The [Lambeth] Conference begins with a couple of days’ retreat. Some critics have complained that Lambeth is too focused on prayer and reflection and not enough on decision-making; but I am bound to say that I regard this as an extraordinary thing to say about any Christian gathering ”“ as if we could make any decision worthy of the gospel without the utmost attention to listening together to God. I partly understand that some feel there may be an attempt to appeal to the need for prayer and reflection as an alibi for not grasping the nettles; but I would gently but firmly say that it is also possible to use a rhetoric about needing decisive action as an alibi for waiting on God. I simply pray that we’ll get the balance as right as we can.
I respect the consciences of those who have said they do not feel able to attend because there will be those present who have in their view acted against the disciplinary and doctrinal consensus of the communion. Needless to say, I regret such a decision, since I believe we should be seeking God’s mind for the Communion in prayer and study together; but it simply reminds us that even the most ‘successful’ Lambeth Conference leaves us with work still to be done in rebuilding relationships. The decision of some to be absent not only shows the deep differences over theology and ethics that have so strained our connections; it also reflects, uncomfortably for us, some of the legacy of hurt that is felt by some of our provinces at what is experienced as patronising or manipulative or insensitive actions and attitudes on the part of many of the churches of the ‘West’ or ‘North’ ”“ not only the Episcopal Church in the USA, but us as well. That’s hard to hear, but we have to hear it and to offer apologies and seek for better understanding. Lambeth can’t be the end of the story; and if at Lambeth we try to do proper justice to the idea of a Covenant, it must be in the light of that need for a more serious and profound mutuality between us all.
I’ve said in other contexts something about why all this matters; let me illustrate it by looking briefly at one particular situation. What I’ve just said about the legacy of bruised feelings and half-buried resentments is, of course, one of the things that so complicates our political, never mind our ecclesiastical, relationships with the post-colonial world. And nowhere is this more apparent than in Zimbabwe at the moment. A history scarred by exploitation and deep racial injustice can all too easily be used, as it has been there, to turn aside every criticism and even to refuse any proper help when a local regime has fallen victim to its own incompetence, corruption and self-delusion. It has been that much harder for many in this country to know how to respond to the needs of Zimbabwe for fear of simply reinforcing stereotypes of colonial patronage or misunderstanding. We have tried to take our cues from those on the ground locally who are seeking justice and change.
Perhaps we are sitting in our little corner dithering, blithering and gazing at our navels as we “wait for God” in the meantime He’s sitting in the Great Hall wondering what is taking us so blasted long!
Brevity is an indication of greater wisdom. Didn’t see it.
It’s not “prayer and reflection” that has turned the Windsor Report into a quaint relic. Nor did it moot Dromantine or the Dar communique’. Your actions, ++Rowan, did that.
I think I’m fairly well educated, I have a Master’s in both English Literature and History as well as a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with a dual major in Finance and Accountancy. I’ve spent a lot of time in school. That said, I’m done reading this man’s tortuous prose and transcripts of his speeches. Everything that issues forth from his pen, or his mouth, is too long by half and as convoluted a read as anything I’ve ever seen.
He apparently assumes he is writing or speaking to a room full of academics and even if that were the case there is no excuse for the circuitous, meandering tripe he offers as effective written or verbal communication.
… and is as convoluted a read…
From the first draft:
[blockquote]”So please continue to pray for the Lambeth Conference – pray that it may find new ways forward [strike]that do not involve upholding prior conciliar decisions providing consequences for TEC’s defiance[/strike]…”[/blockquote]
😉
If Churchill had spoken like this, the war would have been lost.
As the football player told the interviewer, “I didn’t used to know what an intellectual was. Now I are one.” This is not a difficult speech to read or understand for anyone past the “See Spot Run” stage of literacy… who has the will to try and understand it, rather than reading it as yet another automatic target for attack. I think that Andrew Brown was spot-on in [url=http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=274]his analysis[/url] that the Archbishop does not see his role (or the role of law) as enforcing uniformity rather than of helping the community come to an appropriate stance regarding the limits and toleration of diversity. Rowan Williams is only a failure as an Archbishop if you apply criteria for measuring success or failure which he quite openly—and in my opinion, basically correctly—has rejected. Do I wish he spoke more clearly? Certainly, but those who have ears to hear have no difficulty in understanding him.
Dale Rye:
What you and I need is:
…. “a more serious and profound mutuality between us all…”
This kind of pablum is neither pastoral nor erudite. It’s pure, feel-good fluff.
I write as a Roman Catholic. I can only repeat what I have said elsewhere, that it is breath-takingly arrogant for the Church of England to assume as Rowan Williams does that it speaks for all faiths: part of both the burden and the privilege of being the Church we are in the nation we’re in is that we are often looked to for some coherent voice on behalf of all the faith communities living here. Catholics, Jews, others do not need the Archbishop of Canterbury to speak for them. We can be perfectly coherent ourselves, thank you. The sooner was have disestablishment the better.
This part is very misleading and the lowest of blows
So the primates who don’t show up are only absent because their feelings were hurt?!?!?!? Does this man understand ANYTHING?
I think I have given him the benefit of the doubt on many occasions, but even the slowest of people can figure out that certain primates will not attend Lambeth because they think it a matter of a moral (i.e. universal) right and wrong, not just “you hurt my feelings, so I will ignore you.”
Relativity = A house divided against itself. And those have a hard time staying up don’t they?
Since when was it our fault 🙁
– sorry I am referring of course to “some of the legacy of hurt that is felt by some of our provinces at what is experienced as patronising or manipulative or insensitive actions and attitudes”
This is one of the most deeply unsatisfying speeches of Rowan Williams’ I’ve read, though, at this point, I don’t think it’s any longer worth the time to analyze why. I do think a hint as to how the center (Canterbury) has failed to hold, thus handing the Communion over to Western libertine mores as an organizing theology, can be found here:
“As I implied earlier, part of both the burden and the privilege of being the Church we are in the nation we’re in is that we are often looked to for some coherent voice on behalf of all the faith communities living here.â€
Perhaps if the emphasis were on being a coherent voice on behalf of the Anglican Christian community in the UK (and beyond), we would have received a response to the waywardness of this province grounded in a Christian framework. Instead, we got the “multi-culti†approach of “to each his own, and there’s no such thing as right and wrong†– with predictable results.
[blockquote]I have had a fair amount of recent first-hand contact with Christian minorities in Muslim majority countries which has left me with no illusions about the sufferings they can and do face . . . [/blockquote]
Oh really? Then, sir, why have you put them in an even worse position with your comments about sharia law?
Make a 100% apology or resign. Better yet, do both.
To quoteth Shakespeare:
“it is a tale told by an idiot…signifying nothing.”
I would say the apology, for it was that is to be welcomed.
Also notable are his words in this section on Zimbabwe:
[blockquote]The records of Bishop Kunonga’s administration in Harare make unhappy reading – a story of conflicts and threats and the refusal of both outside challenge and outside help. Last year, he announced his decision to separate from the Province of Central Africa, citing in support the ‘liberalism’ of that Province on issues of sexual morality. This at least simplified some issues; I had already indicated that I should not be happy to invite him to Lambeth while serious charges in the ecclesiastical courts were still unanswered, but his decision has left him isolated from the life of the Communion, and his episcopal acts cannot now be recognised as part of that life. But his preposterous charge against his province illustrates exactly something I noted last year in this Synod – the possibility of using conflicts in the Communion as an excuse to pursue self-seeking agendas in various contexts, and the great danger this poses in divided or fragile local churches. We saw it in Sudan, and now here it is in Central Africa; it underlines the need to find ways of resolving or containing disputes in the communion that do not leave quite so much room for opportunistic posturing of this kind.[/blockquote]
Ah yes – self-seeking agendas and opportunistic posturing – we can’t be having any of that – oh dear no.
I am increasingly coming to believe that there is [b]nothing[/b] that would satisfy the detractors, most of whom have opposed +Rowan since even before he was enthroned. I think their problem with him is essentially that he is an independent thinker who cannot be counted on to support either a liberal or conservative party line. They would prefer an unquestioning ally, but they could live with a predictable opponent more easily than with someone they fundamentally do not understand.
The alleged obscurity of his language is partially due to the 143-word sentences, but only partly. Mostly, it comes from the fact that he is steeped on the one hand in the classic literature of theology and spirituality from before the modern era and on the other hand in the contemporary thought that questions modernity as an inevitable and universal form of reason. That makes him incomprehensible to those who have neither a sense of history nor a critical approach to reality. Sadly, that describes both most reasserters and most reappraisers. They can understand one another, even through their differences, because they share a common worldview with one another, but not with +Rowan.
Conservative Anglicans have, by and large, bought into modernity as thoroughly as the liberals. Their hermeneutic principles make no sense apart from an approach to propositional truth that would have been meaningless before the Enlightenment. “Inerrancy†depends on a definition of “truth†as little more than the empirical facts we can verify with our senses.
+Rowan rejects that view. Like +Tom Wright, he is a critical realist who grounds his view of reality in a particular human community and tradition. Like +Tom, that makes him fair game for those who claim universality for their opinions. They may think they disagree because folks like Williams, Wright, and Milbank are wrong, but the fact is that, in most cases, they disagree because they are reading them from a different intellectual universe where they simply make no coherent sense.
No matter how clearly men like +Rowan and +Tom expressed their thoughts, they would still seem absurd to those who regard modernity as simple universal reason itself. That also explains the obvious phenomenon that both sides see +Rowan as hostile to their position and a conscious agent of the other side. “They clearly aren’t with us, so they must be against us.” Hence the otherwise incomprehensible notion that this very moral man believes that anything goes.
The critics—on both sides—define +Rowan as a failed Archbishop because they see the job as involving the enforcement of universal law on a monolithic Anglican Church. As the tumult of the past few days shows us, he strongly opposes both the whole notion of suppressing diversity by the application of inflexible and uniform law and the notion of canonizing diversity by the development of parallel legal systems. He doesn’t even think that enforcing uniformity is the role of the British legal system, much less of a Christian minister.
In short, it is not that +Rowan is living up to his job description poorly, or even that he has a fundamentally different notion of his job description than his critics, but that he is operating from a different world view… one that has at least as strong a claim to be in the Anglican mainstream as theirs.
Re: quotes in #18
First, there would be NO or at least MANAGEABLE conflicts in the Communion if it had a leader rather than a whatever ABC is.
Second, SELF-SEEKING AGENDAS!? What of ABC’s social engineering through delay and inaction? What of his syncretism of faiths by allowing apostates to have an ongoing and credible voice? What of the “Listening Space” that has become a bellowing bullhorn for all things homosexual? Is THIS not his own self-seeking agenda?
Newbie Anglican quoted and wrote:
“Oh really? Then, sir, why have you put them in an even worse position with your comments about sharia law?”
He hasn’t. Those who misquoted, misunderstood, or would rather twist what he said for their own purposes have perpetuated harm.
Perhaps some who post on this blog have often been to Africa or the Middle East and meet with the primates, bishops, clergy, or lay people who are actually experiencing the abuse and persecution. Perhaps some who have done such traveling and meeting together with the people-on-the-ground honestly know better then +Rowan, who most certainly has traveled and met, but I kind of doubt it. The word “Hubris” comes to mind. To assert that +Rowan doesn’t understand or care what his comments mean to those Anglicans suffering persecution is absurd.
19. Dale Rye: Thank you! I think this is why +Rowan and +Tom are so popular with young people – and particularly young American Evangelicals who no longer function with “Enlightenment Modernity,” and in fact don’t understand it.
I find it funny, in a way, that early on Christians so strongly condemned the godless Enlightenment and Modern thought, but now so much of Christianity is doing everything it can to maintain this way of thinking and consider it to be God’s very way of thinking. Conceiving of an “Ancient-Future” church will certainly contain “classic literature of theology and spirituality from before the modern era,” which +Rowan does, and Post-Modern ways of engaging.
#20, I think these are the sorts of thing #18 had in mind. You have to read into his last line the British genius for wry understatement.
Dale,
I am coming to believe that reappraisers believe that everything they say and do is perfectly reasonable, and they can’t understand why those they are hurting, alienating and suing can’t see that reasonable-ness.
Reasserters, on the other hand, are looking for statements of clarity and repentance upon which they can grasp to show that reappraisers understand the damage they are causing. Statements that are not forthcoming, but instead are filled with more psuedo-theologcial babble and jargon which have no meaning or which can easily be taken back later (as with Dar es Salaam).
Until reappraisers such as KJS and, now it seems, the ABC realize the divide in language which they have caused, there will be no reason for reasserters to accept their ‘you can come back on my terms’ offers.
I would have no problem with ++Williams if he stood up and supported a theologically valid CHRISTIAN viewpoint, I really don’t care about ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’, which have varying shades of meaning depending upon with whom one speaks. So far, though, that seems to have been lacking in his speeches and publications, and all we see is back and forth ‘wishy-washy-ness’.
Peace in Christ, incarnate, crucified and risen!
Jim Elliott <><
#22 Bob G+
Living in Lambeth Palace; being appointed by joint effort of the State and Queen; holding a three week table talk on how to be a bishop; ignoring elephants in his own living room while portending to tell the state how to organize it’s law is hardly “Ancient-Future”.
Standing firm for the faith once delivered, and being persecuted by those in authority as a result, is.
Dale (#19), I agree with your assessment of +Rowan. And just to show you how complex and weird things are in the Communion, I am at Truro! Though I do think he made a tactical error by issuing invites to TEC bishops who consecrated VGR BEFORE the Primates had the opportunity to judge TECs compliance. On the other hand, commentators who say many Global South Primates are declining Lambeth for moral reasons rather than “hurt feelings” are also correct. TECs manipulation of the process has turned our Communion into a Kafka parable they can no longer abide. I grieve for these good and godly brothers. But this is far from over.
Considering the numbers of people working in Muslim areas of the world who have been outraged by the Archbishop’s interview and lecture, it’s fair to say that he doesn’t understand the full impact of what he said and why it’s so inflammatory. He does indeed have a different worldview. The post-modern promotion of “diversity” assumes that all options and cultures are morally equivalent. It isn’t true.
Dale – your insinuation that Rowan Williams’ detractors are too stupid to get on his philosophical plane and understand his reasoning is strictly ad hominem. I, for one, was not a constant detractor of Williams prior to his actions of last year. The record here and elsewhere will show that I’ve found his past speeches and letters to be impressive, and at times even remarkable.
To have come to the judgment that there are, after all, red lines beyond which an organization cannot go and remain coherent is neither a) modernism nor b) a craving for a “monolithic Anglican Church” that never was. Or, put another way, the fact that I have concluded we’ve crossed some red lines, while you seem to feel we’re far from them, doesn’t make me a “modernist.”
You might note that the early Church, with an ecclesiology far closer to Anglicanism’s than your straw man of a monolithic church, had no problem affirming the idea of Truth, or authentic revelation. When the times called for it, its pre-modernist, big-O Orthodox ethos didn’t prevent it from anathematizing false teachings and the individuals who were their exponents. Nothing in what I take to be Rowan Williams’ apophatic theology prohibits bad ideas from being dealt with and put far from the church. It is, rather, the person, Rowan Williams, who has decided to embrace such ideas and keep them within the fold, so that their sponsors and opponents might learn to just get along for the peace of the Communion (“…but pray even more that it will be a context where, by thinking and speaking together in the presence of God, all of us may be set free to be more fully the Church God calls us to be wherever we may find ourselves …”).
When an idea is contrary to the Christian revelation and therefore, by definition, wrong, it’s wrong – in 325, during the Enlightenment, and even today.
Well said Phil!
I had a long dissertation to add here, but your comment was far better. I will only add: Several comments above have mentioned +Tom Wright who I have heard lecture followed with answering questions from the audience. I have read many of his sermons and papers. There is no comparison between his straightforward scripture based sermons and lectures and +++Rowan’s papers that, to me, are like discussions with Doctoral Candidates.
I believe +Tom Wright would make a superior, unifying ABC, because he is a believer in the truth found in scripture and his mind is clear and not circuitous like +++Rowan
Phil,
You said it much better than I was attempting. Well said.
I, too, used to be quite well disposed toward Dr. Williams. But he has lost my trust. I don’t think I’m the only one who can say that.
Dale,
I disagree with your thoughts in #19. This is not a battle between modern and post-modern thought. Logic and reason are not tied to a time line. I highly doubt even Socrates could make anything from our current ABC. The battle is absolutism vs. relativism. Truth vs. lie. What is vs. what is not. As God’s name is I AM there are things that I AM is not.
You are right that ++Rowan William’s worldview is different. It’s relativistic and will fail. See #13 above.
jayanthony (#25) – +Rowan did not and was not “telling the state how to order its law.” Why is that so hard to accept? Truly, why? To continue to make this assertion is to willfully spread misinformation or bear false witness against the man and his intention.
I differ from my usual confreres in that I thought this was a good speech that should put the recent controversy behind him. I hope so because he is indispensable to the Anglican Communion at this time.
He has a lot of work to do. In the last month there have been court proceedings in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi and Tanzania that have been linked by one side or the other to the communion’s sexuality disputes, as was the division in the Sudan earlier. As I have said before, running out the clock works when you are coasting to victory, but is a bad strategy when you are behind.
To return briefly to the Subject Which Shall Not Be Named, when I was a boy watching Willie Mays play center field, I thought “I can do that.†When I was a young lawyer in New York watching Suzanne Farrell dance with the City Ballet, I thought “How beautiful; she makes it look easy.†When I read Tom Wright today I think “Aha! Why didn’t I think of that?†When I read Rowan Williams, I usually stop. Any fool can make something easy look difficult. It is a rare genius that can make something difficult look easy.
Rowan Williams in his lecture was not bushwhacking through virgin territory. He was essentially addressing the age-old question of natural law versus positive law that has been the subject of philosophical debate since the Stoics and was given a rather robust airing by Thomas Aquinas 800 years ago. It is a topic that is always in need of fresh analysis. It would have been helpful if Williams could have used his very large pulpit to lead his audience along this well-worn path and to stimulate fresh thinking on this topic: to cause the “legal establishment,†who had spent the day in client meetings and in court and may have skipped lunch, to say “Aha! I see it now.â€
Instead, I think he likely succeeded only in closing off debate and making the question of Islamic law’s relation to British positive law largely out of bounds for the foreseeable future. And it does not do to fault the dim-witted 99% of the population that misunderstood him and explain it by his brilliance.
Katherine (#27) wrote: “Considering the numbers of people working in Muslim areas of the world who have been outraged by the Archbishop’s interview and lecture…”
I’m wondering whether those people where reacting to his actual lecture or interview (whether they actually read/saw it), or whether they were reacting to the misunderstanding or misinformation of the secular media and those who believed their interpretation rather than what +Rowan actually wrote and intended? There is a big difference. I don’t know in fact which they were/are reacting to.
#26 Now there’s a name to conjure with.
Well said.
#23 Katherine – thank you.
BobG+, I have lived in two Muslim countries and can tell you how it works. This will be taken into the Mosques where the Imam will whip the crowd into a frenzy of hatred for Britain. It will then be talked about on the streets and Christians will be vilified and perhaps beaten. There is no nuance in those calls from the Muslim clergy and politicians. The Shariah is the law and code of conduct for Muslims. It is not translated into English, but is read and translated by the clerics who can read the ancient Arabic of the Koran and Sharia. This flap will most probably be fanned by the fundamentalists into hatred for the West and Christianity.
#28—I’m not saying his detractors are stupid, just that they are speaking a rather different language. It is not a reflection on the intelligence of a Spanish-speaking university professor to say that he isn’t speaking English or on the intelligence of an English-speaking student to say he doesn’t understand Spanish. A hypothetical student who had never heard that there were any languages other than English and who happened on one of the professor’s lectures would think he was a crazy person spouting gibberish. That isn’t a reflection on either of them, but on the situation of us living in a world where there are different languages spoken.
I would suggest that many Anglicans from both the reappraiser and reasserter camps do not recognize that the Communion has also become that sort of world. They hear one another speaking and think their opponent is speaking the same language, only badly, when the case is that he isn’t speaking the same language at all. The first step in re-establishing communications is not to shout “Speak more clearly!” at one another, but to recognize that there are different languages involved that require some sort of translation.
Even within the two camps, there is an even more profound division between those with a basic commitment to the universal man applying universal reason to a univocal Bible and those who see themselves, their community, and their joint history as inextricable parts of the meaning-extraction process. The tension between what the English call Open and Conservative Evangelicals is one reflection of that division; so, I think, is the tension between Communion and Federal Conservatives. The problem is not just that those who basically affirm modernity speak a different language than those who do not; an even deeper problem is modernity’s insistence that there should be only one universal human language. Hence the insistence that those who do not read Scripture as we do must be fools, dupes, or scoundrels.
Please, please note that I am not setting up a hierarchy of value here; English is no better in the abstract than Spanish and Christian modernism is no better than Christian scholasticism, but they are different. They may be more or less useful in particular circumstances, of course. Someone who speaks only English should probably not enroll at the University of Bolivia, and a post-modernist is probably going to have problems at Bob Jones University.
The current times in the Anglican Communion are such that either an unwavering liberal or an unwavering conservative could provide a good deal more clarity than someone like +Rowan Williams who rejects the dichotomy (particularly someone who insists on using nuanced language to describe nuanced positions). I do think he has drawn some red lines and stated clearly that some have crossed them (as have I), but he insists that the Communion as a whole must enforce its own discipline in accordance with its characteristic means of making such decisions; he will not act alone. We obviously disagree on which approach is more consistent with preserving the essential character of Anglicanism.
It’s been said by Dr. Williams’ defenders that aspects of sharia already exist in Britain. In the Independent, Johann Hari describes how British sharia actually functions. Hint: it is as far removed from the reassurances Dr. Williams no doubt regularly hears from “Muslim scholars” as it is possible for anything to be.
To me, this controversy is not so much about what Dr. Williams said as his obtuse refusal to see that his ideas will have real consequences for real people. What an Archbishop of Canterbury says still matters. The doddering old fool may think he is making genuine contribution but he needs to realize that there are real people involved whose lives will be seriously impacted by his airheaded theorizing.
Sorry. This controversy did not erupt because people didn’t read what Rowan Williams wrote or misunderstood him. People read him and understood him quite well. This controversy arose because people did read Rowan Williams and were appalled by the laziness and his sloppiness of someone who should have known better.
Oldman (#37) – Perhaps I just missed it or perhaps the media didn’t report it, as it often does, but I didn’t see any reaction within the Middle-Eastern world after Friday prayers.
Besides, the ABC was talking about making some kind of provision for faith communities, including Muslims through his example of some form or part of Sharia under the umbrella of British law, within British secular society and governmental structures, which I would think would not draw crazed opposition in the Muslim world (except, as you allude to, perhaps among the minority of truly radical Islamisists that insist on no other form of law but Sharia). Then again, I can certainly be wrong. I just didn’t see much reaction among Muslims from predominately Muslim countries.
#39–just for the record, I believe Archbishop Rowan is in his mid to late 50s. I know everything is bad about him, but is he also really a “doddering old fool” as well? I guess I thought you had to be older for that denunciation to work.
#41,
If the shoe fits.
Bob G+,
I hope and pray nothing will happen, but it’s way too soon for such things to get organized. Also it will depend on how those governments decide if a reaction is necessary to benefit them. And the reactions will be different in say Indonesia and Malaysia, Syria and Nigeria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Nigeria may be a particular problem with so much tension already. It also depends on how large the indigenous Christian minorities are. We should watch carefully next Friday’s Prayers.
#19 – That is a very interesting point of view, which I will have to think about further. But do not neglect the follow-on question of whether holding such views is a good thing for the leader of the church at this time or not. I know you think it does, or at least is appropriately Anglican, but it does not necessarily follow to me. There certainly seem to have been a lot of missed opportunities for him to unify the church, if that is what he wished to do, without jettisoning one or the other of reasserter or revisionist, and I do not attribute any of those lapses to his inability to speak modernism or post-modernism.
#42–every shoe fits now. Next time, just call him a silly young man with no experience. What difference does it make?
Dale Rye writes: “Conservative Anglicans have, by and large, bought into modernity as thoroughly as the liberals. Their hermeneutic principles make no sense apart from an approach to propositional truth that would have been meaningless before the Enlightenment. “Inerrancy†depends on a definition of “truth†as little more than the empirical facts we can verify with our senses.”
I really don’t know what to make of this, or the scare quotes. Most conservative Anglicans I know or know of – including Stott, Packer, Green, Jensen, Motyer, Michael Ovey etc – would be amazed to be told they had an ‘Enlightenment’ understanding. We are decidely pre-modern, believing in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit telling us things our empirical sesnes could never discover. As for that old bogey of ‘propositional truth’, do you not know how highly esteemed Kevin Vanhoozer is in evangelical circles?
Ah well, back to my lager …
Dale- let me add that Rowan Williams’ approach to Scripture is decidedly Un-Anglican (a la 39 Articles) and is worlds removed from Tom Wright’s. Garry Williams made this clear in his monograph ‘The Theology of Rowan Williams’. Have you read that?
For those who argue that ABC’s speeches and letters are so academic as to be beyond the understanding of most of us—let me be blunt and non-academic in my language: Bull Roar. Academics are to teach, are they not? How does one teach successfully if most cannot understand one’s utterances? As an academic, if I were to discover (let alone be shocked and dismayed) that so many misunderstand what I say I would have been busy long ago trying to do a better job of communicating with the majority of the world. If ABC enjoys being so complex as to be repeatedly misunderstood, let’s find him a group of monks to whom he can communicate in Greek. The AC needs a leader we can understand and who can understand us. Williams never has been such a person.
The Archbishop can be very clear, although his writings are concentrated. To be honest, the last few things I have read from him have not been. He has not been himself – perhaps the pressure of it all is showing. I don’t think the latest ordeal by media will have helped.
Re #46: They weren’t scare quotes, but references to the [i]words[/i] “inerrancy” and “truth” as distinct from the concepts that lie behind those words. The definitions of those words as used by many modern Evangelicals, Anglican and not, are substantially different from understandings that would have been common prior to the Enlightenment. The words of Scripture are treated primarily as the data for truth-statements of much the same sort as those we could derive from the data provided by our senses or scientific instrumentation. All these propositions are then subject to the same sort of verification or falsification by the use of the individual reason (albeit enlightened by a personal inspiration of the Holy Spirit).
That leaves the role of the community and its traditions either out of the picture entirely or out on the periphery. The exaltation of the individual judgment is the essence of modernity, and none too helpful for anybody trying to develop a coherent theology of the Church. It leads almost inescapably to a view that the Church is not the organic Body of which Christ is the Head and we are the organs, but a voluntary membership organization of those who have a personal relationship with their Savior. It is that sort of individualist thinking, embodied in the Robinson consecration among other events, that has gotten us into this mess. In my opinion.
Steven Anderson,
I find Rowan quite concise and brilliant and comprehensible. Alas, others find him confused. I did not get a PhD, nor am I in the academy. I do think, however, lots of people are interested in scapegoating him for not being a bully. thus the name calling. Note that Mssrs CJ and Katherine write neatly, but offer no evidence for their claim. Instead, the constant diminishing of a man who has repeatedly demonstrated his intellect and knowledge. what people don’t like is that he disagrees with them.
You guys are a tough audience. Dale, you’re doing a good job, but in the end, we’re dealing with emotions, not rationality.
And lets be clear, the Archbishop isn’t responsible for how Christians are treated in Muslim Countries. Muslims are.
As fare as #12 – yes – clearly the primates feelings were hurt. They think Rowan should solve their problems. Why should he? They’ve been invited and they don’t need to come to the party.
Tom Wright has [url=http://www.fulcrum-anglican.org.uk/page.cfm?ID=277] weighed in[/url]:
Later Wright acknowledges that maybe things could have been expressed better.
I am a one-note band on this subject, but I am precisely the same age as Rowan Williams. Like him, I have had two professions, one in the academy and one without. I made my living first as a philosopher, and then made a slightly better one as a lawyer. Much of my legal career was spent in the UK, and I acquired some facility with the strange tongue used by the natives of those fair isles. Some of my friends may very well have been in attendance at the lecture. If Wright thinks that this audience demanded that kind of lecture, replete with 143-word sentences, he needs to spend more time with lawyers. (Which he easily could do if he were to espouse his well-known views in this country under the tender mercies of 815.)
I thought the ABC was quite clear and easy to understand in the interview about which everyone has commented.
I just didn’t agree with his clearly stated desires.
Take another run at it, John. Or at least click on the Independent link I provided and read about how sharia in Britain actually works. If you don’t like that one, try this one.
As far as emotions are concerned, what are we to make of people who resort to the “you’re too stupid to undersand what you just read” charge in order to defend Dr. Williams despite his inexcusable sloppiness and his arrogant unwillingness to see sharia as it really is?
Great Christopher. One anecdote. You really think Rowan wishes that? Read the address. You’re making assumptions about what he wants that fit within your contempt. A more honorable way of argument is describe what the other person argues in its best light. Rowan was very clear that he didn’t want the sort of sharia described. You simply aren’t listening.
You don’t seem to understand mob mentality. Look closely at what people are saying. They are reading each other. Few people quote Rowan williams. Noone is looking at what his argument really is. And then when he clarifies they sputter about saying, “but, but YOU SAID” even when he tries to clarify. Plainly, people are getting emotional, ascribing to him views he doesn’t have. And that’s their problem. Not his. It will all blow over and fortunately most people close to the situation are recognizing that this is really nothing, and thankful that he brought the issue out into the forefront.
More than one actually, John, but never mind. What Dr. Williams wishes is irrelevant. What Dr. Williams and Great Britain will get if this idea of his is ever implemented is what is at issue here.
I’m listening quite well, thanks awfully. What I’m hearing Dr. Williams say is appalling. It is Rowan Williams who seems to believe that this sort of thing can be implemented in a civilized, British manner. I provided two examples of Britons who believe that it cannot. And there are no doubt others if you’d care to look for them. You can start here.
Are we overly emotional about this stuff? Perhaps. For my part, I am going to start winding down coverage of this topic until the next time Rowan Williams says something stupid. But if we are emotional, we are emotional for the noblest of reasons. Because airheaded theorizing has real-world consequences. Because of the way sharia is applied in the real world. And because actual lives of actual people are at stake.
The pack has spoken: right problem, wrong solution.
What Williams was “exploring and teasing” in his most usual speculative and theoretical way, complete with his truck load of caveats, was an extended form of the perverse multiculturalism that has been implemented in Britain. In doing so he
*made some super false assumptions about the nature of sharia, or Islam vis a vis say Christianity/Judaism
* argued using inappropriate analogies
* based it on the most unrepresentative and even deceptive scholarship (Tariq Ramadan the stone -throwing apologist? Itjihad is representative rather than an extreme minority view? Shachar’s theories have evidential basis or support? Good grief!)
* ignored or just paid passing reference to the biggest elephants in the room which Muslims themselves have been unable to overcome (issues of authority to make rulings, apostasy etc etc)
Let’s not get to that slippery slope of creeping dhimmitude or this bit of reframing in his clarification at synod was just over the top:
[blockquote]”But I noted that many Muslim majority countries do distinguish clearly between the rights of citizens overall and the duties accepted by some citizens of obedience to Islamic law. It is this that encourages me to think that there may be ways of engaging with the world of Islamic law on something other than an all-or-nothing basis.”[/blockquote]
R-i-g-h-t. Tell that to every non-Muslim from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia. They have the same rights. The Muslims just have extra duties. U-n-b-e-l-i-e-v-a-b-l-e.
His thoughts on interactive pluralism, supplementary jurisdictions, transformative yada yadas, even with all the caveats are
* incoherent (as many have said, it’s as if Williams wants to have his cake and eat it too)
* unworkable (see elephants in the room)
* unrealistic (not least because it was based on either false or the most idealistic of premises)
* potentially dangerous and/or nothing more than capitulation, and
* coming from a senior Christian leader – whether it be in the context of a lecture on Islam and the law or not – totally perplexing.
The fact that British Muslim women have come out in force against his suggestion whilst organisations like Hizb ut Tahrir – banned in most countries, including the Middle East – have supported him, should give him reason to pause. But it won’t and it hasn’t.
Rowan Williams has once again spoken at length without taking responsibility for his own communication.
Dale Rye writes: “The definitions of those words as used by many modern Evangelicals, Anglican and not, are substantially different from understandings that would have been common prior to the Enlightenment. The words of Scripture are treated primarily as the data for truth-statements of much the same sort as those we could derive from the data provided by our senses or scientific instrumentation. All these propositions are then subject to the same sort of verification or falsification by the use of the individual reason (albeit enlightened by a personal inspiration of the Holy Spirit).”
You’ve just repeated your error. I know of no evangelical who thinks just like this. The truths of supernatural revelation CANNOT by verified empirically – though Pannenberg seems to suggest this.
Our hermeneutic is very sophisticated – read Vanhoozer, ‘Is there a meaning in this text?’
& read Garry Williams on Rowan Williams on Scripture (available online – google Latimer) – nobody but NOBODY (Garry Williams has told me this and he’s writing more on this) has ever refuted his claim.
Williams on Scripture is decidedly UN-Anglican.
No. 59 – Can you explain why Williams on Scripture is UN- Anglican? Thx/ No. 50 Dale – Good analysis of the deep ecclesiological division in the Church. The Church has a Catholic ontology which is not consistent with the Protestant views held by many of its memebers..
[blockquote]”…He was not making a public statement about his belief in Jesus ([b]people have asked me[/b] ‘why doesn’t he speak about Jesus?’[/blockquote]
This quote makes me wonder – why is it that people would ask such a question in reference to an archbishop? Why would they think otherwise? What has he said and done that has lead them to this question? What else is he talking about? What is his witness?
(a good question for us all, I might add)
# 59 : download this essay, read the section on Scripture & please comment.
Dale Rye – feel free to do the same & ask ‘Is this anything like a classical Anglican view of Scripture?’
http://www.latimertrust.org/theology-rowanwilliams.htm
Christopher, Rowan says, “We are not talking about parallel jurisdictions; and I tried to make clear that there could be no ‘blank cheques’ in this regard, in particular as regards some of the sensitive questions about the status and liberties of women. The law of the land still guarantees for all the basic components of human dignity.” You seem to know exactly what he has in mind – I don’t think he has a clear idea about how it was implemented.
Nor should he be blamed for what happens in other parts of the world. That responsibility lies squarely with local Muslims in Charge. It is other people’s projections upon what he said. We are responsible for our own projections.
What has happened? As I’ve said elsewhere, he stirred up enough of a storm that we see multiple Muslim voices; multiple Christian voices; and now a pretty honest open discussion in Britain. This, in itself, is most impressive.
He is not responsible, of course, for Muslim women. And what was remarkable is that Muslim Women themselves spoke out. This – in itself – is one of the most important things that +Rowan’s address could have done – made the opposition voice within the Muslim Community visible. He was a scapegoat for this, perhaps. But he’ll keep on plugging along.
Was this deliberate? If you know something about family systems theory or the Tavistock Institute or even James Alision, his leadership has been effective. Clearly he knows that shocking the system can be more helpful than resting on easy platitudes.
#63: “What has happened? As I’ve said elsewhere, he stirred up enough of a storm that we see multiple Muslim voices; multiple Christian voices; and now a pretty honest open discussion in Britain. This, in itself, is most impressive.”
– If you don’t think people in the UK have been discussing this issue for years, you haven’t been reading or paying attention. But the Liberal-Left in the UK (including the Labor Party – there are several Muslim MPs – and the BBC) has tried to muzzle discussion, shouting ‘Islamophobia’ or ‘racism’ whenever the question of Islam in the Uk has been raised. ‘Multiple Muslim voices’? Only Hizb-ut-Tahrir was pleased by his words.
“He is not responsible, of course, for Muslim women. And what was remarkable is that Muslim Women themselves spoke out. This – in itself – is one of the most important things that +Rowan’s address could have done – made the opposition voice within the Muslim Community visible. He was a scapegoat for this, perhaps. But he’ll keep on plugging along.”
– Actually, all the Muslim women in the UK who’ve been quoted spoke out AGAINST Williams and his all-too transparent call for ‘parallel jurisdictions’ (despite his obfuscating claim to the contrary). It’s ludicrous now to say he’s the champion of UK Muslimahs. They felt decidedly threatened by his proposals. (& Williams does think he’s responsible in some way for all British citizens …)
The Gordian,
You say “you haven’t been reading or paying attention” but then you say “the liberal-left in the UK has tried to muzzle discussion.” Which one is it? You also seem to be confused by the difference between approval and process. Let me explain.
Let’s say seven people are sort of talking about an issue. It’s confused by ideology, identity politics and lots of hidden stuff.
Person 1 makes a point or an argument. It is exploratory, but explosive.
Persons 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, misinterpret the point and try to figure out what it means. They each have biases, but have been skirting the question. They get angry at #1, even though they should be talking to each other. person #1 simply states, more clearly what he has been thinking which is simply what 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 have each said but in different ways. Finally, the rest begin talking to each other. We assume that person 1 needs to be right or wrong.
Rowan Williams probably is glad that Muslim woman are speaking up. And I find it disturbing that someone can say “I’m not for parallel jurisdictions” and a Christian would say “I don’t care if you say it, I think you want them.” That shows a deep lack of charity. I did not say that he was the “champion” of uk muslims. I do think that he has created the air for a much more substantial discussion than was before. Even though people like you constantly put words in his mouth and assume the worst of his intentions.