“Peace is the only option which can allow the flourishing of South Sudan and its neighbour Sudan,” the Archbishop of Canterbury has warned. Speaking on the first anniversary of the independence of South Sudan, the Archbishop has called for urgent humanitarian assistance in conflict areas and renewed efforts to resolve outstanding differences between the two countries….

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Christians need to overcome their own feelings of embarrassment, shame and disgust about homosexuality, the Archbishop of Canterbury has insisted.

Dr Rowan Williams acknowledged that the Church was still “scratching its head” about where it stands on issues like same-sex marriage despite its vocal public opposition to the Government’s plan to legalise it.

In his most frank public comments to date on the subject, the Archbishop accepted that the Church was in a “tangle” over homosexuality.

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Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, will release “Faith in the Public Square” in September.

The book, published by Continuum, is a compilation of several of Archbishop Rowan’s interventions into the public discourse ”“ often at key points in wider debate ”” during the ten years of his ministry as Primate.

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The archbishop of Canterbury has denounced David Cameron’s “big society”, saying that it comes across as aspirational waffle that was “designed to conceal a deeply damaging withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities to the most vulnerable”.

The outspoken attack on the prime minister’s flagship policy by Rowan Williams ”“ his strongest to date ”“ is contained in a new book, Faith in the Public Square, that is being prepared for publication ahead of his retirement.

Passages from the book, obtained by the Observer, reflect the archbishop’s deep frustration not just with the policies of Cameron’s government and those of its Labour predecessors, but also with what he sees as the west’s rampant materialism and unquestioning pursuit of economic growth. Williams also laments spiralling military expenditure, writing that “the adventure in Iraq and its cost in any number of ways seems to beggar the imagination”.

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I shall be suggesting that if every complex society needs systems of representation, we have to come to terms with the fact that legitimacy is never a matter of electoral majorities alone. Good, “legitimate” government involves both direct election and mechanisms for representing:

–concerns that are of longer-term importance than electoral cycles allow;
–minority interests that can be silenced by large electoral majorities;
–groups with conscientious reservations about aspects of public policy; and
–the expertise of professional and civil society agents that will not necessarily be engaged in party political elections.

In a word, I believe that if there is a “democratic deficit” in our governance in the UK, it is best addressed by taking all of these issues together and looking at what most strengthens civil society groups and local democratic mechanisms, rather than seeking a solution primarily at the level of national electoral systems.

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“We are haunted by Christianity in this country; there’s a bit of can’t live with it, can’t live without it in some people’s approaches. Even with Dawkins, the sense that he can’t leave it alone is fascinating. It does mean that it’s a more complex phenomenon than it looks at first; it’s not as if everyone on that side wants to sweep things away and start from day one. I’m interested in how much scope that still gives for mutual understanding.”

I think we will come to miss Williams in national life. He functions in the exact opposite way to a politician, looking for mutual understanding, while embracing doubt. If there is a consistence to his inconsistency, it is to suggest that perhaps religion’s role is not to provide easy answers but to pose difficult questions; that complexity and paradox may be worth considering too. “That is hard in a short-term media age.”

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has today announced that the Very Reverend Canon David Richardson, the Archbishop’s Representative to the Holy See and Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome, intends to retire at Easter 2013.

Canon Richardson, who will be 67 next year, will have served for five years as Director of the Centre. He has recently been instrumental in establishing a five-year plan which will enable the Centre to take forward its mission with renewed focus and vigour in preparation for the fiftieth anniversary of the Centre in 2016 and beyond. David is Dean Emeritus of St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, and one of four Provincial Canons of Canterbury. He is married to Margie and they have two adult children.

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Governments can, of course, and must, play their part in all this. Governments need to give fiscal incentives to green development. They need to promote programmes that encourage us all to reduce our waste. They need to ”˜green’ our economy, both at home and worldwide. And we, all of us, not least the faith communities, need to collaborate in that and support governments in that vision.

But at root, the question remains the same: what kind of world do we want to hand on? Imagine that you have a child’s or a grandchild’s birthday coming up. You want to give them a present. You want to give them something that will genuinely mean something to them, that will enrich their lives, that will be part of lasting growth and well-being. And that’s what we’re challenged to do here. It’s a challenge that I think will resonate for absolutely everybody across the world. Simply enough: what’s the gift we want to give? The gift of a world that’s more free from pollution, a world whose future is more secure, a world where more people have access to food and clean water and healthcare? Yes. But also a world in which we’re transmitting the wisdom of how to inhabit a world, how to inhabit a limited environment with grace, with freedom, with confidence.

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In its submission to the Government consultation on same-sex marriage, which closes on June 14, the Church of England states it cannot support the proposal to enable “all couples, regardless of their gender, to have a civil marriage ceremony”.

It adds that the consultation paper wrongly implies that there are two categories of marriage, “civil” and “religious” – “this is to mistake the wedding ceremony for the institution of marriage”. Changing the State’s understanding of marriage will, therefore, change the way marriage is defined for everybody and, despite the government’s assurances to the contrary, will change the nature of marriages solemnized in churches and other places of worship.

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To declare a lifelong dedication is to take a huge risk, to embark on a costly venture. But it is also to respond to the promise of a vision that brings joy.

And perhaps that is the challenge that this Jubilee sets before us in nation and Commonwealth. St Paul implies that we should be so overwhelmed by the promise of a shared joy far greater than narrow individual fulfilment, that we find the strength to take the risks and make the sacrifices ”“ even if this seems to reduce our individual hopes of secure enjoyment.

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Speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight, Dr Rowan Williams raised concerns about the gap between rich and poor and the lack of cultural cohesion in the UK….

“There have been moments in the last decade and more when, perhaps, we might have been able to take a different line,” he said.

He was referring to the way the British think and feel as a society and told Newsnight’s Stephen Smith that British society had “put up the shutters” and retreated into “corporate paranoia” in the wake of terrorist threats.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury is urging the people of Britain to pop into a church or cathedral to say thanks for the Queen and her Diamond Jubilee.

Speaking on Radio 2’s Pause For Thought… Dr Rowan Williams said he hoped this weekend’s Jubilee celebrations would give people the “chance to get in touch with the background of their lives, the big context, the things that make this the sort of world it is and give us the sort of values we have”.

Dr Williams, who retires at the end of the year, said: “I hope the Jubilee prompts us to see what we can do to get back in touch with the big background picture. Like the monarchy ”” it’s still there, and it still means something, and dropping into a church or a cathedral is a good way of connecting with it, and perhaps saying thanks ”” for the Queen and the Jubilee and for lots more besides.”

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It seems to me that what her importance has been for most people in this country has been as a sign of stability, a sign of some kind of security. And that wouldn’t have happened had she not been so profoundly committed at every point, so intelligently committed to understanding the society she was in, working with the flow of the changes that have taken place. To have someone who has been a symbol, a sign of stability through all that period is really a rather exceptional gift. Her role in the Commonwealth is not the least important part of that. I think she has reminded us that we in the United Kingdom are part of a worldwide fellowship. That’s not the least of the lessons she has shared with us, and again, the change that she has helped to happen from Empire to Commonwealth while yet retaining that sense of fellowship and family between nations.
Part of the regular rhythm of life as Archbishop is that I see The Queen privately, just one to one, perhaps once or twice a year. I have really valued those meetings because she is always extremely well informed about issues concerning the Church – extremely supportive and full of perception. She’s seen lots of archbishops come and go, she’s seen prime ministers come and go, so she knows something of the pressures of the job. And I’ve always found it really refreshing to be able to talk with her about these questions, to get her perspective – purely personally, I’ve felt very strongly supported there. I’ve felt she’s understood the difficulties when there have been quite trying events and episodes in my own life as Archbishop. She has been unfailingly kind, understanding and supportive, and I value that enormously.

I hadn’t had any contact at all with royalty before coming into this job. I didn’t know what to expect, really. I found in The Queen someone who can be friendly, who can be informal, who can be extremely funny in private (and not everybody appreciates just how funny she can be), who is quite prepared to tease and to be teased, and who, while retaining her dignity always, doesn’t stand on her dignity in a conversation.

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There has already been a lot of discussion about the amendments agreed this week by the House of Bishops to the draft Measure concerning the ordination of women as bishops. Although the senior officers of the Synod (the ‘Group of Six’) have determined by a majority that these amendments do not alter the substance of the proposals embodied in the Measure, much anxiety has been expressed as to their implications, and it may be helpful to set out what the House attempted and intended.

The House fully and wholeheartedly accepts that the draft legislation voted on by the dioceses represents the will of an undoubted and significant majority in the Church of England. They did not intend to make any change in any principle of that legislation or to create any new powers or privileges for anyone. They believed that, if certain clarifications and expansions of the wording were made, the Measure might be carried with more confidence, and, out of that conviction, agreed the new wording, which affects two questions….

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We are keenly aware of the great suffering caused by the non-implementation of several key parts of the CPA. The cry of pain continues to be heard from South Kordofan, Blue Nile and Abyei, as well as from those affected by the escalation of conflict in the border region between Sudan and South Sudan. I pray that the UN Security Council Resolution and the AU Roadmap will result in real progress in settling the outstanding issues.

The church’s dedicated efforts in peace-building and advocacy continue to represent a powerful witness to the gospel. We are inspired by the untiring efforts to bring peace in Jonglei. We also stand in special solidarity with the church’s situation in the Republic of Sudan and will continue to press for freedom of religion and worship and the safety of the Christian community.

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From here:

For some time now, the Anglican Communion has been exercised over the issue of same-sex relationships. As this copy of ”˜Outreach’ was going to press, Rowan Williams announced his decision to stand down as Archbishop of Canterbury. There have been many column inches written about the pressures that have led to this outcome, including those relating to this issue.

It’s high time that the Christ Church family had a mature conversation about same-sex relationships. We plan to do so at a special event in the Harwood Hall

England’s Catholic jurisdiction for former Anglicans has received a $250,000 donation from Pope Benedict XVI, prompting an expression of thanks from its top cleric.

“I am very grateful to the Holy Father for his generosity and support,” said Monsignor Keith Newton, head of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, in a May 1 statement….

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(Close readers of this blog may note that we featured the amazing resource of Michael Sandel’s Harvard Course on Justice in September 2010–KSH).

Should people be paid for donating blood? In the United States, there is a mixed economy of free donation and the sale of blood through commercial blood banks. Predictably, most of the blood that is dealt with on a commercial basis comes from the very poor, including the homeless and the unemployed. The system entails a large-scale redistribution of blood from the poor to the rich.

This is only one of the examples cited by Michael Sandel, the political philosopher and former Reith Lecturer, in his survey of the rapidly growing commercialisation of social transactions, but it is symbolically a pretty powerful one. We hear of international markets in organs for transplant and are, on the whole, queasy about it; but here is a routine instance of life, quite literally, being transferred from the poor to the rich on a recognised legal basis. The force of Sandel’s book is in his insistence that we think hard about why exactly we might see this as wrong; we are urged to move beyond the “yuck factor” and to consider whether there is anything that is intrinsically not capable of being treated as a commodity, and if so why.

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From here:

I am at the GAFCON/FCA gathering in Battersea this week. We’ve been asked not to indulge in too much personal blogging, tweeting, etc, so I’ve not posted anything before, but below is an official release of the opening address.

The mood is good — positive and outward looking, and it has been good to meet so many people from Africa in particular.

Yesterday we had a welcome from the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered by the Bishop of Southwark (in whose diocese we are meeting). That felt odd!

If you believe, as most Americans do, that the upper reaches of the church don’t have much to do with the ground floor, the next Archbishop of Canterbury will have mostly trivial interest to you. Perhaps it will be John Sentamu, and the ECUSA is in for the deep-freeze. Perhaps it will be a conciliator or a caretaker. Perhaps it will be someone with an even more lush and vigorous patch of Muppet fur insulating his brows from the slings and arrows of church leadership. Who’s to say? But Easter will come, just as it did this year. There will be babies to baptize, teens to confirm, crappy church coffee to be drunk (maybe good sherry if you’re in the right congregation), and ministry to be done, regardless of who fills Williams’ seat.

But if you believe, as many Americans do, that it is of the utmost importance to speak with one voice on women in ministry, or the place of gays and lesbians in the church””if you believe that without a common creed and ethics and way of reading scripture, there’s no point in calling it a “church”””well then, you’re in for a very interesting six months or so. It’s unlikely that you’ll get a champion of orthodoxy like Benedict, and probably not such a fierce champion of unity-at-all-costs as Williams. You may have to face the same uncomfortable ideas that the rest of us are confronted with: that there is no single voice for Christianity, that Christ’s prayer “that they may all be one” is and always has been a fond wish and ardent desire but never a fact on the ground, that Christianity as a world movement has not produced a standard culture but has shaped and been shaped by many different cultures in many different ways, to the detriment of its coherence. But at this point, who the hell knows? You may find somebody who can bring it all back together, or (more likely), you may find another weak leader committed to togetherness in principle but unable to do much about it in practice. Either way, good luck, and definitely let us know if you find somebody with bigger eyebrows than Rowan Williams. We’ll want to be warned about that right away.

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Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the leader of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion, recently announced that he would step down by year’s end. A few days later, the Church of England rejected a Williams-backed unity plan for global Anglicanism, a church fractured by issues of gender and sexual identity. The timing of the resignation and the defeat are probably not coincidental. These events signal Anglicans’ institutional failure.

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Saying that he hopes that his successor has the constitution of an ox and the skin of a rhinoceros. Rowan Williams, the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, will resign at the end of this year and return to academics. He will become the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge where he can meander along the River Cam and take tea at the Orchard Garden in Grantchester far away from the turbulence of the 85-million member Communion he leaves behind. When an archbishop retires at the usual age of 70, no one bats an eyelash. But when he resigns in good health nearly a decade before normal retirement age, people sit up and take notice. It evokes the image of a battle weary pugilist whose “sponger” looks at the condition of his man and tosses his sponge in the air. The fight is over. We might as well declare defeat.

The battle, of course, was his to lose. Anyone with half an eye could see the turbulence that lay ahead for someone assuming the role of leader of the world’s second largest Communion. The same year he took office an openly gay man, Gene Robinson, was consecrated bishop of New Hampshire despite public assurances from Frank Griswold, the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, that he would not participate in the consecration. Griswold went right ahead and did just that. With one part of his Communion going its own way, and thumbing its noses at the rest, while the vast majority were profoundly upset, Williams was forced to choose. Either he would take a self-imposed mediatorial role, and desperately try to keep all parties at the table. Or he would take sides, and do what he could to bring the truculent back in line.

He chose the former, with the result that no one was satisfied. Privately he held to a liberal position on sexuality, as enunciated in his well-known, though highly inscrutable, paper entitled The Body’s Grace. Publicly, he towed the line that was spelled out by Lambeth Resolution 1:10, which stated as the official position of the Communion that “homosexuality was imcompatible with Scripture.”

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, says Back to Church Sunday is “essential” in a new videocast going live as registrations open for Back to Church Sunday, 30th September 2012.

In a speech to diocesan and denominational Back to Church Sunday champions at Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop said: “We have been in danger of forgetting just how much we still have in the ‘bank’, just how much”¦ wish there is for connections to be made in the minds and hearts of a lot of people. What Back to Church Sunday has more than anything demonstrated is that you don’t have to dig too far to find that desire for connection.”

Read it all and see what you think of the video and website.

We are not told that Jesus ”˜survived death’; we are not told that the story of the empty tomb is a beautiful imaginative creation that offers inspiration to all sorts of people; we are not told that the message of Jesus lives on. We are told that God did something ”“ that is, that this bit of the human record, the things that Peter and John and Mary Magdalene witnessed on Easter morning, is a moment when … we see through to the ultimate energy behind and within all things. When the universe began, prompted by the will and act of God and maintained in being at every moment by the same will and action, God made it to be a universe in which on a particular Sunday morning in AD33 this will and action would come through the fabric of things and open up an unprecedented possibility ”“ for Jesus and for all of us with him: the possibility of a human life together in which the pouring out of God’s Holy Spirit makes possible a degree of reconciled love between us that could not have been imagined … for the Christian, the basic fact is that this compelling vision is there only because God raised Jesus.

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In all sorts of ways Holy Week really is the most important week in the Christian year because it’s a week when we discover in a way we don’t at any other time just we are and just who God is….

…on Good Friday we are not only discovering something unwelcome about ourselves, we are seeing Christ’s arms extended to us on the tree of life as the old Hymn says. We look at Jesus as the source of new hope because we see in his sacrificial love what God is willing to do for us. We see that he knows and understands our darkness more fully than we do ourselves and still embraces us and takes us forward and that becomes absolutely real and concrete in the events of Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday morning.

We gather in darkness on Holy Saturday evening. We gather to listen to the story of how God brought light out of darkness at the very beginning and how God’s pillar of cloud and fire lead his people through the desert. We celebrate the way in which God set his people free in the story of the Exodus, and we listen to all those prophecies of how God will honour his work and his word and bring it to completion in Jesus. And so we are drawn into the great mystery of Easter, we come to the point when the lights are fully on, the candles are all lit and we can celebrate a light that has dawned again on the world. We’ve been taken on a journey all week from darkness to light, from the darkness of not really understanding ourselves to the light of seeing God’s face clearly and seeing ourselves; from the darkness of recognising our own failures and our sins into the light of hope and forgiveness. And that is why as the first Eucharist of Easter begins we pull all the stops out quite literally, the organ plays, the bells ring and we recognise that the journey for this week, for this time, is over. We’ve come home to where Jesus is. The risen Jesus is standing with God the Father pouring out in the Holy Spirit his love on the world and we just stand there for a moment at Easter receiving that, basking in it as you might say. We’ve come on a journey, we’ve come home and we know that that home is always there for us in the accepting, compassionate love of God which has paid the ultimate sacrifice to make peace between heaven and earth.

In this empty hallway, there’s nothing expected of us at this moment. The work is out of our hands, and all we can do is wait, breathe, look around. People sometimes feel like this when they’ve been up all night with someone who’s seriously ill or dying, or when they’ve been through a non-stop series of enormously demanding tasks. A sort of peace, but more a sort of ”˜limbo’, an in-between moment. For now, nothing more to do; tired, empty, slightly numbed, we rest for a bit, knowing that what matters is now happening somewhere else.

”“Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

But perhaps even more urgent for the Church in England than addressing this issue is the need to amend the growing incompetence and theological incoherence on the ground. There are three crucial elements that stand out:

–Almost ubiquitous liturgical chaos, where many evangelicals and liberals alike have little sense of what worship is for.

–The increasing failure of many priests to perform their true priestly roles of pastoral care and mission outreach, in a predominantly “liberal” and managerialist ecclesial culture that encourages bureaucratisation and over-specialisation. This has often led to a staggering failure even to try to do the most obvious things – like publicising in the community an Easter egg hunt for children in the bishop’s palace grounds! To an unrecognised degree this kind of lapse explains why fewer and fewer people bother with church – though the underlying failure “even to try” has more to do with a post 1960s ethos that assumes decline and regards secularisation as basically a good thing, or even as providentially ordained since religion is supposedly a “private” and merely “personal” affair after all.

–Perhaps most decisive is the collapse of theological literacy among the clergy – again, this is partly a legacy of the 1960s and 70s (made all the worst by the illusion that this was a time of enlightening by sophisticated German Protestant influence), but it has now been compounded by the ever-easier admission of people to the priesthood with but minimal theological education, and often one in which doctrine is regarded almost as an optional extra.

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The campaign, which mobilised ordinary worshippers against the so-called covenant, was co-ordindated by Mrs [Jean] Mayland from her two-up, two-down cottage in Hexham.

She criticised the Dr Williams as “a manager not a leader” and told The Times: “I still wish that he had stuck to himself and his integrity, while reaching out to those who were against gays and others, and more gently led us in the right direction.

“The next Archbishop should be someone who is able to understand that the Church should be able to bless civil partnerships and lead it into a discussion about gay marriage.”

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…front-runners to succeed Rowan are not just coyly denying any interest in the post ”“ they are actively saying it is an impossible one.
First to make this claim was Nick Baines (currently at 7/1 to move into Lambeth Palace, according to William Hill’s odds), who declared on his blog last September: “You’d have to be out of your mind to want to be Archbishop of Canterbury.

“My guess is that whoever is asked to do it next will have to be dragged to the seat.”

{and]…Graham James said: “I have served as a chaplain to an Archbishop of Canterbury and it was an impossible job then, and I think it’s more impossible now. Only those who don’t recognise its difficulties could possibly want to do it.”

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The Archbishop of Canterbury warned this week that challenges in the Anglican Communion “will not go away”. Dr Williams was speaking after a majority of diocesan synods rejected the Anglican Covenant.

Last weekend, three more diocesan synods ”” Lincoln, Oxford, and Guildford ”” voted against the Covenant. Three others ”” Black­burn, Exeter, and Peterborough ”” endorsed it. This brought the total number of diocesan synods in favour of the Covenant to 15, and the total number against to 23.

Since a majority of dioceses have voted against, it will not return to the General Synod during this quin­quennium (2011-15).

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