out, and troops were on the ground, Dr Williams decided not to “sound off from a distance”. He had tried to focus the debate on what an exit to the war would look like, “what would justice after the war look like”, which left him “satisfying nobody. . . People who think you ought to be swinging behind the Government are disappointed; people who think you ought always to be making loud and clear noises about global ethics will be disappointed.

“But I still think it’s a path worth treading, because the important thing about Archbishops speaking in public is, I believe, they shouldn’t ever be speaking in ways that have no cost, when other people are paying a price.”

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….everyone who visited the Olympic site or watched the broadcasts will have been made aware of the army of volunteers who cheerfully gave up their free time and worked away, without complaint, all hours of the day and night to make these great events happen. They were the key people who translated the Olympic vision into reality for the rest of us.

It ought to make us think a bit harder about all the other folk who quietly, often invisibly, turn vision into reality and just make things happen ”“ especially volunteers. Here at the Robes project, over twenty local churches are combining to offer food and shelter to homeless people in London. Religion here isn’t a social problem or an old-fashioned embarrassment, it’s a wellspring of energy and a source of life-giving vision for how people should be regarded and treated. So let’s recognise this steady current of generosity that underlies so much of our life together in this country and indeed worldwide.

It’s all based on one vision ”“ to make our society, our whole world, work for everyone, not just the comfortable and well off. And it’s a vision that sometimes seems to need Olympic levels of patient hard work and dedication.

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The decline of the Anglican Church as the country’s main religious voice is confirmed by findings from the Henry Jackson Society.
The study, which monitored statements by religious groups and media coverage of religion over the past decade, also found that the Roman Catholic Church had a more prominent role in public debate about religious issues than the Church of England.
Catholics focused heavily on pro-life issues and personal morality. Statements made by the C of E, in contrast, were more likely to be about overseas aid, foreign policy and poverty.

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Rowan Williams has attended his last service as the archbishop of Canterbury at the city’s cathedral, before he leaves office as leader of the Church of England and spiritual head of the 77 million-strong Anglican communion.

More than 700 people turned out to bid farewell to 62-year-old Williams before he officially departs as the 104th archbishop of Canterbury on Monday, following a 10-year tenure.

He will go on to take up the posts of master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and chairman of the board of trustees of Christian Aid, the international development agency.

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The truth of God is the most comforting and joyful presence we can imagine; and also the most disorienting and demanding. There’s a famous Old Testament story (2 Kings 5) about the great military leader of ancient Israel’s fiercest enemy, who comes to the prophet Elisha to be healed of his leprosy; and the prophet tells him simply to wash in the river. He is indignant: surely there must be something more difficult and glamorous and heroic to do? No; it’s perfectly simple. Go and wash, go and join all those ordinary humble folk who are sluicing themselves in the river after a long day’s work, or beating their laundry against the stones. Go and join the rest of the human race and acknowledge who you are. That’s the truest heroism and the hardest.

It’s a foreshadowing of the New Testament invitation: repent and believe and be baptised. Turn round and look where you’ve never looked before, trust the one who is calling you and drop under the water of his overflowing compassion. Be with him. Join the new human race, re-created in the Spirit of mutual love and delight and service.

If Jesus is strange and threatening, isn’t that (the New Testament certainly suggests) a sign of how far we’ve wandered from real humanity, real honesty about our weaknesses and limits?

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At the end of 2012 Dr Rowan Williams steps down after almost a decade as Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

He is the 104th Archbishop and has been in office at a time when the church faces internal problems and society comes to terms with global terrorism and recession….

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It’s a slightly strange way to start a Gospel you might think. We expect something a bit more like the beginning of the other Gospels: the story of Jesus’s birth perhaps or his ancestry, or the story of Jesus’s arrival on the public scene. But at the beginning of St John’s Gospel what St John does is to frame his whole story against an eternal background. And what he’s saying there is this: as you read this Gospel, as you read the stories about what Jesus does, be aware that whatever he does in the stories you’re about to read is something that’s going on eternally, not just something that happens to be going on in Palestine at a particular date. So when Jesus brings an overflow of joy at a wedding, when Jesus reaches out to a foreign woman to speak words of forgiveness and reconciliation to her, when Jesus opens the eyes of a blind man or raises the dead, all of this is part of something that is going on forever. The welcome of God, the joy of God, the light of God, the life of God – all of this is eternal. What Jesus is showing on Earth is somehow mysteriously part of what is always true about God….

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…there is one thing often said by defenders of the American gun laws that ought to make us think about wider questions. ”˜It’s not guns that kill, it’s people.’ Well, yes, in a sense. But it makes a difference to people what weapons are at hand for them to use ”“ and, even more, what happens to people in a climate where fear is rampant and the default response to frightening or unsettling situations or personal tensions is violence and the threat of violence. If all you have is a hammer, it’s sometimes said, everything looks like a nail. If all you have is a gun, everything looks like a target.

People use guns. But in a sense guns use people, too. When we have the technology for violence easily to hand, our choices are skewed and we are more vulnerable to being manipulated into violent action.

Perhaps that’s why, in a passage often heard in church around this time of year, the Bible imagines a world where swords are beaten into ploughshares.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Spiritually, we must prepare ourselves for the journey, stripping away the trivial and comfortable habits that all of us develop in our practice of faith, and renewing our commitment to follow the Word Incarnate. And then we must work this out in action ”“ in our own willingness to be alongside the displaced, to work devotedly with all who defend the rights and dignities of those without land or livelihood, and to speak for them and serve them in whatever way we can. Our churches should not be places where we retreat into the relief and safety of being with people who are just like ourselves. They should be places where we meet the ”˜divine exile’ who invites us to follow him in bringing hope to the displaced and disinherited ”“ where we learn something of his own liberty to be at the service of all in need and pain.

May God lead us out beyond the gates of our comfort to be with Jesus; and may he keep us always awake to see the realities of disorder and suffering around us.

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Everyone seems to be amazed that the Pope is tweeting ”“ and there was a news story the other day about bishops in England using Twitter for their Christmas messages. The surprise reminds me of the way people pretend to be astonished when clergy admit to having heard the occasional rude word (never mind clergy actually using them”¦) or having watched a soap. It’s taken for granted that we’re far too unworldly for all this.

Even speaking as someone who struggles with any kind of technology, I don’t think it should be assumed that all my fellow clergy are or ought to be as dim as I am in this area. And I don’t buy into the panic that sometimes gets stirred up about social media and electronic communication. OK, we all know it can be poisonous and destructive at times. But there’s another side to it.

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In other words, real freedom of speech, the kind that is morally important and politically essential, involves two things ”“ freedom to stand back from any particular loyalty in the name of loyalty to the truth, and freedom to speak truths that the powerful want hidden or ignored. It is not simply a matter of the liberty to spread random or trivial information, certainly not the liberty of expressing abusive or demeaning opinions. And no-one can be complacent about the levels of hurt and distress experienced by those who have been at the receiving end of intrusive and insensitive investigation in the name of this debased version of liberty. It is about sharing the reality of painful and difficult human experience so that others may know it for what it is and so that they may have no excuse for ignoring it. This kind of truthtelling is always radical because it demands that we identify with the situations of those very unlike us and recognise that they share the same world and the same human challenges. Truth is not likely to be found where people are told never to ask questions or where those who are backed by force have the right to dictate what counts as news, so that the human reality and human cost of injustice or disaster can be swept out of sight and mind.

Our readings today reinforce this strongly. St Paul’s words in his letter to the Philippians take it for granted that what is true is bound up with justice and honour among human beings: to think about what is true is to be committed to pursuing justice and honour, trust, fairness, all that is positive and in tune with people’s deepest longings and feelings.

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Canterbury Cathedral is a huge, unmistakeable physical fact: it simply stands there, quietly letting us know how deeply these issues mattered to people not so unlike us. It reminds us that there were some who thought them a matter of life and death ”“ like Thomas Becket, who died as a result of protesting against the king’s absolute claims. Less dramatically, it reminds us of those generations of monks who fervently believed that the best thing they could do for the world was to hold it steadily in prayer, in a daily rhythm of simple living and concentrated quietness.

You can’t fail to recognise that at the very least it’s a great open space for us to come into and discover new things about our human life and possibilities. And Christmas itself is about the arrival of a person whose words and actions and sufferings make that sort of space for us all. It isn’t about the arrival of a new philosophy ”“ or even just a new religion. The compassion that is shown by Jesus is something that takes us as we are and gives us freedom to ask the hardest questions; freedom to grow up, confident that at every stage of our lives we are welcomed and understood and affirmed. Freedom to face our shadows and betrayals as well, because we know that love can always make a fresh start with us.

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The crisis of gospel truth that has polarized the Anglican Communion and continues to separate Anglicans stems from a willful, premeditated and deliberate violation of Anglican Communion teaching on human sexuality and Holy orders (see Lambeth Resolution 1.10). For almost 15 years, TEC and other “progressive” Anglican churches in the mostly Western and Global North provinces have openly defied these settled Communion teachings.

It continues to be a sad commentary on the leadership of the current Archbishop of Canterbury that he seems unwilling even to acknowledge the doctrinal issues, much less the crisis, that has consumed so much of his tenure-especially with fellow bishops whose office is to guard the faith and order of our beloved Communion, and among whom are many from the largest Anglican provinces in the Global South who, in the face of this crisis of Gospel truth, found it necessary to provide refuge and oversight for faithful Anglicans in North America. “Some challenges” indeed.

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[Rowan] Williams spent most of his decade as Anglican spiritual leader struggling to keep bitter disputes between liberals in western countries and traditionalists, mostly from African and other developing countries, from tearing the Communion apart.

Faced with strong traditionalist opposition to gay clergy, women priests and liberal interpretations of the Bible, he tried to balance both sides and to strengthen central authority in Anglicanism so member churches did not diverge too much.

But his Anglican Covenant project failed when even his Church of England rejected the idea of a stronger center. Unlike the powerful Roman Catholic pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury is only the spiritual leader of Anglicans and has no direct authority over the Communion’s member churches.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has conceded defeat in the battle over the Anglican Covenant. In a 2 Dec 2012 Advent letter to the primates, Dr. Rowan Williams said the Anglican Communion had become “corrupted” and could no longer be considered a communion of churches but a “community of communities.”

Dr. Williams’ somber appreciation of the state of the communion today, contrasts with his past letters to the leaders of the Communions 38 provinces. Nothing now bound the church together apart from good will….

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Despite many questions about how our decisions about doctrine and mutual responsibility are made in the Communion, and some challenges to the various ”˜Instruments of Communion’, the truth is that our Communion has never been the sort of Church that looks for one central authority. This doesn’t mean that we are not concerned with truth or holiness or consistency. It simply acknowledges that all forms of human power and discipline can become corrupted, and that in the Church we have to have several points of reference for the organising of our common life so that none of them can go without challenge or critique from the others. Our hope is that in this exchange we discover a more credible and lasting convergence than we should have if someone or some group alone imposed decisions ”“ and that the fellowship that emerges is more clearly marked by Christlikeness, by that reverence for one another that the Spirit creates in believers.

Another way of saying this is that (to use the language of a great Anglican theologian of the early twentieth century, J.N. Figgis) we are a ”˜community of communities’.

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Cardinal Martini shook up a heady intellectual cocktail for the Catholic Church before he passed away. His recently published last testament has stunned the Vatican and set the faithful arguing about the direction of Catholicism in the 21st century. At nearly the same time, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the retiring leader of 100 million worldwide Anglicans, has been stirring up his flock with valedictory messages.

The lives of Cardinal Martini and Archbishop Williams share common themes. Both have held the highest academic positions and been recognized as great scholars, having produced over 50 works of theology between them. Both are remarkable linguists””Martini spoke 11 languages and Williams speaks six. Their prelatical concoctions pack a punch, and both will certainly enliven the debates about the future of the world’s two largest churches.

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Speaking about the link between HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence, Dr Williams said ”˜HIV/AIDS is regularly both the cause and the result of gender-based violence. It results often from rape, from unacceptable and degrading sexual practices. It’s the result of attitudes towards women that demean them, that deny their human dignity”¦HIV/AIDS is also the cause of violence; it’s the cause of stigma and rejection, and suspicion.’

“I believe it’s crucial for governments, NGOs, civil society agencies worldwide, to keep their eyes firmly on the connection between ”¦ the challenges around HIV, and the challenges around gender equality; the challenges posed to the dignity and the freedom of women worldwide.”

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Although it was carried in the House of Bishops by 44 to 3, with two abstentions, and in the House of Clergy by 148 to 45, with no abstentions, it was lost in the House of Laity. Here, there were 132 votes in favour, 74 against, with no abstentions; the Measure thus fell by six votes. Across all three Houses, 72.6 per cent of Synod members voted in favour of the legislation.

This result came despite strong support for the Measure from the Archbishop of Canterbury and his designated successor, the Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Justin Welby.

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“Bishop Kenneth Cragg held a unique position in the world of inter faith dialogue. His powerfully original mind, both analytic and poetic, was able to weave together themes and images from many and diverse religious backgrounds into a fresh theological perspective that still managed to do full honour to classical orthodoxy.

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Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said today that his successor was going to have to map the Biblical vision of humanity and community onto the worst situations in society.

Speaking at the final media conference after the end of the Anglican Consultative Council in New Zealand, Archbishop Williams said the issues discussed at the meeting–including environmental change and ending domestic violence–were “actually questions about what kind of humanity we’re seeking to promote and serve, which is a deeply Christian question.”

He said he thought that when people were probing the church on certain issues, they were actually asking how the church could help them “be really human”.

“We believe as a church we have unparalleled resources for enriching humanity that way.”

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has paid tribute to the resilience of the people of Christchurch while visiting the city’s devastated red zone – but refused to be drawn into the debate over the fate of the cathedral.

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