These views are not surprising and they are not new. I refer interested readers first to this Telegraph article (and please note the date–July 2001). Second, there is the full text of his essay entitled The Body’s Grace.
Third, I remind readers of this Time Magazine interview (July 2007):
Isn’t the Scripture straightforward on homosexuality?
It’s impossible to get from Scripture anything straightforwardly positive about same-sex relationships. So if there were any other way of approaching it, you’d have to go back to the first principle of human relationships. Those theologians who’ve defended same-sex relationships from the Christian point of view in recent decades have said you’ve got to look at whether a same-sex relationship is capable of something at the level of neutral self-giving that a marriage ought to exemplify. And then ask, is that what Scripture is talking about? That’s the area of dispute.You yourself once thought it possible that same-sex relationships might be legitimate in God’s eyes.
Yes, I argued that in 1987. I still think that the points I made there and the questions I raised were worth making as part of the ongoing discussion. I’m not recanting. But those were ideas put forward as part of a theological discussion. I’m now in a position where I’m bound to say the teaching of the Church is this, the consensus is this. We have not changed our minds corporately. It’s not for me to exploit my position to push a change.
Finally, there was a very long interview with Dr. Williams on February 12, 2003 in the Daily Telegraph by Charles Moore and Jonathan Petre which included this section:
Q: What are you going to do when the Bishop of New Westminster in Canada issues his rite of same-sex blessing?
A: I don’t think this kind of thing is something that any diocese can declare on its own. It does raise quite large doctrinal questions which are not best dealt with on a local basis.
Q: Given that he has said that he is going to do it, what will you do?
A: The Province of Canada will obviously have to face these questions in the first wave, and then it is probably something that the primates of the Communion will have to discuss.
Q: Apart from that unity point, what is your own view of same-sex blessings?
A: I’ve never licenced one or performed one because I believe that there are significantly serious questions about how that is to be distinguished from marriage not to rush into the innovation. So it is very complex and I don’t have a quick answer.
Q: How will you deal with bishops or clergy in this country who do undertake them?
A: I can only speak with past experience. When I have encountered cases where a cleric has performed a same-sex blessing I have said that this must not happen again. Anything that is done in the name of the Church must be something done by more than just an individual.
For reasons I will never understand I cannot find a working url for this latter interview (yes, I tried the Telegraph site and numerous other approaches) so if any of you can and could plass it along I would be very grateful–KSH
Rowan Williams wrote, “I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.â€
http://www.anglican-mainstream.net/2008/08/08/letters-put-fresh-pressure-on-archbishop/
There is no support for Rowan’s view in the Bible. The biblical worldview is thoroughly binary when it comes to God’s ordering of creation. This conclusion can’t be supported from Scripture.
It is casuistry to make “absolute covenanted faithfulness” in homosex the basis for judging what expresses God’s love when God’s love has already been expressed in the absolute covenanted faithfulness of the Holy Trinity. That same love ordered the binary distinction of male and female and speaks of its love using the image of a man who lays down his life for his bride.
Here is another statement by Rowan Williams, posted here: http://www.globalsouthanglican.org/index.php/comments/editorial_comments_09_aug_2008_walking_statements_or_going_to_the_pits/
When Rowan spoke in a 2007 public gathering in St Andrew’s Cathedral, Singapore, he was asked again during the Q&A;: “In your opinion, what is the Bible’s view on homosexuality?†His lengthier reply went this way:
“I’m surprised there’s only one question on this subject! The Bible tells us 3 significant things here, I think. First of all, the Bible begins by setting out a model of human relationship, human sexual relationship between man and woman in the Garden of Eden and that seems to be the model from which everything else is understood and seen as the Scripture unfolds. Second, in the law code of the Old Testament intercourse between man and man is described as something which is like ritually untouchable, it’s something that pagans do and Jews, the covenant people, don’t do it. Third, in the first chapter of Romans we have Paul taking for granted the argument that this is an example of human unfaithfulness to the order of nature. But I think those taken together explains why the Christian church has historically, thought as it has thought, reacted as it has reacted, to homosexuality. In the last 30 years or so, some Christians have raised the question of whether what we now see as the phenomenal of homosexuality in the world is exactly what the Bible has in view when it makes these prohibitions and these comments. And that is a debate that is by no means at an end yet. As you know, the position of the Anglican church is that corporately the Anglican church has not been persuaded, let’s say to change the traditional view on this and that’s where our church stands. That I think is how the biblical view unfolds and I do want say in fairness to those who have raised questions in the last 30 years or so, not all of them want to overturn the authority of the Bible but are simply asking, “Have we got it right? Have we understood it right?” But it’s a long, painful discussion and you won’t need me to say to you at this juncture that some of us in position of leadership in the Anglican church feels the force of the debate very powerfully but also the importance of not rushing into a change that will divide us, that will increase our difficulties in ecumenical interfaith discussion.”
[blockquote][i] (Time reporter) You yourself once thought it possible that same-sex relationships might be legitimate in God’s eyes.[/i]
Yes, [b] I argued that in 1987.[/b] I still think that the points I made there and the questions I raised were worth making as part of the ongoing discussion. I’m not recanting. But those were ideas put forward as part of a theological discussion. I’m now in a position where I’m bound to say the teaching of the Church is this, the consensus is this. [/blockquote]
He argued it in 1987, [i]but[/i] he was still arguing the same in 2001 as archbishop of Wales, more than a little bit deceptive on Rowan Williams’ part. So, in some sense, this is news. Of course, the guy was ordaining non-celibate homosexuals as archbishop of Wales and trying to elevate Jeffrey Johns as archbishop of Canterbury.
I do tire of the so called orthodox bishops who go along with the hypocrisy that distinguishes homosexual bishops from homosexual priests or deacons. This viewpoint only guarantees heresy for our children. Kendall, I know that you have kids. +Tom Wright has four grown children. Calling the moratorium on consecrating homosexual bishops a good thing when it undermines the proper moratorium by creating a false dichotomy between homosexual bishops and other clergy and plagues our kids with worse problems is NOT a good thing.
(If I were a non-married priest, could I shack up with a hottie female?)
Alice, thanks for recalling the Singapore response. I would note that Rowan’s stating that homosexuality was merely a violation of the ritual purity codes is a gross misrepresentation. If I ate a much celebrated shellfish, I could sacrifice a pigeon or two. But the penalty for homosexuality, like adultery, was stoning to death.
But there is nothing new here. We all knew how far left the abc is. the question is, why do we continue to put up with it? How many slaps in the face do we take before we say that THAT slap was the last one.
We are guilty of being slack, vacillating, weak, fearful, loud in talk but inaudible in action. Shame on him? Shame on us. Larry
Williams wavers and wanders.
FWIW the Archbishop’s essay is titled “The Body’s Grace”. To my knowledge, it has never been printed in the the various collections of the Rowan Williams’ essays, lectures and sermons that have appeared over the last decade or so.
After its initial delivery as a lecture and its publication by the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement in 1989 it was rather hard to find. Rowan Williams consented for it to be republished in Charles Hefling, “Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God” (a 1996 book almost entirely by episcopalian theologians in which every essay argued for a change in the teaching of the church) and again in the 2002 book edited by Eugene Rogers, “Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings.”
My concern with his position is at least two fold:
1. The Archbishop’s own essay continues to undermine the traditional teaching on that he now says he upholds. One only has to read the theological literature on human sexuality to discover its effect. Rowan Williams I (the Body’s Grace) is undermining the very teaching that Rowan Williams II (Archbishop of Canterbury) says he is committed to uphold.
2. The division within Rowan Williams between his private view and his public role is only wholesome as a christian leader if the view he holds as a private individual is agreed to be an adiaphoron (a matter about which christians can disagree without any concern that salvation is effected). Imagine if he were to take the view that as an individual he supported plural marriage but as a church leader he upheld traditional teaching. Thus the public very division within Rowan Williams undermines traditional teaching and seems to suggest that the view of Rowan Williams I is permissible within the church, a view that Rowan Williams II claims he disagrees with.
I think it would be helpful and revealing to mount a debate between Alice and +Cantuar re: The Biblical (Theological, Logical, Ecclesiological, Apostolic, Historic, Moral) Warrant for Non-celibate Same Sex Unions. Without hesitation I would bet the farm on Alice.
In the meantime, Dr. Williams must be called upon to step down from his archbishopric immediately and without subsequent challenge. He and he alone is responsible for his actions and statements. In view of such he has brought untold harm to the Anglican Communion. Please, Dr. Williams, do the right and proper thing.