Bearded, kindly and theologically subtle, the archbishop has spent the last 10 years trying to bring an academic’s finesse to issues where finesse often just looks like evasion ”” the spread of Islam in a de-Christianizing Europe, the divides within the Anglican Communion over homosexuality and women’s ordination, the rise of a combative New Atheism.
The result has been a depressing public ineffectuality for a man charged with leading the world’s third-largest Christian body. Whether he was talking vaguely about “interactive pluralism” as a way of avoiding tackling issues like forced marriages and honor killings in Muslim immigrant communities, answering “pass” to a journalist’s pointed question about his own views on sexually active gay clergy, or offering unreciprocated olive branches to proselytizing atheists, Williams rarely missed an opportunity to soft-pedal around an important debate.